Mitt Romney Launching Four Day Bus Tour Ahead Of GOP 2012 Convention

With the Mitt Romney campaign launching a "Mitt's VP app" and encouraging supporters to donate money to the campaign with the possibility of meeting the new VP, announcing a bus tour two weeks prior to the GOP convention in Tampa, Florida is adding more fuel to the fire of speculating who he will pick as his VP: 

But beginning August 10th, Romney will ramp up his campaign operation with a splashy four-day bus tour targeting the largest media markets in several of the states that will decide the November election, CNN has learned.

And in a show of force and party unity, Romney will be joined at each stop by prominent Republican officials and campaign surrogates.

Some details are still murky, and Republicans cautioned that they are subject to change, but on August 11th, Romney will hit three of Virginia's biggest population hubs - the Washington, D.C. metro area, Richmond and Norfolk - before heading down to North Carolina the following day.

On Aug. 13, the Monday after the Olympic Summer Games finish in London, Romney will arrive in Florida for campaign stops in Jacksonville, Orlando and Miami.

Romney aides are also scouting multiple campaign venues in Ohio for later that week, knowledgeable Republican sources told CNN. Other states may also be added to the itinerary that week.

"Sounds like V.P. week," said one Republican familiar with the schedule, who did not want to be identified revealing the campaign’s plans. “Hitting the big markets in the big states. It just makes sense.”

I found some tiny additional details of the bus tour: 

A campaign aide could not immediately confirm what states Romney is expected to visit on the trip. According to CNN, the bus tour will take Romney to the Washington area as well as Richmond and Norfolk, Va., on Aug. 11. The next day, Romney is expected to hit the swing state of North Carolina, with the final leg of the tour expected to bring him to Jacksonville, Orlando and Miami, Fla., on the last day of the London Olympics.

While all of the details of the bus tour hasn't been released, you can be sure that people will try to figure out who the VP is based on the path of the tour bus. That's why the Romney campaign is keeping things under wraps and the details vague. 

Some people are speculating that Tim Pawlenty or Bob McDonnell based on the scant details that we do have. While those names have been mentioned as potential running mates for Mitt Romney, I don't think it will be either men.

Mitt Romney Campaign Releases New App: Mitt's VP

Beth Meyers, who is the woman assisting Mitt Romney find his Vice President and running mate, has announced the release of free app on your iPhone or Android device which will alert you to who Mitt Romney's VP is before anyone else. 

Of course, members of the media will also download the app so that they can announce Mitt's pick as quickly as possible. However, its an innovative idea to garner more interest and excitement in Mitt Romney and his VP pick. It also helps add to the suspense of finding out who Mitt's VP is. Also, I think the Romney team wanted to find a way for people to feel personally involved with the Romney team by giving them an opportunity to be personally notified rather than find out who he picked from the news.  

You can download the app here: http://mi.tt/Ni5wb0

Obama's Potential Strategy To Attack Mitt's Faith Won't Work

The last time there were rumors that President Obama was going to go after Mitt Romney's religion, he got slammed hard by Jon Stewart: 

The Daily Show
Get More: Daily Show Full Episodes,Political Humor & Satire Blog,The Daily Show on Facebook

Once again, there is new speculation that Obama's surrogates plan to go after Mitt Romney's faith since none of Obama's attacks on Mitt are working:

Anyway, attacking Romney on Bain hasn't proved to be effective in any polls, but there is no reason for Obama to stop.  Again, what else does he have? Newsweek is doing its part this week by calling Romney a wimp, a la 1987. That petty insult didn't work against George H.W. Bush, but again, it shows the left is mentally exhausted. It reveals how trapped and empty it has become.

Obama will figure out a few more promises he can make to lure voters to the dole, but that has become old hat. I really believe there are meetings at the Obama campaign and at the White House (what's the difference?) where the question on the table is, "What can we give away to whom that will get us votes?" As the Obama campaign exhausts itself, having misspent money and failed with its messages too early in the election cycle, it is near the bottom of the barrel. The final 100 days are here and all Obama can do is attack — but he needs some new material.

