Romney 2012?

I wonder, in November, when Romney is shown conclusively that the country doesn't want him , will he go out and get a real job? Six years of doing nothing constructive but running for the presidency instead,should more than enough for anyone.

He doesn't see what you post, he put you on ignore a while ago. Said you were a waste of time.

WASHINGTON — In court documents that lawyers for Bain Capital sought to keep secret, the company and other leading private equity firms are depicted as unofficial partners in a bid-rigging conspiracy aimed at holding down the prices of businesses they were seeking to buy.

Stephen Schwarzman runs the Blackstone Group, one of the firms accused of colluding with others to deflate takeover bids.

In Bain’s biggest acquisition, the $32.1 billion purchase of the hospital giant HCA in 2006, competitors agreed privately to “stand down” and not bid on the company as part of an understanding with Bain to divvy up companies targeted for leveraged buyouts, according to internal e-mails.

The documents have become part of a lawsuit in Federal District Court in Boston brought against Bain and other firms by shareholders who say the firms’ bid-rigging artificially deflated the sales price of more than two dozen companies and cost them billions of dollars.

Bain, founded by the Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney, is a defendant in the lawsuit, which also names Goldman Sachs’s private equity arm and the Blackstone Group, the firm run by the investor Stephen A. Schwarzman.

Current polling over counts Democrats and relies on the voter turnout percentages of 2008.

Past history on polling indicates it is unreliable in terms of what it suggests.

Undecided voters always, in the main, break for the challenger.

Polling in Wisconsin (including exit polling) suggested that Walker would defeat the recall by a slim margin. He ended up getting more votes than he did when he originally ran for office.

Polling missed the 2010 Tea Party sweep

It won't be a Romney landslide, as some wishful thinkers on the Right contend, but it will be a win and that will do Babe, that will do.

Charlie Cook's The Cook Report

By this time next week, there should be enough national and state-level polling data to present a pretty clear picture of where this election stands, post-Labor Day and after whatever bounces the candidates may have gotten from the conventions. But we have seen enough data in recent weeks to draw some preliminary conclusions about the contests for the White House, the Senate, and, to a lesser extent, the House.

The presidential race is still close and, in a tight election, either candidate can win. Any number of events, not the least of which are debates, campaign gaffes, and domestic or international developments, could put President Obama or Mitt Romney over the top. Although it is pretty clear that Obama has an edge over Romney in national and swing-state polling, the size of his advantage remains in doubt. Every event or development should be judged on whether it might change the path of this election.

My view is that if Obama is reelected, it will be despite the economy and because of his campaign; if Mitt Romney wins, it will be because of the economy and despite his campaign. This economy is an enormous millstone around Obama’s neck, yet he and his campaign have managed to secure the upper hand—albeit with a very tenuous grip. At the same time, despite an enormous advantage that the sluggish economy and the sentiment for change affords him, Romney and his campaign, to an astonishing degree, seem to have squandered too many opportunities and undermined his chances of winning.

It should be emphasized again and again that this campaign isn’t over and that the race is still awfully close. But without a change in the trajectory, it’s a good bet that Obama will come out on top. The questions are whether the opportunity will arise for that trajectory to change and whether the Romney campaign be able to effectively capitalize on it.

There are a number of reasons why one shouldn't assume Obama will win...despite the polls:

We all know people who voted for Obama in 2008 who will not do so in 2012. Does anyone know a McCain voter who will now vote for Obama?

He can't possibly generate the turn-out he benefited from in 2008. He can't capture lightning in a bottle. 2008 was a once in a lifetime election. He will win the Black, Hispanic, Youth and Unmarried Mother vote, but their numbers will not come close to what they were in 2008.

Current polling over counts Democrats and relies on the voter turnout percentages of 2008.

Undecided voters always, in the main, break for the challenger.

There are huge numbers of voters who don't want to admit that they have given up on the first black president. They, unfortunately, buy into the nonsense that to do so is racist and they are so insecure as to worry whether or not a nameless voice on the telephone who is polling them thinks they may be racist.

Past history on polling indicates it is unreliable in terms of what it suggests.

Polling in Wisconsin (including exit polling) suggested that Walker would defeat the recall by a slim margin. He ended up getting more votes than he did when he originally ran for office.

Polling missed the 2010 Tea Party sweep.

When Kerry challenged Bush, Republicans watched the early returns with dread and nausea as pundits all across TV (including FOX) exulted or lamented that the exit polls indicated that Kerry of Vietnam would win.

