Romney’s base problems were revealed in the fact that he lost North Dakota to Santorum, despite winning the state easily four years ago.
But it was Virginia that perhaps best revealed the depth of anti-Romney sentiment. Because of arcane and frankly idiotic ballot access rules, Romney had the Virginia ballot all to himself with the exception of Ron Paul. The Libertarian congressman won just 4.5% of the Old Dominion State vote four years ago. This year Paul won 40%, while Romney cleared 60%. That almost tenfold increase provided Paul’s best percentage showing of the night and served as a way of gauging just how committed some conservatives are to voting for someone other than Romney.
The problem is not a conservative talk show host, but conservatism itself as presently construed. It has become a landfill. Limbaugh is just a seagull circling the top.
You might be seeing more planes flying in and out of Albuquerque in routes you’re not used to.
That’s because a major runway at the Albuquerque Sunport is closing for repairs for about a month.
Construction started Monday on the east/west runway.
All commercial traffic will use the northeast/southeast runway in the meantime.
Airport officials say Nob Hill and Southeast Heights neighborhoods could be affected by the runway closure – but say it all really depends on air traffic at the time of landing.
Crews will be installing more efficient LED center-line lights and replace sections of the concrete.
So here’s a counterintuitive argument: These primaries have damaged the Republican candidates’ images in the short run. But in the long run, they may yet help Romney — if he prevails — because by comparison with Santorum and Newt Gingrich, he seems “moderate,” and his supporters are more “moderate” than the voters backing the other guys. And Romney has been on so many sides of so many issues that pundits can arbitrarily imagine their own Romney.
My friend and colleague Matt Miller wrote recently that “everyone knows Romney is basically a pragmatic centrist.” No, “everyone” does not know this. The evidence from his tax plan, in fact, is that he’s an extremist for the privileged.
We’re witnessing what should be called the Two Cadillacs Fallacy: Romney’s rather authentic moments suggesting he doesn’t understand the lives of average people (such as his comment on his wife’s two Cadillacs) are dismissed as “gaffes,” while Santorum’s views on social issues are denounced as “extreme.” But Romney’s gaffes are more than gaffes: They reflect deeply held and radical views about how wealth and power ought to be distributed in the United States. These should worry us a lot more than Santorum’s dopey “snob” comment or his tasteless denunciation of JFK. …
Romney’s most faithful constituency in primaries [is] Republicans earning more than $200,000 a year. In Michigan, they backed him over Santorum by 2 to 1.
They’re Romney’s base for good reason. That “across-the-board” tax cut sounds fair and balanced. But a Tax Policy Center study in November of the impact of a 20 percent across-the-board rate cut showed that the wealthiest 0.1 percent would get an average tax reduction of $264,000. The poorest 20 percent would get $78, and those smack in the middle would get $791.
