Posts Tagged ‘obama’

Freak show Dennis Kucinich lost huge to Marcy Kaptur in the Ohio CD9 Democrat primary, 56-40.  Proof that the Democrat Party is not completely crazy.  The interesting thing about this primary is that Kucinich is philosophically closer to Obama than Kaptur.  That does not bode well for Obama in Ohio in November.

[This post will be updated as the night goes on]

This is going to be a big day for Mitt Romney.  He will win Ohio, Virginia, Idaho, Massachusetts and Vermont.  He will come in second in Georgia, and thus will take a decent number of delegates out of that state.

At the end of the night, it will be clear that Romney is in the driver’s seat and the nomination is essentially his.  Newt Gingrich should do the honorable thing and drop out – having only one win tonight – and Rick Santorum should also drop out, recognizing that he has no chance of beating Obama.

[UPDATE 6:00 p.m.EST]

Exit polls show that Romney will win OH, VA, VT and MA.  Santorum will win TN and OK.  Gingrich will win GA, but be held below 50%, allowing Romney to get a decent chunk of delegates as the second place winner.

[UPDATE 8:30 p.m. EST]

Romney has been declared the winner in VA, VT and MA.  Gingrich has won GA, where Romney and Santorum are within a couple hundred votes vying for second place. Santorum has won Oklahoma.

Ohio polls are closed and with a mere 1% reporting, Romney leads Santorum by 3% – way too early to call.

[UPDATED 9:30 p.m. EST]

Santorum holds a nearly 4% lead over Romney in Ohio with 29% of precincts reporting.  This could get interesting.

Santorum has also won TN and it looks like he may win ND.

This night is far from over.

[UPDATE 10:10 p.m. EST]

Santorum remains in the lead in Ohio by less than 2% (about 10,000 votes) with about 55% reporting.  The good news for Romney is that there a lot of ballots to count in areas where he is strong.  Even if Santorum wins the statewide vote, Romney will gain a large number of delegates, since they are distributed by Congressional district.

So we continue to wait on Ohio.

[UPDATE 11:55 p.m. EST]

Mitt Romney appears to have squeaked out a win in Ohio. He won the population centers of Cleveland, Dayton, Columbus and Cincinnati.  He has also won Idaho.  Huge night for Romney.  The nomination is effectively secured.

[UPDATE 1:00 a.m. EST]

Romney’s wins in OH, VA, VT, ID and MA along with delegate gains in GA, ND, OK and TN give him a total of 386 delegates to Santorum’s 156 and Gingrich’s 85.  Congratulations to Romney for securing the Republican nomination.

Mitt Romney is, as country band “Big and Rich” would sing, “rollin’, rollin’, rollin.’” Mitt Romney continues to show broad strength in the GOP nomination contest with a big win in the Washington State caucuses.  He bested Ron Paul and Rick Santorum (who are only a couple hundred votes apart) by more than 10 points.

This gives Romney additional momentum going into “Super Tuesday” and the most important contest that day, Ohio.

Unless Santorum can pull off some solid wins next Tuesday, it’s going to be hard for him to justify continuing his campaign.  Gingrich has no business continuing forward, but since his head is in lunar mode, he still hasn’t recognized he has long overstayed his welcome.

For all intents and purposes, the general election is on – and it’s time for Republicans as a party to focus all of their energy on making Obama a one term President.

As expected, Romney coasted to a solid 47-26 win in Arizona, and topped Rick Santorum in Michigan 41-38, which puts him in the driver’s seat to lock up the nomination next week on Super Tuesday. At this point, Newt Gingrich (who came in third in Arizona and fourth in Michigan) should drop out, something that he really should have done weeks ago.

As I wrote back in January, Romney is well-positioned to secure the nomination. Last week, I wrote that Romney was going to win Arizona by double digits and also win Michigan.

Romney has proven his ability to win when it matters, and Santorum should join with Gingrich and drop out, conceding the nomination to Romney, so we can move on as a party.

Super Tuesday next week will solidify Romney’s status as the Republican nominee, and for either Gingrich or Santorum to stay in the race only wastes resources that could be used to beat President Obama in November.

You know that an argument is hitting pretty close to home when the Left starts to whine about a criticism of Obama.

A group called the American Future Fund is running the ad below. The reaction from the Left is amusing because they are so used to being able to get away with tying Republicans to Wall Street, that they don’t know how to handle the truth that Obama’s Wall Street ties are deeper than Bush’s ever were.

Obama’s supposed compromise on a rule requiring religious institutions to cover contraception was summarily rejected by the U.S. Catholic Bishops.

Catholic bishops said Friday night that they would not support the Obama administration’s proposed compromise on a controversial rule that requires most employers to fully cover contraception in their workers’ health plans.

The U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, which had led opposition to the regulation, issued a statement saying that they didn’t believe their concerns were addressed by a new policy offered by President Barack Obama on Friday morning to allow religious employers who object to the use of birth control to turn over responsibility for covering it to insurance companies.

