Performance rule number one: know your audience. After vowing to eliminate the Affordable Care Act and other "non-essential, expensive programs" if elected president, the Republican presidential candidate was met with boos Wednesday at the NAACP convention in Houston, Texas. Not once, but three times. His line that would make a better president for the black community than Obama, American’s first black president, didn’t sit well either.
"If I am president, job one for me will be creating jobs. I have no hidden agenda,” Romney told the crowd. "If you want a president who will make things better in the African-American community, you are looking at him.'' More boos.
The former Massachusetts governor faced an uphill battle to win over the crowd, as members of the well-established civil rights organization are some of Obama's staunchest supporters.
After the speech, Romney said he "expected" some of the negative reaction. "I am going to give the same message to the NAACP that I give across the country which is that Obamacare is killing jobs," he said on Fox News.
Vice President Biden is scheduled to address the group on Thursday. In 2008, both Obama and his GOP opponent, Senator John McCain, spoke in front of the NAACP.
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Desparate for a bad slant on Romeny's appearing before the NAACP Comnvention, MSNBC?. I watched the speech, and Romney was engaging, direct, candid in his comments, and very authoratative and command of the moment. And on several occasions his address was interrupted by applause, and at the end he received a standing ovation.
Pulling no punches, he told his audience who he admitted have a history of voting in the 90th percentile for the Democrat Party candidate what he had to offer them, and what he would promise, and one of those promises was to work to repeal the job killing and unaffordable ObamaCare Health reform act of 2009. So that got a boo, as would be expected from this audience. If he hadn't provided his intentions one of the main issues of the campaign (with the need for economic policies that will lead to a turnaround for our failing economy under this President's Administration) he would be considered as phony in his presentation, and this network and Larry O'donnell would be taking him to task for that!
It didn't hurt Romney to hear the boos...and the fact the media is advertising that small incident will gain him votes in the National Election as a backlash, you know! So have at it!
My friend Lawrence, YOU obviously know and see I am more than quite right on the issue of the "new show" The Cycle. The fact that the four are on a continuous cycle of contribution on every show [my idea] is key to that thought. HowEVER... Are you able to share with me weather there is ANY truth to the "RUMOR" that Ture' is already on an escape route out of his contract? ; ]
Because I hear he doesnt want that stain on his resume'...
Cheers
You must be kidding. Romney seemed stiff, uncomfortable, and tone deaf to the needs of the people to whom he was speaking. On top of that he presented economic misconceptions, such as that somehow cutting back on federal debt will stimulate jobs, as if they were facts. He deserved to be booed much more than he was, not because of anything that he said that was derogatory, but because of his statements that demonstrate a clear lack of understanding of how any of the mechanisms that would improve the issues about which he talked work.
He talked about charter schools and school choice as if somehow that will make education better, when it has been shown that those make education worse for the majority by funneling money from the majority to a small minority, and in many cases moving students from schools where they are being taught real science to religious schools where they get indoctrination rather than facts. He talked about "fixing" social security and medicare, but his approach to medicare is a voucher system that would essentially KILL IT.
I don't fault Romney for coming across as stiff, that is who he is, but I do fault him for having no clue as to how an economy actually works. The prescriptions for the economy that he proposed just in this one speech would make things worse for the majority for a long time.
Craig...that free spending and refusual to attack the graft and waste and duplicity of the programs that the social welfare party has been funding got us our first downgrade of our nation's debt in history, and we are about to get the 2nd as the debt ceiling is again about to be breached by this run away unbudgeted federal government. We lived through the 60s social spending fiasco, and now we are being forced to live through it again under this President and his "progressive" cronies in the Senate.
The nation's business community is sitting on their cash, as the accountants tell them not to expand, not to go out on a limb and hire now, as the deficits keep mounting up, and this President simply keeps asking for more taxes for his social spending agenda of the past, and the future. The economy is stalemated by this sorry state of affairs, and the economic and financial problems that wrack our largest trading partner, the Euro zone of Europe, are all based on those nations same history of government excessive spending and borrowing that we are now closely mirroring.
