Mitt Romney’s Concession Speech

Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney’s concession speech Tuesday night in Boston, as transcribed by Roll Call:

Read the rest of this entry »

• Tweet

MMM Predictions for Election 2012

By popular demand (from Matt Rooney and a Democratic operative who doesn’t want people to know he/she talks to me) your favorite blogger is shifting his focus away from the Sandy Aftermath and back to politics on this election eve.

Rooney said, “Let’s hear your projection, Gallagher.”  My response: “The power will be off at my house for the rest of the week.”

Here are my predictions:

Read the rest of this entry »

• Tweet

If Romney takes Pennsylvania he doesn’t need Ohio. Here’s why it could happen that way

By Stuart J. Moskovitz

There’s a serious flaw in all of the polls which is misrepresenting the current state of the presidential race.  As Dick Morris has pointed out, the pollsters all assume the demographic turnout will be the same as it was in 2008.  There are many reasons why this is simply not going to happen.  Many African-American preachers have already indicated that Obama hasn’t done anything for black people and that his views on gay marriage do not match their own.  They will not be lining up the busses to take their parishioners to the polls.

Let’s see what this means. At this point, it is fairly well predicted that if Romney takes Pennsylvania, he takes the election.

This seems clear from looking at RealClearPolitics’ current calculations.  Giving Romney Colorado, North Carolina, Iowa, and Florida, which is not unreasonable, Romney needs only 26 more electoral votes. If you give him Virginia, where he is slightly ahead, he needs 13.  He can do this with Ohio.  He can do this with Wisconsin and New Hampshire.  He can do this with Pennsylvania.  Few people believe he will win Pennsylvania, where he is trailing by 5% in some polls.  (Susquehanna Polling — which is very accurate in Pennsylvania — did a poll October 18 showing Romney up by 4%.  For some reason, RealClearPolitics is using its October 4 poll showing Obama ahead by 2%.)  In 2008, in Philadelphia, the mother lode for Democratic votes and a city with a majority-African-American population, approximately 688,000 people voted in the 2008 election.  Of these, 574,930 voted for Obama.  In 2010, however, when the Republicans swept to power in the House — due to disenchantment with Obama, primarily — only 422,283 people voted in Philadelphia.

Granted, there are always fewer votes in a senatorial/gubernatorial election than in a presidential election, but this is a dramatic drop-off.  To begin with, I should point out that Republican Tom Corbett won the gubernatorial race, garnering 54.49% of the vote statewide.  In their final polls, no pollster had the Republican above 52%.  In other words, they all underestimated him by nearly 2.5%.

Read the rest of this entry »

• Tweet

Has anyone seen Charles Measley?

• Tweet

Clint Eastwood: “There’s not much time left and the future of our country is at stake”

• Tweet

Who won the Al Smith Dinner?

Katie Couric won the night as more people saw her sitting behind Governor Romney and President Obama while the they delivered their remarks since the time she broadcast her colonoscopy.

Romney was the more presidential of the candidates.  He was confident, funny and prepared.  The crowd responded accordingly.

Obama joked twice about his performance in the first debate.  “Just to make Axlerod sweat,” he said that he was going to prepare for the third debate coming up on Monday night the same way he did for the first.  It looked to me that the same Obama who showed up at the first debate also showed up at the Al Smith Dinner.

• Tweet

Karl Rove: No candidate with numbers like Romney’s has ever lost

• Tweet

Who won the debate?

By virtue of the fact that he showed up this time, unlike the Denver debate, President Obama had a much better performance tonight and probably stopped the bleeding.

I thought the president’s most powerful moment was when he was standing for the diplomatic corp while answering the question about Libya.  If I didn’t know that Obama was lying blatantly at the moment, he might have even won me over.  I was shocked that after two weeks of covering up and lying about the attacks on our people in Libya, while blaming the deaths on a YouTube video, that Obama was actually acting presidential.

Mitt Romney must have been shocked too because he missed a huge opportunity to blast Obama for the lies to America’s face about Libya, both tonight and since September 11.   Just as Romney seemed to have his footing for the knock out punch, moderator Candy Crowley interfered, erroneously, on behalf of Obama.

After appealing to his liberal base for the last two months, Obama started to compete with Romney for the center.   Romney countered, with less effectiveness than he did in Denver, by reminding America of Obama’s record.

My favorite moment was when Obama said, “when I was president.”  I hope that was prophetic.

Expect the momentum that Romney has enjoyed for the last two weeks to slow and for the race to move to a dead heat.

• Tweet

The real Mitt Romney

During a campaign stop in Iowa yesterday GOP presidential candidate Mitt Romney shared a story about how he and Ann mistakenly crashed a Christmas party where he met one of the Ex-Seals who was killed in Benghazi on September 11.

• Tweet

Barack Obama approved this message

• Tweet