Let The $4 Billion Rumpus Begin! (Mitt Romney & The Detroit Wheels Edition)

Posted on February 15, 2012 by Campaign Outsider

Mitt Romney is to the Republican presidential nomination what Ramen noodles are to college students: The candidate of last resort.

As such, the Michigan primary could well be Romney’s Last Supper, at least according to the Washington Post:

For Romney, the contest is a chance to show that he can connect with working-class voters, who have been lukewarm toward him. He has a built-in advantage in a state where he grew up and his father was a popular auto executive and governor. But for those same reasons, a defeat here could be devastating.

“If Romney loses Michigan, the perception is that it’s just a huge loss for him, one that could really cost him the nomination,” said Steve Mitchell, a Republican pollster based in East Lansing.

And from The Daily Beast:

Mitt Romney’s Michigan surrogate Rep. Bill Huizenga is confident in his candidate, but thinks “it’d be a huge embarrassment if he’s not able to win the Michigan primary.” Tuesday alone, Romney has penned a Detroit News op-ed and released a new TV ad aimed at proving his Michiganness to Michigan voters.

Slight problem: The feeling is not Mittual.

From Politico’s Morning Score:

62% OF MICHIGANDERS DO NOT CONSIDER ROMNEY A MICHIGANDER: Only 26% do, according to the PPP numbers out yesterday. “Only 39% have a favorable opinion of George Romney with a 46% plurality having no opinion about him,” Democratic pollster Tom Jensen writes. “Romney really doesn’t have some great reservoir of goodwill in Michigan to fall back on.” http://bit.ly/ypaFEc

So Romney will fall back on what he always does: The Super PAChyderm Restore Our Future, which truncated Newt Gingrich in Iowa and Florida and has now turned its attention to Rick Santorum in this TV spot (for starters):

 

The ad is currently running in Michigan, Arizona, and Ohio. Restore Our Future is also reportedly buying airtime in Tennessee, Georgia, and Mississippi – obviously intended to blunt both Santorum’s and Gingrich’s appeal in the South.

There will be blood in the GOP presidential primary over the next four weeks.

The question is, whose?

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , | 2 Comments

Boston Herald Readers Have Unsuspected Depth

Posted on February 14, 2012 by Campaign Outsider

From Monday’s Boston Herald Letters to the Editor:

Eagan panned

Margery Eagan reminds me of that character in Flannery O’Connor’s “Wise Blood,” an angry apostate hell-bent on starting a new church (“A hard pill for bishops to swallow,” Feb. 9). Eagan can’t comprehend why the church won’t change its teachings when 98 percent of women have used contraceptives . . .

 – Bill Connolly, Newton

“That character” is the immortal Hazel Motes (as in, “And why beholdest thou the mote that is in thy brother’s eye, but considerest not the beam that is in thine own eye?”).

Best ever quote from Hazel Motes: “Nobody with a good car needs to be justified.”

Then again, Bill Connolly already knew that.

Campaign Outsider Bonus Clip

See here for the origins of the phrase “unsuspected depth”:

 

A great scene from a great movie.

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , | 1 Comment

The Grammys vs. The Slammys

Posted on February 14, 2012 by Campaign Outsider

From our Whiskey Tango Foxtrot desk:

Sunday night’s Grammy Awards were in large part the Revenge of the Jilted Chicks. The Grrl Power Gone Wild lineup included:

Adele’s “Someone Like You” (one dagger on the Disdain-o-Meter).

 

Katy Perry’s “Part of Me” (three daggers).

 

Taylor Swift’s “Mean” (buried the needle).

 

(Not to get technical about it, but isn’t a banjo meant to be picked, not strummed?)

Meanwhile, there was this going on in the Twittersphere (via BuzzFeed):

25 Extremely Upsetting Reactions To Chris Brown At The Grammys

Yikes. Looks like we have a really big problem here, society.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

And etc.

So liberation is on the same footing as domination?

Go figure.