I look for the "September surprise" to be Mormonism on trial. At first the attacks will come from marginal surrogates, then the reliable half-cocked usual suspects among Democrats in Congress.  (Somebody cue Debbie Wasserman Schultz.)  Next, a member of the left's apologencia from the MSM will write a cerebral, somber piece saying the tenets of Mormonism are fair game, and then we will be off to Slimytown. Romney will be confronted with this or that Mormon practice or theological position, the late-night comics will weigh in and Obama will have a distraction that could linger while he hopes for a break or something external to change the trajectory of the race.

However, going after Mitt Romney's faith is not a winning strategy for Obama: 

A new Pew survey released Thursday found that eight in 10 voters either are either completely “comfortable” with Romney being a Mormon or simply don’t care. White evangelicals are slightly more skeptical, but the poll found that it made no difference in how ardently they support Romney.

Further evidence indicates that attacking Mitt's faith would be a losing strategy for Obama: 

Not only do voters have huge information gaps when it comes to candidates’ religions, but they are not interested in learning more. Another Pew survey released July 24 found that only 16 percent of voters want to know more about Romney’s faith. There are a couple of explanations for that fact; voters may think they already know what candidates believe, or they might not find it particularly relevant to who they plan on voting for.

The latter is certainly the case for a large number of religious voters. Most voters surveyed say the economy is their primary issue, and other evidence suggests that Christians, Jews, and Mormons alike are more likely to vote for a candidate’s policies instead of basing their decision on his or her religion. (The same is true for other groups: immigrants, for example, consistently rate the economy as more important than immigration.) Sectarian political identification may have been alive and well in the JFK era, but it seems to have evaporated since then.

Regardless if the speculation that Obama or his surrogates will go after Mitt is true or not, its not winning strategy for Obama. Obama has unleashed all of his arsenal on Mitt and none of it has stuck. Obama might be desperate enough to try this attack on Mitt's religion just to win another term but the American people will see right through it.

Mitt Romney Slams Brian Williams In Interview

Mitt Romney displayed his quick wit and humor in an interview with Brian Williams. Watch the entire interview below. The best part comes around the 9 minute mark of the interview: 

Visit NBCNews.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

When Brian Williams asked Romney if he's looking for an “incredibly boring white guy” as his Vice President, I love Mitt's response: “You told me you were not available.” 

Brian Williams could only politely laugh at that smackdown. 

Overall, Mitt Romney did a great job with an incredibly boring white liberal interviewer.  Way to go, Mitt!!

Romney May Announce VP Pick Very Soon

After many months of speculation about who Mitt Romney's running mate will be, we are about to find out very soon:

Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney acknowledged on Tuesday he is considering naming his choice to serve as vice presidential running mate earlier than usual to better compete with President Barack Obama.

As they work from a short list of leading Republicans, Romney and his advisers say they are weighing whether he should announce his choice some weeks earlier than the traditional time of around the Republican National Convention, which is to be held in Tampa in late August.

The reasoning, advisers say, is that two candidates would be able to raise more money and engage Obama and Vice President Joe Biden in battle with polls showing Americans closely divided on whether to pick the Republican challenger or Democratic incumbent in the November 6 election.

Picking the choice early could also serve to guarantee some positive news coverage at a time when Romney is under fire from Obama over whether he should release more financial information about his wealth.

The subject of when to announce the pick was brought up by a voter at a lively town hall meeting Romney held in a high school gymnasium in Grand Junction, the largest city in western Colorado. The man asked whether Romney would announce his vice presidential choice before the convention.

"I can't give you the timeline for that. That's a decision we'll make down the road. Nor can I give you the individual," said Romney.

We do have a time line for when Mitt will announce his VP. In a campaign fundraising e-mail blast sent out today by Mitt Romney's campaign, the announcement will come sometime between now and the GOP Convention in Tampa, Florida:

I am very excited to find out who Mitt's VP will be. I can't wait!