This line from a story in Politico exposes the true thinking of the administration:

A senior administration official told POLITICO Saturday that the White House didn’t expect to win the support of the bishops with Friday’s updated policy. Instead, the official said, the administration was focused on achieving a balance of respecting religious beliefs and ensuring women had access to preventive services.

This is another example that Obama doesn’t want to actually respect religious liberty, but rather push an aggressive anti-First Amendment agenda and try to wedge the Catholic Church against its members.

As further evidence of the disregard of religious liberty, a very smart political observer emailed HHS’s women’s health “Required Health Plan Coverage Guidelines” to me and made this point:

Nowhere does it talk about infertility or fertility treatments — which is a legitimate illness/disease, as opposed to pregnancy, which is not. The Church is opposed to artificial means of conception as well, and would fight this too. If the Administration genuinely cared about “women’s reproductive health” however, wouldn’t they care about treating infertility as much, if not more than, fertility?  Why do they want to kill babies so badly?

I think that says it all about the real agenda of Obama’s administration.

Mitt Romney enjoyed a big day on Saturday.  First he won the straw poll at CPAC – something that no one believed was possible.  Then, later Saturday, he won the Maine caucus, edging out Ron Paul, whom everyone thought was going to win the Maine caucus.  Paul even skipped CPAC to spend time in Maine, and yet lost both.

This puts Romney at more than 100 delegates and Ron Paul with fewer than 20.  Gingrich is under 30 delegates and Santorum has just more than 70.

This makes Arizona and Michigan important contests at the end of the month.  Santorum has predicted he will win Michigan, and he might. But if he doesn’t, Romney will be riding momentum into Super Tuesday with a sure win in Arizona.

One thing is for sure, Gingrich is done.  CPAC is not the establishment crowd – as evidenced by Ron Paul’s straw poll wins in 2010 and 2011 – but the self-proclaimed anti-establishment candidate, Newt Gingrich, only garnered 15% of the vote, for a distant 3^rd place finish.

The CPAC straw poll results are very interesting.  Romney winning CPAC challenges the narrative that Mitt Romney can’t get the support of the most conservative elements of the GOP.  CPAC is the most conservative of the base GOP, and handing Romney a solid straw poll victory will give Romney additional momentum.

While this primary contest seems to be dragging on forever, remember, it’s only Feb. 11.  Obama didn’t secure the nomination from Hillary Clinton until June of 2008.  There is still plenty of time for the GOP to resolve the contest and then focus on beating Obama.

The Obama Administration grossly miscalculated the reaction that American Catholics would have to the new Health and Human Services (HHS) mandate requiring Catholic institutions such as schools, hospitals, and charities, to purchase health insurance that covers contraception, sterilization, and abortion-inducing drugs–all of which are immoral according to Catholic teaching.

Stories in the Huffington Post and others covering the controversy are quick to point out that 98% percent of sexually active Catholic women have used birth control; whether these women are all actively practicing Catholics is not discussed.  Regardless, the point is moot.  The Catholic Church is a 2,000 year-old global institution; its orthodoxy is not governed by polling in the United States.  Further, the First Amendment says, “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.”  There is no stipulation saying, “unless Congress determines that some followers of that religion do not strictly adhere to all of that religion’s tenets.”  Many Jews do not keep kosher, so can Congress pass a law prohibiting those who do from continuing?

Catholics may disagree with the rules of the Church, as children at times disagree with the rules of their parents, but it does not mean that Catholics do not respect or love the Church just as a rebellious child still respects and loves his parents.  The Obama Administration gambled that Catholics would choose Obama over the Church.  The sheer arrogance is mind-blowing. As Peggy Noonan wrote in her WSJ column, “there was nothing for the president to gain, except, perhaps, the pleasure of making a great church bow to him.”

Even some Catholic liberals like the Washington Post’s E.J. Dionne have spoken out against the mandate.  When E.J. Dionne and I are in agreement, there is something incredibly wrong in the world.  The pressure on the Administration is growing and will be unrelenting.  The Catholic vote matters to Obama and eventually, I believe, the Administration will capitulate.  If it isn’t soon, the damage to his image with Catholics could be irreparable.

This past weekend, Catholic bishops around the country wrote letters, to be read at Sunday Masses, condemning the attack on religious freedom.  Among these bishops was Bishop Olmsted of Phoenix and Archbishop Timothy Broglio, the Archbishop of Military Services who wrote that the HHS rule was, “a blow to the freedom that you have fought to defend and for which you have seen your buddies fall in battle.”

As National Review reports, the Army’s Office of the Chief of Chaplains actually tried to prevent Catholic chaplains from reading Archbishop Broglio’s letter from the pulpit.  The Executive Branch tramples on freedom of religion and then tries to silence those who object–these are not the actions of a man who respects our free society.  Obama views the First Amendment, heck the entire Constitution, as optional.

He must be stopped.

This is a must-see ad from Americans for Prosperity.