So there's a documentary about Mitt Romney...

In 2012, former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney was the GOP nominee for President. I'm sure many Americans believe he should've been president but sadly 2012 wasn't the year to make a change. Indeed depending on whom you read it could be said that "the incumbent was uninspiring and the challenger wasn't very inspiring".

Well I may not have gotten that quite correct, but I'm sure there were many voters who weren't very happy about the choices that they had almost two years ago. Now we know a bit more about the man. Perhaps he's much happier about being out of the spotlight now that the 2012 elections are over.

We know he has a grandson, who just so happens to be Black. He's happy about that I'm sure although unfortunately many have decided to point this out and make jokes about it.

All the same I got wind of a documentary via Instapundit on Mr. Romney - entitled Mitt - and it seems really interesting. Perhaps a portrait of a man who seeks to be a future leader of the "Free World". It premiered at the Sundance Film Festival and Romney himself went to the premiere.

You know I used to say that Romney probably didn't have a prayer because he was a wealthy man. Some of the comments he made on the campaign trail were certainly blown-up as if to say this man is out of touch with everyday Americans. Also these comments were certainly blown-up by President Obama's re-election campaign. Without a doubt it had been brutal!

Now it seems, Romney beat himself up a lot. He felt like he couldn't measure up to his father former Michigan Governor George Romney. While Mitt himself was wealthy it was noted that daddy Romney himself made good and well provided very well for his family. Also Romney apparently was intimidated by the President and if you want your seat in the Oval Office as as leader of the free world, should you be intimidated by the one who already serving a term and running for re-election?

Who knows, what if Romney wasn't down on himself in 2012? Could he have made a difference where many may say Obama couldn't have? And supposing that Romney really didn't want to job considering how difficult the current political environment is?

A catchy political slogan???

What you see @ http://www.michaelscottcarter.com/

If I recall correctly when I was in elementary school me and a group of friends at the time started a clique that was named for the Nickelodeon Network. And our "leader" was also named Mike, but somehow we created a slogan for him "I like Mike". Not sure who created it, but it was catchy.

Not sure how it came about, but it almost certainly matches another famous slogan - "I like Ike!" - created in time for a past US Presidential campaign. It's possible that this was an inspiration for that back then or even now.

Truth be told, I wonder if the Mike of "I like Mike" - in this case Michael Scott Carter - is the same as the one that I knew. Haven't seen or spoken to him in years, but it would be cool to know that I once went to school with someone who is making moves on the state level here in Illinois.

Alas, Mike got my attention today finding a statement of his on the Capitol Fax this morning. An e-mail he sent to supporters noted that Illinois has 110 counties as opposed to the 102 it actually does have. Rich Miller quipped.

I wasn’t aware that Illinois had annexed southern Wisconsin. The “Illinois Dells” somehow just doesn’t have the same resonance, but I suppose I could get used to it.

Heh, and the comments weren't very kind to Mr. Carter either. They roasted him for that gaffe in his e-mail and then noted that they don't trust a man with three first names.

Well I'm trying not to go full on negative here. He would definitely be a different face to the 2014 race as it's noted that he's reportedy a Black Conservative Republican running for state treasurer. Also he's said to have worked with the Chicago Urban League. He's ready for the attack of the "liberal attack machine" in this race.

As for the screenshot up top, it would be great if it went viral and it just had to be preserved for posterity. Who knows how far this gent will go in politics?

Paul gets cool reception at Howard

I think it's a great thing for Kentucky US Senator Rand Paul to visit Howard University - an HBCU. It's truly good to know an American university is truly seeking to provide students with opposite viewpoints from their own. Still why were the Bisons cool to Sen. Paul:

"I don't think he changed any minds," one student said, noting that Howard has a tradition of allowing controversial figures speak at their university in order to get a broad range of viewpoints.

"I came here because I'm a very open-minded person," Jazmine, a junior, stated. "And I'm excited about the way I hope the GOP will do its thing in the future because I think that they're on the right track," she added. However, she said she did not think that Paul was the right person to spread the GOP's message of tolerance given his questionable position on the Civil Rights Act. (An issue he tried to resolve Monday, claiming that he has "never waivered" in support of the legislation.)

Jazmine and several other students said they also took offense at the Senator's attempts to educate them on the GOP's role in the advancement of African-Americans and pander to them by quoting Toni Morrison and notable Howard alums - all of whom were black. At one point in the speech Paul asked the students if they knew that Republicans founded the NAACP. The audience was visibly taken aback and audibly expressed shock that Paul would have the audacity to ask the predominately black audience a question about black history.

"This is Howard University. We know the history of the Republican Party. We have to take political science. I should have brought my book. That's in the first chapter," Jazmine said.

The outspoken college student admitted that there was nothing Paul could have said or done to change her mind about him or the Republican Party and was unable to give an example of someone within the party she'd be more likely to listen to.

"I feel like no one has really taken a step in that direction" her friend, Evelyn, chimed in, saying she would be more likely to take into consideration a speech by someone "genuine," unlike Paul, who she said should have owned up to his previous statements about the Civil Rights Act.