Mitt Romney's Speech at the NAACP 2012 Convention

When Mitt Says I'll Repeal ObamaCare, He Means It

Ever since Mitt Romney has been running for President, he's been repeatedly said he would repeal ObamaCare. Recently, Mitt Romney was on Piers Morgan Tonight talking about ObamaCare: 

Many high profile conservatives such as Representative Paul Ryan, Ann Coulter and Fred Barnes are confident that if Mitt Romney becomes the next President of the United States, he will honor his campaign promise to repeal ObamaCare. 2012 will be the year Obama gets out of office and his health care law will be repealed. But that will only happen IF do all that you can to help Mitt Romney win.

Why More Conservative Supreme Court Justices Are Needed

Normally, I don't listen to Rush Limbaugh but there wasn't anything else good on the radio and so I decided to tune in to Rush. And he helped me to see the light on ObamaCare: 

The brilliance of the United States Constitution is its timelessness.  It applies to the human condition until eternity, because it is a document devoted to maintaining, proclaiming, and maintaining the freedom and liberty of the individual.  It's the greatest document of liberty and freedom ever written by human beings, and it is a target.  And it has just been dealt a very severe blow.  And to sit here and argue over whether what remains because of the Supreme Court ruling is a tax or a penalty is to lose the argument in November.  What are we left with, after all of that?  Tax penalty, Roberts brilliantly left a secret plan for us in there. It will manifest in years down the road.  What are we left with?  We're left with Obamacare.  We have Obamacare.  It's intact every bit as much as it was.

 Like many people, I got caught up in looking at the silver lining and analyzing how clever Justice Roberts was in the wake and I failed to see that whatever silver lining that exists is completely overshadowed by the fact that ObamaCare exists. The debate between Obama and Romney about the penalties or tax in their health plans is stupid. This silly debate will no doubt show up in the Presidential debates in the fall.

Given how ObamaCare was upheld, I am nervous about how the Supreme Court Justices will rule on the upcoming legal challenges that are on the way to the Supreme Court:

The next wave of lawsuits likely wouldn’t put the whole law at stake, as the challenge to the individual mandate could have. But they’re going after pieces of the law that happen to be red meat for many conservative voters — like the law’s contraception mandate and a new Medicare panel that Republicans call a “rationing board.”

And one possible legal challenge, which would try to block the feds from offering subsidies in a federal health insurance exchange, is meant to exploit a loophole in the law. But it could also be a good “messaging hit” — allowing them to attack the subsidies they see as a budget-busting new entitlement.

The fact that the Supreme Court will ruling on individual parts of the ACA worries me since the Court could uphold these parts of the law or they can chip away at the law by holding the various parts of the law unconstitutional. What's even more disturbing is that we find that Chief Justice John Roberts wrote the majority opinion and parts of the minority opinion and that we will never know why he ended up upholding ObamaCare.

Regardless of how the Supreme Court rules on the additional challenges to ObamaCare, we are still stuck with all the taxes in the law and the additional taxes that are forthcoming in the near future. We are also stuck with other provisions of the law that will do great damage to our nation's economy. 

We have to repeal this law. The only option that is left to us, thanks to the Supreme Court, is to elect Mitt Romney as our next President. But there's another reason why we need to elect Mitt Romney. What Chief Justice John Roberts did was make it very clear that we need more conservatives on the Supreme Court bench. We can never afford to have a Supreme Court Justice switch on the American people at the last minute. By electing Mitt Romney, we will have the opportunity to put more conservative judges on the Supreme Court. Thus, we need a conservative majority not only to keep the liberals in the minority but now we see we need them in the event one or two justices decide to go with the liberal minority, we still have a conservative majority.

Obama's Failed Promise Under ObamaCare

Recently, the Mitt Romney campaign put out this infographic about President Obama's failed promise regarding ObamaCare:

Liberals Understand The Impact of The Supreme Court Ruling On ObamaCare Better Conservatives Do

Those conservatives who are angry with Chief Justice John Roberts for upholding ObamaCare fail to see that he was able swing the Supreme Court to the right and to make it easier for future Supreme Court justices to apply the proper and constitutional analysis to legal issues that will come before the court. 