And the nation's consumers are taking the wary approach, cutting back on their expenditures, reducing their debt, and for the first time in decades actually putting a few dollars away (even in nearly 0 interest paying savings accounts), to be prepared for the disaster that looms just around the corner as our economy heads for a DOUBLE DIP RECESSION, and even those that still have jobs are worried about whether they will tomorrow if things don't change soon.
When you wake up from your revery about the JIVE campaign that Barrack Obama is offering up for his reelection, and realize what the true state of the economy is after 3&1/2 years of his Presidency, you will understand Romney's message, Craig.
You had the best panel on to discuss this story. They all nailed it. Brilliant. Loved Goldie's first comment.
NAACP learned nothing new about Romney today. It just confirmed he isn't concerned about their issues or anyone else who isn't a millionaire w/in the top 1%. The rest of the American electorate be damned to poverty, we're on our own.
Mr. Romney is a white man. It is not his fault, but he has not checked out his whiteness and yes the speech was good early on, but he could of have least used the real name of the Health Care Act...saying "Obamacare" was dumb. He doesn't have to examine his white heart, but at least get some better speech writers! Thank god for Toure and Michael E Dyson! time to help educate the white folks! No one is asking for a" negro tour leader," but as more white folks learn to listen...they might learn something and then again...maybe not.
There is nothing remotely affordable about "The Affordable Care Act", Judith, so refering to that bad law passed by the Democrat Party almost exclusively in 2009 y its name would detract from Romney's message. This law, with its bevy of new taxes (some $800 billion in the next 10 years as estimated by the CBO), from investment taxes to medical devices taxes to increased medicare taxes to "panalty" taxes on both individuals and employers to its failed mandate to the states to expand Medicaid (or else), forcing the states to raise taxes in the future, is a money grubbing bill of goods and a job killer in its ramifications. And it won't do one thing to improve the quality or reduce the cost of health care. So it was calling a spade a spade, and referring to it as ObamaCare, and announcing again that when Romney was elected President he would seek to repeal the law. .
I agree with your guest that Romney’s appearance was to appeal to his base.
I think this appearance was a desperate attempt to make an impression on his party’s own constituents because he knows how much even his own constituents do not like him as a candidate.
I also think it might have been his campaign advisors way of implying to voters that it does not matter if the other side’s base does not like him as a candidate, while appearing to be in touch with average people, and attempt to mentally intimidate black voters, all three, at the same time. Too bad he and his campaign leaders cannot put as much thought into any new policymaking…
Oh, and far as Rachel Maddow’s breaking news, that Romney said “…if they [at the NAACP] are just looking for a hand-out…” Romney has a hand out for the same amount of taxes from most everyone, even if he would keep the Bush tax cuts. (All accept for taxes from his self, and the richest, with his proposed International Territorial Corporate Tax System, where he would pay zero taxes on money overseas that he brings back to America.)
What is wrong with the government sharing tax revenue with the public to guide, help or serve the public, anyway? Does Romney want the leaders to keep all tax revenue for their selves and their contributing friends, and not pay any bills for anything?
It is like, Romney is not going to get away with telling any cashier that he should have to pay less sales tax than the person standing in line behind him because he is the richest in line, and he just does not get it!
In the global economy business is conducted more and more by multinational corporations, and moneys that are invested by those companies in overseas operations to gain profits have those profits taxed in the country of operations. The point is, why should the profits be taxed twice? And if a US based multinational company does bring its profits home to reinvest here in the US, is that not a good thing? If you ever hope to regain some of the lost manufacturing sector jobs that have been lost to the global nature of business activity, there has to be an incentive...and right now taxing twice, and also having the US Cor[porate taxes amongst the highest in the World is self defeating.
And if the history of the offshoring of jobs that the Obama Administration has created by the investments of taxpayers monies in enterprises like GM and GE and Solyndra (none of which paid any taxes in 2010 or 2011) doesn't wake you up to the foolishness of having the Federal Government take the capital out of the system and redistribute it as some ivory tower dwellers in Washington, D. C. see fit based on misguided ideology, well you are in need of a seeing eye dog to get you across the your Eight Mile street, Frank from Detroit.