Perhaps the GOP can reach out to other HBCUs around the nation as well. I'm sure many of them have their own College Republican organizations. If I may add a former RNC chairman Lee Atwater had been a member of the Howard University Board of Trustees although it was for a brief period and he resigned his position.

Via Instapundit who offers Sen. Paul points for actually showing up!

Reason: Hawaii's "Lone Ranger"

[VIDEO] Sam Slom is a State Senator in Hawaii. He's the only member of the Republican caucus in the upper house of that legislature. Slom talks with Reason.tv about his role being the only member of the opposition caucus in Hawaii's Senate.

It's a little hilarious but a serious interview. He even discussed the fact that there may have been other instances of one member of a minority party in a state legislature and even Hawaii's early political history and how in the early days it had been dominated by Republicans and somehow became a blue state where President Obama took 42% of the vote. It does make you wonder what happened.

BTW, let's add that Obama is a native son of Hawaii as he had spent his childhood there. The President is often considered a Chicagoan however he basically started his adult life and career in the "Windy City".

Via Instapundit!

Ward Room: The Party of Lincoln -- Again

In the wake of Mitt Romney's loss for the Presidency almost two weeks ago, we have heard or seen lots of analysis of why the Republican party didn't gain the White House. It involves the demographic changes this nation is seeing. In fact we can see evidence of this in the previous post as far as Illinois goes.

So here's the anaylsis (again) from Ed McClelland:

There’s an argument in the movie Lincoln about whether the Republican Party was intended to be a progressive or a conservative outfit. Francis Preston Blair, who boasts that he founded the party in his living room, insists that it’s conservative and anti-slavery, but shouldn’t be taken over by radical abolitionists. President Lincoln, who is trying to persuade Blair to support a constitutional amendment banning slavery, obviously wants it to be progressive.

For the first hundred years of the Republican Party’s existence, Lincoln’s vision was ascendant. Republicans were in the forefront of the great social issue of the 19th and 20th centuries: abolitionism, environmentalism, women’s suffrage, civil rights. The Democrats, a confederation of Southern whites and Northern Catholics, were the socially conservative party. William Jennings Bryan, who lost three presidential elections on the Democratic ticket, ended his career by defending creationism at the Scopes Monkey Trial. Even in the 1970s, most of the judges who signed on to Roe v. Wade were Republican appointees. And President Ford supported the Equal Rights Amendment.

By then, though, the Republican Party had begun to change, into a party of reaction, whose purpose was resisting the social movements of the 1960s: civil rights, feminism, pacifism, environmentalism. The Republicans basically switched bases with the Democrats, becoming the party of the South and Northern white ethnics -- a coalition assembled by Richard Nixon, whose “Southern Strategy” made the Republicans the dominant party of the 1970s and 1980s.

Mitt Romney’s defeat demonstrated that this iteration of the Republican Party has run its course. The changes that began in the 1960s have become ingrained in American life. Campaigning against them marks the Republicans as a party of memory, not a party of hope or progress. Even conservative commentator Wayne Allyn Root admitted, on the Fox News website, that the Republicans have lost the culture wars, and need to give up on a political solution to the abortion issue.

Seriously, the real answer is to run candidates who are fiscally conservative and principled, but socially moderate and modern. The GOP needs candidates that say “Roe v. Wade is the law of the land. I will uphold it, even though my personal views are pro-life. And I will ALWAYS support exceptions for rape, incest, and when a mother’s life is in danger. Period.” The issue is off the table -- forever. What's left? The economy and jobs -- winning issues for the GOP.

That explain why an image of the Lincoln movie poster is shown in this post. This analysis makes sense to me in fact.

I consider myself pro-life, but my position isn't exactly ban all abortions. Social issues don't matter to me at this point primarily because I have a different set of issues. Jobs being one of them. I may not be able to stake a solid claim on abortion primarily because I'm not going out of my way to have children and have never been in a situation where there had been an unwanted pregnancy. Though for abortion all I can say is that hey whether the child is unborn or not it's not THERE fault that they're in the situation their in. I try to remember that.

Another piece of analysis is that Republicans must find a way to attract people of other ethnicity into their party. It doesn't matter if they're Black, white, Mexican, Puerto Rican, Chinese or whatever. Also how do they attract more women to their party?

There is some soul searching to do there, where to start? Start with their history as the party of Abraham Lincoln, 16th President of the United States?

American Crossroads: "Cool"

[VIDEO] I've searched for this ad and am elated to have found it! People were genuinely excited about Barack Obama in 2008. The then junior Senator from Illinois was a young fresh face and people were tired of political insiders who spent years in Washington. He could be described as a celebrity politician but with perhaps not a whole lot accomplished in his political career starting in the Illinois State Senate.

This ad shows how cool he is and then asks if he's accomplished anything as President of the United States. Well has he?

This ad was produced by Karl Rove's Super PAC. Do you think it's effective?