Category Archives: 2012 Election

Every day — every day! — for the last eight or so days I’ve been at home I’ve gotten a robo-call from an outfit that identifies itself as “Independent Voter Research.”

Every day — every day! — the robot asks me the same demographic questions (age, party, likely voter, race) and then asks me who I plan to vote for. Once I think it maybe also asked what I think of the President’s job performance. At the end of the short quiz, it gives a number at which ‘Independent Voter Research’ can be contacted: (866) 540-3140.

Something odd here. What kind of poll calls the same person every day? Is it looking for a different demographic, hoping the other registered voter will answer the phone? Is it some weird new type of tracking poll where they are looking to see if a given fixed population changes its views over time? Some unfathomable scam, looking for old folks to rip off? Some polling outfit ripping off some campaign? Some campaign with more money than sense?

After last night’s call, I’d had it. I called the number, and got a recording saying that they were sorry they had missed me, but were just calling to get my opinion; obviously a message for those with caller ID. Same thing again today.

So it seems that “Independent Voter Research” is not a group that really wants me to know about it. On to the internet, where they have no apparent web page. But looking up the number leads me to frantic discussions between Ron Paul supporters about a plot to get info about delegates in Virginia and elsewhere. More interestingly, it also leads me to a Rolling Stone article from Februay, Romney Camp Tapped Volunteers For Deceptive Polling Effort in Michigan in which I learn that the “Independent Voter Research” monicker and the same phone number were in fact used by the Romney campaign in a shady project in Michigan. But that project involved live callers; this one is a recording.

So, assuming this is a Romney project, what on earth do they stand to gain from robo-calling me daily?

Here’s how the Obama campaign will welcome Paul Ryan:

As others have noted, Romney’s selection of Ryan is a gift to moderate and liberal Democrats: in the course of identifying why the Ryan-Romney budget plan would be so destructive, Democrats are likely to say things making a lame-duck ‘grand compromise’ (aka grand sellout) on social security and Medicare much less likely.

The diabolically effective part of the latest Obama ad isn’t that it suggests Romney paid 10% or less in taxes, but rather that it links him to a tax scandal with the delicious name of “Son of Boss”.

Because the thing most likely to sink Romney isn’t his tax avoidance but rather that he talks and acts like the boss’s son he is.

By contemporary standards, this Obama TV ad is actually substantive, but it falls down a bit on the web backup. "Worried" – Obama for America TV Ad:

It also has a link to www.barackobma.com/plans where you are invited to go for more details. Although extant, they are rather scant:

FORWARD

• President Obama is calling on millionaires and billionaires to pay their fair share, and believes no family earning less than $250,000 should face higher taxes
• President Obama has a plan to give tax cuts to companies that bring jobs back to the U.S.
• President Obama is taking a balanced approach to cutting the deficit without sacrificing investments needed to grow the economy and create jobs
• President Obama’s plan would help grow the economy for the long term by investing in education, small businesses, clean energy, and infrastructure
• President Obama responsibly ended the war in Iraq, is bringing our troops home from Afghanistan, and will use half the savings to reduce the deficit

NOT BACKWARD

• Mitt Romney wants to reward the wealthiest with even more tax breaks
• Mitt Romney would create new incentives for companies to ship jobs overseas
• Mitt Romney’s plan would add $5 trillion in tax cuts skewed to the rich, either increasing the deficit or requiring tax increases on the middle-class
• Mitt Romney supports a plan that would require slashing funding for investments in our future, Social Security, and Medicare
• Mitt Romney criticized the end of the Iraq war as “tragic,” and has offered no plan for Afghanistan except keeping troops there indefinitely

We could probably stand a few more details online, no?

Good thing for Romney that nobody reads Newsweek any more. The article isn’t available online (yet?), but I have to say judging just from the cover it looks like a cheap shot. In any case, I’d have said the problem was arrogance, not insecurity.

(Just to make things worse, my son, seeing this cover’s top tagline said, “I knew Romney was a job killer, but I didn’t realize he was a mass murderer.”)

Meanwhile, Romneyshambles Continues in Israel (per Kevin Drum).

Update (7/30): Here’s a taste of the article:

The Sun even went so far as to dub him “Mitt the Twit.”

It was an astonishing faux pas—one of many packed into his brief visit. And it makes one wonder: if elected, Romney is going to have to work hand-in-glove with Prime Minister David Cameron and other world leaders on the ongoing global financial crisis and other issues. What unintended offenses are going to tumble out of his mouth then, when he’s representing our nation on the world stage?

The episode highlights what’s really wrong with Romney. He’s kind of lame, and he’s really … annoying. He keeps saying these … things, these incredibly off-key things. Then he apologizes immediately—with all the sincerity of a hostage. Or maybe he doesn’t: sometimes he whines about the subsequent attacks on him. But the one thing he never does? Man up, double down, take his lumps.

In 1987, this magazine created a famous hubbub by labeling George H.W. Bush a “wimp” on its cover. “The Wimp Factor.” Huge stir. And not entirely fair—the guy had been an aviator in the war, the big war, the good war, and he was even shot down out over the Pacific, cockpit drenched in smoke and fumes, at an age (20) when in most states he couldn’t even legally drink a beer. In hindsight, Poppy looks like Dirty Harry Callahan compared with Romney, who spent his war (Vietnam) in—ready?—Paris. Where he learned … French. Up to his eyeballs in deferments. Where Reagan saddled up a horse with the masculine name of El Alamein, Mitt saddles up something called Rafalca—except that he doesn’t even really do that, his wife does (dressage). And speaking of Ann—did you notice that she was the one driving the Jet Ski on their recent vacation, while Mitt rode on the back, hanging on, as Paul Begala put it to me last week, “like a helpless papoose”?