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , | 1 Comment

Keith Olbermann: Forgotten But Not Gone

Posted on February 13, 2012 by Campaign Outsider

For the second time in a couple of weeks, Current TV has run this full-page ad in the New York Times:

As TV Newser noted last month:

While the ad features pictures of hosts Cenk Uygur and Jennifer Granholm, there’s no image of Keith Olbermann, whose show “Countdown” is the network’s longest-running — since June — and most-watched live talk show since the network reinvented itself last year.

A sign that Olbermann is on a glide path to another implosion? Or was he just too big to fit into the ad?

We deride. You retort.

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , | 3 Comments

Westminster Kennel Clubs Rescue Dogs

Posted on February 13, 2012 by Campaign Outsider

The Missus and I always eagerly await the Westminster Kennel Club Dog Show, but this year we won’t look at it the same way after this development (via the New York Times):

Tired of Sad Ads, Kennel Show Takes ‘Dog With a Smile’ Tack

Prancing purebreds and pound puppies do not mix, or at least they will not during the televised broadcasts of the Westminster Kennel Club Dog Show this year, after the club cut ties with Pedigree, a longtime sponsor, in part because of Pedigree’s commercials featuring sad-eyed mutts up for adoption.

“We want people to think of the Westminster Kennel Club Dog Show as a celebration of the dogs in our lives,” said David Frei, the club’s director of communications and the host of the show for over two decades. The Pedigree advertisements, showing quaking and abused homeless pets, are in stark contrast to the coddled and cosseted animals that strut around Madison Square Garden during the two-day show, which begins [today].

So there’ll be none of this sort of buzzkill advertising:

 

According to the Times, the club’s director of communications David Frei told the Associated Press, “Show me an ad with a dog with a smile; don’t try to shame me.”

The Westminster Kennel Club doesn’t need Pedigree to shame it. It’s entirely capable of doing that itself.

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , , , | 1 Comment

In Which The Hardworking Staff Revises Its Opinion Of Brian McFadden

Posted on February 13, 2012 by Campaign Outsider

Last August the hardworking staff posted this:

NYT Sunday Review Cartoonist Is Just Not Funny

Posted on August 1, 2011

If Brian McFadden isn’t the lamest guy since Gunsmoke’s Chester, he’ll do until someone else comes along.

McFadden’s latest contribution to the New York Times Sunday Review section (click to enlarge):

 

You’d need to go a long way to find anything more hackneyed, predictable, knee-jerk – your pejorative goes here.

The Times Sunday Review has enough problems without including this dreck.

Pretty mean, in retrospect.

Flash-forward to today, and here’s how Brian McFadden responded in a comment:

Well, here’s what we’re doin’ now: We’re saying Brian McFadden is a mensch.

And, Brian – we’re a fan!

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged , , , | 6 Comments

It’s Good To Live In A Two-Daily Town (Tim Thomas Edition)

Posted on February 12, 2012 by Campaign Outsider

Tim Thomas, who sounds like the NHL’s first mobbed-up goaltender (“I going to use my right to remain silent”), gets very different treatment in the Boston dailies today.

Boston Globe columnist Kevin Paul Dupont cuffs Thomas around on the sports page under the headline, “Thomas needs a save to restore his legacy.”

Lede:

It can still end well here for Tim Thomas. Right now, the Facebook-posting, self-imploding goaltender is shoulder to shoulder with Curt Schilling and Manny Ramirez regarding how Boston will remember him. Not just as a player, but as a person, a key player-citizen in what is the unique nation of Boston sports.

Through a trio of Facebook postings issued over the course of 19 days, the 37-year-old Thomas has told the world that he wants to be heard. He feels the need to get his thoughts out there, and we are left to believe he wants to stimulate thought and conversation.

But he doesn’t want the media talking to him about it, and he told a gaggle of reporters, bloggers, and photographers Thursday at the Bruins practice facility in Wilmington that he’ll simply stop talking whenever he is asked about the personal beliefs he is posting for the world to see.