NAACP, Ben and others, especially President Obama, they will never like you. They have a genuine hate for people of color (especially Black people). They never liked us voting, damn they hate our very existence. The main reason I cannot worship in their organized religion is: I refuse to continue to allow you to do anything else to me and when you think you (or I) are dying - you come forth and say, I'm sorry and I'm suppose to forgive. RACISM is defined as Race Prejudice plus power. I therefore cannot be a RACIST, but I sure hell can be a bigot. And with what little time I have on this earth, I do not want to spend anymore time with people like romney.
A black stand up comic a couple of months ago was doing his routine, and he got to talking about his white friends asking him if he was going to vote for Obama just because he was black...and he slowly shook his head, and then answered their inquiry with: "No, I'm going to vote for him because he's NOT White." There are many shades of racism, apparently, Dkinciad.
Hilarious! Romney stumping for Obama.
Romney knows he will not get there vote. His speech was for the media and independents.
The main problem with Romney's statement was the first part where he said "I hope everyone understands that high levels of debt slow down the rate of growth of the GDP, of the economy, and that means fewer jobs are created." That is conventional wisdom among republicans, but it is WRONG! This is a major problem with the right. They seem to believe in economic theories that are totally inconsistent with those understood by the people who study the economy, economists.
High levels of Federal debt do NOT slow down GDP growth, but do the opposite. The reason that job creation hasn't been faster is because too much government spending has been cut back and republicans have blocked any and every bill to spend money on programs to create jobs. If government jobs hadn't been cut back as much as they have during this recession unemployment would be more than a percentage point lower than it is today.
More people need to talk about this, how republican claims that somehow cutting back on government spending will create jobs. This was what was tried by Hoover (and continued by FDR in the beginning of his first term) that made the Great Depression worse. When they say things like this someone should ask them to explain the economic mechanism by which that works. I can explain how government deficit spending helps stimulate an economy during a recession. They can't explain how government austerity will somehow create jobs, because it doesn't.
Examine Portugal, Italy, Greece, and Spain (otherwise know as the PIGS) and Ireland also (although the latter country bit the bullet and put in the austerity programs a few years back to curb their governments deficit spending and borrowing to more workable levels of their Gross Domestic Product, Craig. We are quickly looking like their balance sheets, and taxing more inorder to keep spending at the ridiculous rate simply sucks capital out of the nation's business community (that "private sector" that this economic illiterate President said "was doing alright" as he made his case for more borrowed money and tax money to send to the untrimmed fat public sector still existing in the states and municipalities from the luxurious hiring rates spawned by the revenue stream of the housing bubble). It is sooooo self defeating.
Mr Romney,s statements even though delivered emphatically, is not backed by any facts or sound economic argument.the statements that he is reading from written for him by his speech writers dont make any sense.
he is totally fake.we have not heard him put forward any plans from him ,only monotone of constant attack on president.and return to tried and failed policies of George W.Bush. Nation should be alarmed and prewarned of danger that Romney can cause to the nation.
Mr. Romey is putting into his economic planning the very same tools he utilized to turn around the Massachusetts economy when he was Governor, reducing a growing deficit left by his predicessor who couldn't stave the runaway spending of the Democrat Party controlled legislature (and leaving a rainy day fund of $1.6 billion when he left office), bringing the state's job growth rate from 51st in the nation when he took office to 30th and it's unemployment rate below 5% (a full 1%+ below the national average) when he left, and rejuvinating the state's and municipalities' education systems at the same time to rank as one of the best in the nation.
His 59 point plan, available on his campaign website, to turn around the economy is availble for you to read, Reason man, but I'm sure you prefer to continue sucking the poisoned pap from this network and their in the bag for the JIVE candidate, Barrack Obama from the Chicago Nationalist Socialist movement and the New Party. Your kind is going to be overshelmed at the polls in November, just as this network is overwhelmed by the ratings of other cable news shows and main stream TV media. .
I always enjoy the conversation on the Last Word. Last evening Karen Finney, whom I admire very much, repeatedly refered to the Afforable Care Act as "Obama Care". Please Ms. Finney stop doing that, you are falling into a Republican trap that diminishes the seriousness and importance of this bill.