However, Liberals clearly understand just how significant this ruling is for the conservative movement: 

In the term that ended last week, the Supreme Court reached a liberal outcome in cases involving President Obama’s health care law, Arizona’s draconian immigration statute and mandatory life sentences for juveniles. But the conservative majority also laid down a cache of weapons that future courts can use to attack many of the legislative achievements of the New Deal and the Great Society — including labor, environmental, civil rights and consumer protection laws — and to prevent new progressive legislation. Far from being a source of jubilation, the term may come back to haunt liberals. 

...

The Roberts court has intensified the effort to reduce federal power. That the individual mandate was upheld should not overshadow the court’s ruling on Medicaid expansion — the part of the ruling that is most likely to affect other legislation in the near future.

For the first time since the New Deal, the court struck down an exercise of Congress’s spending power. It held that Congress lacked the power to deny Medicaid funds to states that refuse to expand their coverage. Chief Justice Roberts — joined by the liberal justices Stephen G. Breyer and Elena Kagan — held that while the government can deny additional Medicaid funds to states that refuse to expand their coverage, it cannot penalize them by rescinding current Medicaid payments.

Legal conservatives have come to the same conclusion once they overcame the initial shock of the decision and actually read the Supreme Court's decision. Virginia Attorney General  Ken Cuccinelli has echoed the liberal's fear concerning the implication of Chief Justice Robert's opinion. Famous conservative columnist Charles Krauthammer also acknowledges Robert's contribution to moving the conservative agenda at the Supreme Court. 

The only thing that liberals can be happy about is that ObamaCare has been upheld.  They don't care how it was upheld so long that it was found to be constitutional.  With all the liberals and progressives that I have talked to about this decision, they are not worried that it was upheld as a government tax. The taxes do not bother them because all they wanted to was to keep ObamaCare alive at any cost. The reason why they are not concerned about the fact that ObamaCare has morphed into ObamaCareTax is because they know that once an entitlement program is in place, it is virtually impossible to kill and as a result, the program achieves legislative immortality. Liberals want ObamaCare to be around foreover and they don't care about the source that keeps it alive. They also don't care about the consequences entitlements have on countries that implement them. 

In contrast, conservatives wanted this law to be killed immediately. However, Chief Justice John Roberts made the correct, legal and constitutional decision of leaving the responsibility of killing the law in the hands of the American people and its elected representatives.Furthermore, he made it easier for people to repeal Obamacare because by classifying this program as a tax, it becomes budgetary issue that requires 51 votes to get rid of it, not 60. He also provided the American people with the motivation to get rid of this law because there are two things that Americans hate the the most and that is taxes and ObamaCare. By merging the two things Americans hate into one, its a lethal and explosive combination for Obama and the Democrats, especially as Americans go to the ballot box in November. Mike Flynn, writing for Breitbart, points out that the "ruling will probably go down in history as the most effective GOP voter turnout operation ever."

Finally, given that Democrats love enacting new taxes and raising taxes on the American people, Chief Justice John Roberts made it difficult for Congress to raise taxes in the future since all future government programs will be labeled as a tax. Conservatives are justified in their concerns that the courts will defer to Congress in calling government programs a tax and uphold it on those grounds. What these conservatives forget is that given that Americans loathe taxes, Roberts increased the  political risks for Congress in passing new government programs. Thus, Congress will be more reluctant to create new government programs for fear of facing their constituent's ire for creating new taxes. That's the theory, at least.

Liberals and progressives fully understand the impact of Chief Justice Robert's decisions while Conservatives are still trying to come to terms with the Supreme Court decision rather looking beyond the holding and looking at the long term implications of the holding. Chief Justice Roberts has moved the conservative agenda on the Supreme Court far down the field and the Left knows it. It will take a while for Conservatives to see that he made the right decision and once they do, they will realize how powerful Chief Justice Robert's decision is for conservatives.