Dupont can’t decide whether Thomas is naive or delusional in posting statements such as “I Stand with the Catholics in the fight for Religious Freedom,” but either way, Dupont writes:

“[H]is ‘going Facebook’ is not going to wear well here, not in a town where fans and media invest deeply, perhaps care too much, in every little thing relating to their professional teams and athletes. Not only will fans and media quickly get fed up, but far more important, so will teammates, Bruins management, and ownership.

In other words, How to Get Defriended in Three Easy Posts.

Meanwhile, L’Affaire Thomas lands on the news pages of the Boston Herald in the form of a Howie Carr column headlined, “Freezin’ of speech.”

Lede:

What if Bruins goalie Tim Thomas had posted on his Facebook page that he was in favor of gay marriage?

He’s be up for a Profiles in Courage award, even though it required no courage, just Political Correctness.

But instead the Boston Bruins goalie wrote these 11 fightin’ words: “I Stand with the Catholics in the fight for Religious Freedom.” Such hate speech! Such misuse of capital letters! How dare he!

You get the picture. But Carr sees a very different reaction, at least from the fans, than Dupont does.

After the White House tempest-in-a-teapot, the pom-pom boys [news media not named Howie Carr] forecast that Thomas would be booed when he returned to the Garden. Wrong again. He got a standing O.

Your conclusion goes here. The hardworking staff is off trying to friend Tim Thomas.

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , , | 4 Comments

Butterfinger Bites Back

Posted on February 12, 2012 by Campaign Outsider

From our Revenge Is Sweet desk:

Last week, as you doubtless remember, the online pawn shop Pawngo became sort of Pwn-go:

[Last Wednesday, Pawngo] decided to have a little fun with Boston-area sports fans by dumping some Butterfingers addressed to Wes Welker in the middle of the city. This was designed to make fun of “The Drop” during the Super Bowl.

As you might expect, Patriots fans were just thrilled to be mocked less than 36 hours after the Super Bowl. Wait, what’s that? Oh right. Sorry, they got really, really angry about the whole thing. So much so that Pawngo CEO Todd Hills wrote an apology. [CBS Sports]

Not good enough for Butterfinger, which was quick to react on Twitter:

Now the candy company has upped the ante with full-page ads in both the Boston Globe and the Boston Herald.

The Herald ad features the headline, “Nobody’s gonna lay a finger on my Nation.”  And here’s the Globe ad (via @bostonponder):

Wait – 4.6 million? Their heart might be in the right place, but their math really sucks.

UPDATE: Okay – I stand corrected. My math sucks.

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , , , , , | 7 Comments

No Labels: No Budget, No Pay

Posted on February 12, 2012 by Campaign Outsider

The advocacy group No Labels describes itself this way:

No Labels is a group of Republicans, Democrats and Independents dedicated to a simple proposition:

We want our government to work again.  

The government in Washington is no longer capable of solving the very real problems facing America. Before every election, our politicians make promises about how they will fix our tax system. Our immigration laws. Our schools. Our budget issues. But after every election, these promises are crushed under the weight of the same poisonous rhetoric and hyper-partisanship.

So No Labels is offering a unique solution, as this ad in Friday’s New York Times detailed:

Crazy, yes?

Except the entire American political system nowadays seems to have crazy.gov as its home page.

Campaign Outsider Reality Check: Crazy.gov is actually “an invalid domain name” according to Spirit Domains.  Just disclosin’.

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , | 4 Comments

Rep. Paul Does An End-Ron At GOP Presidential Caucuses

Posted on February 11, 2012 by Campaign Outsider

Verrrry interesting segment from MSNBC’s irrepressible Rachel Maddow:

 

Apparently Ron Paul zealots are hanging around at caucuses longer than other GOP presidential primary candidates’ supporters, thereby locking up delegates at a rate unnoted by the mainstream media.

Which means Ron Paul might be leading in the GOP delegate race.

Be afraid.

Be very afraid.

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged , , , | 4 Comments