Irrespective of whether or not you buy everything I've posted, it's pretty clear that any assertion that Obama has this one is the bag is ridiculous.

The Facts

Most of the criticism stems from a series of speeches that Obama made shortly after taking office, when he was trying to introduce himself to the world and also signify a break with the Bush administration with new policies, such as pledging to close the detainee facility at Guantanamo Bay.

This is typical of many new presidents. George W. Bush, for instance, quickly broke with Clinton administration policy on dealings with North Korea, the Kyoto climate change treaty and the international criminal court, to name a few.

Rove built his case around four quotes made by Obama:

Mr. Obama told the French (the French!) that America "has shown arrogance and been dismissive, even derisive" toward Europe. In Prague, he said America has "a moral responsibility to act" on arms control because only the U.S. had "used a nuclear weapon." In London, he said that decisions about the world financial system were no longer made by "just Roosevelt and Churchill sitting in a room with a brandy" -- as if that were a bad thing. And in Latin America, he said the U.S. had not "pursued and sustained engagement with our neighbors" because we "failed to see that our own progress is tied directly to progress throughout the Americas."

In none of these cases does Obama actually use a word at all similar to "apologize." The Latin American comment might have resonance with Rove's old boss, since that was Bush's charge against the Clinton administration in the 2000 campaign. The Prague and London quotes are not apologies at all. The Paris quote, which is often cited as an apology, is taken out of context.

In Paris, Obama was trying to rebuild relations with Europe, where opposition to the Iraq war had run high. The quote in Paris often cited by conservatives is this: "In America, there's a failure to appreciate Europe's leading role in the world. Instead of celebrating your dynamic union and seeking to partner with you to meet common challenges, there have been times where America has shown arrogance and been dismissive, even derisive."

That doesn't sound like much of an apology, more of a statement of fact that few international-relations experts would quarrel with. But Obama was making the case that both sides had misunderstood each other, and so he also said: "But in Europe, there is an anti-Americanism that is at once casual, but can also be insidious. Instead of recognizing the good that America so often does in the world, there have been times where Europeans choose to blame America for much of what's bad."

The two sentences are a matched pair; there is no apology.

The Heritage Foundation list is also a stretch. Again, nothing akin to the word "apology" is ever used by Obama. In most of these cases, Obama is trying to make a clear distinction with his predecessor, much as Ronald Reagan did with Jimmy Carter, or George W. Bush with Clinton. Guantanamo or the war on terrorism figures in four of the so-called apologies -- and it is noteworthy during the 2000 campaign that Obama's GOP opponent, Sen. John McCain, also had said he would close the facility. Obama's comments express a disagreement over policy, not a distaste for the nation.

Another Heritage example is a speech Obama gave in April 2009 to the Turkish parliament, in which he was trying to urge that country to come to terms with its tragic history with the Armenians: "The United States is still working through some of our own darker periods in our history. Facing the Washington Monument that I spoke of is a memorial of Abraham Lincoln, the man who freed those who were enslaved even after Washington led our Revolution."

But compare what Obama said to what George W. Bush said at Senegal's Goree Island in 2003. Bush called the U.S. constitution flawed and said that America is still troubled by the legacy of slavery. This does not seem like an apology, either -- but it is even more sharply framed than Obama's comments.

We can fairly judge the past by the standards of President John Adams, who called slavery "an evil of callosal magnitude." We can discern eternal standards in the deeds of William Wilberforce and John Quincy Adams, and Harriet Beecher Stowe and Abraham Lincoln. These men and women, black and white, burned with a zeal for freedom, and they left behind a different and better nation. Their moral vision caused Americans to examine our hearts, to correct our Constitution, and to teach our children the dignity and equality of every person of every race. By a plan known only to Providence, the stolen sons and daughters of Africa helped to awaken the conscience of America. The very people traded into slavery helped to set America free. My nation's journey toward justice has not been easy and it is not over. The racial bigotry fed by slavery did not end with slavery or with segregation. And many of the issues that still trouble America have roots in the bitter experience of other times. But however long the journey, our destination is set: liberty and justice for all.

Why would Obama's comment on slavery be considered an apology and not Bush's?

Similarly, Bush's secretary of state, Condoleezza Rice suggested in Cairo in 2005 that U.S. policies were directly responsible for the terrorism that had struck the United States: "Our policies to try and promote what we thought was stability in the Middle East had actually allowed, underneath, a very malignant, meaning cancerous, form of extremism to grow up underneath because people didn't have outlets for their political views."