The GOP RIGHT WING Brings Out the LONG KNIVES …for Mitt Romney

[Segami]

- "..But I put to you a different case. While the demands for Mr. Romney’s tax returns are coming from various quarters, it’s coming very stridently from the right. Indeed, I believe that if this were coming mostly from the left, the right would be united in condemning this effort as a liberal witch hunt and distraction to draw attention away from Mr. Obama’s failed stewardship of the economy. Instead, the story remains alive, because the right wants it alive. Why would conservatives want this? I suspect the reasons have nothing to do with principles of public disclosure — after all, this is the party that just voted unanimously against even debating the popular DISCLOSE Act to make public the rich donors who secretly give to political SuperPacs — or giving the candidate time to get his story straight. That’s not the timing that matters.



I think this is the conservatives’ latest and most virulent effort at “extreme vetting,” in which the candidate either survives the right’s gauntlet with a disclosure that turns out to be a non-event (and thus potentially harmful to Democrats for hinting it would be otherwise), or — and this may be the preferred outcome — he’s further damaged and wiped out quickly, before the convention. Doing this now, before the convention, would allow the conservatives to replace Romney safely and victoriously with whatever “first team” conservatives the GOP claimed they had that did not run in the primaries. Several facts support this theory. First, it’s always been true that the so-called party leaders viewed Mitt Romney as an empty suit, an insincere usurper who could win the nomination only because he could bury his lesser known opponents with money. And that was possible only because the real “first team” of natural conservative leaders chose not to run.



However, those first teamers’ choices can now be questioned because of the second fact: despite all the claims that Mr Romney has suffered a very bad, no good, horrible week or two of adverse publicity and distractions, while Mr. Obama has been on relentless attack, the race remains effectively tied. The Obama campaign appears to be having some success in painting Mitt Romney as a greedy, out-of-touch, even heartless corporate looter who enriched himself by putting people out of work while businesses failed, and thus the wrong man to fix the economy, but even that image is not enough to allow Mr. Obama to sustain any significant lead over such a villain. If that is true against a damaged, exposed and highly unattractive Mitt Romney as the opponent, then every one of the so-called “first team” wannabes must be telling themselves, “damn, I guessed wrong; I could have won this.”




- It may be that some of the conservatives’ calls for vetting Mr. Romney’s tax returns are influenced by some now quaint notions of traditional fair disclosure. But I think it more likely that what we’re watching now is a major play to take down Romney and replace him at the convention, to allow the demolition — only slightly set back by Justice Roberts — to continue. After all, none of them believes Mitt’s one of them, and if they succeed, they’ll just claim they did it for the country.






http://elections.firedoglake.com/2012/07/17/the-gop-right-wing-brings-out-the-long-knives-for-mitt-romney/

[Bandit]

1. I don't think there is a single Republican anywhere that is squeaky clean and the Obama team

seams quite good at both defending themselves and attacking the opposition..I can not imagine any Republican that could stand against Obama and try to match wits with him in a debate or anywhere for that matter..Republicans ONLY have fear and loathing to preach about... They certainly do not have any fiscal successes or foreign engagement successes to brag about.. In fact I can not think of anything they have to brag about other than their intense hatred for Obama..