Was it poor lighting or what? In this rare interview on a network Sunday news show (Face the Nation) you cannot see Mitt Romney’s eyeballs. Host Bob Schieffer’s eyeballs are visible. Where I come from you can’t trust a man when you can’t see his eyeballs. And the blinking? Some say that’s the sign of a liar.
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72 Responses to Mitt on CBS: The Eyeball Gap
Now on The Trail
craig, you can’t shoot him until then either.
[as declared by colonels putnam, stark, prescott or gridley at bunker hill when short of ammo]
http://www.windstream.net/news/read.php?rip_id=%3CD9VF6KV81%40news.ap.org%3E&ps=931
bet they were plants (counter dirty tricksters) since no staffers made effort to stop it
Weird. Guess it was due to his Beady little eyes- use to be considered the mark of a criminal.
Interesting. I see what you are talking about but when you take your time and open your mind it is just a depth and experience coming through that we have not seen related to the White House in a very long time. We are so used to the Shallow Placating statements that when thoughtful depth comes to the stage it throws you off…..
Craig I thought what a cheap shot on this post at first but soon you will see, Or you do see the Change Coming and thus ……
It’s a damned shame that the obvious answer as to why now, didn’t leap out of the president’s mouth: It’s the end of the school year and I’m not going to see another class of outstanding graduates rewarded with deportation from the country they love!
Watching the GOP candidate and his spookspersons dodging a simple yes or no question is a lot of fun. That makes them look a lot more weaselly than any absence of eye contact. The lack of brain contact is much more off-putting.
Flatus
That sort of thing would require reading the commentary here. The things you and others come up with are a great deal more insightful than the so-called pros.
That was a good interview. If he gets a few more like that Obama is going to be in trouble. As to the eyes it was a shadow issue with natural light, his eyes were just as observable as Sheifers.
And the blinking? Come on Craig that is like making fun of someones stutter. If this is all you or anyone finds to attack Romnney then he is a shoe in for the next president.
Jack
Ping, I didn’t see any great depth coming through. What I did see was a candidate that knew an effective message and he was sticking to it. He is using all these new things that Obama is proposing to placate different parts of his base to emphise the fact that Obama has been a do nothing president.
Here is the question about this election. Here it is the middle of June and Obama is pandering to his base, not a good sign if you are an Obama supporter.
As Romney so correctly pointed out the time to be doing that was 2 years ago.
Jack
“We are so used to the Shallow Placating statements that when thoughtful depth comes to the stage it throws you off…..”
Ping,
If your idea of ‘thoughtful depth’ is changing positions as often as you change socks, than you are right Romney has this thing hands down.
I have yet to find a thesaurus that describes ‘pandering’ as synonymous with depth.
I am voting for Obama. But I have to agree with Jack… anyone who knows anything about art, knows that light comes from one direction. If Schieffer and Romney had reversed positions, I’m sure we’d have had a hard time seeing Schieffer’s eyeballs.
I take more of an issue with Romney stating that Massachusetts is one of the most “Democrat” states instead of “Democratic”. But even that at this point is… beside the point. I disagree with Romney (and Republicans) on the issues… therefore, I will be voting Democratic.
All I see in Romney is someone who has spent hours with his “briefing book” parroting the responses given him by his advisors. There may be someone there who might be able to “govern”, but it certainly isn’t visible within the pat answers, pandering to his base, and avoidance of anything resembling an actual fact or position on anything.
Austerity in Europe used to drive down wages, break down the social safety nets, and create a large low cost labor force within the Euro Zone.
Austerity Kills: How the EuroCrisis is Being Used to Break the Social Contract
By Yves Smith, Naked Capitalism, June 16, 2012
Rob Johnson, Director of the Roosevelt Institute’s Global Finance Project and Senior Fellow.
Euro-Crisis Used to Destroy Social Contract
Jonathan Chait: “The firm is a nice way for Steele and Davis to reframe criticism of themselves as mean-spirited opposition to bipartisanship. In reality, people like Steele and Davis get attacked not because they break from party dogma but because they are, respectively, a buffoon and a sleaze-merchant. (To be fair, Davis is a buffoon as well.)”
From Goodard’s Political Wire.
Too funny
and too true.
Davis and Steel. To call them buffoons does a great disservice to buffoons everywhere.
How to spot poverty from space: Count the trees
PIT,
Great post, thank you.
Austerity in and of itself might not be a bad concept, if it were practiced universally by all.
However in both Europe and the US countless millions have had austerity forced upon them through no fault of their own, by a small number of people who have no idea what austerity means, and absolutely no inclination to find out for themselves.Their idea of austerity is for everyone to make do with less while they go on as though nothing happened.
Those promoting austerity are attempting to hide behind linguistics, what they are really advocating is nothing short of subsistence.
I won’t veil my reply to them with any sort of linguistic slight of hand or semantics, but rather a direct and definitive critique of their proposals.
Bullshit!
who are the six goper senators that called for the withdrawal and how spotless are they with regard to “extra-curricular” activity?
http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/whitehouse/obama-choice-for-next-ambassador-to-iraq-withdraws-nomination-amid-allegations-of-impropriety/2012/06/18/gJQAVVculV_story.html
hiaasen on voter purge
http://www.miamiherald.com/2012/06/16/2851778/voter-rolls-and-scotts-bumblefest.html
Romney = Children of the Corn
James Fallows, the Atlantic, on the road with the Romney campaign
That is what I was noticing with the CBS piece.
Jack
Unfortunately for Mittens that is all he’s got and I think if the Obamarama sticks to its message which is we tried the Romney plan (same as the Shrub plan) and it is exactly what got us into this mess
Why would anyone give Romney a shot — he has done nothing and said nothing to indicate that he even has a clue as to what caused the problem in the first place. The reason the recovery is so agonizingly slow is because of gooper nonsense. Romney is nothing but empty warmed over Shrub — an even bigger empty suit
Romney is ok with a jobless recovery. The Shrub cuts are still in place — where are the jobs MITT?
and a worse war monger and religious bigot too boot
A whole collection of great videos for Sir Paul on his 70th Birthday
http://craigcrawford.com/2012/06/18/mitt-on-cbs-the-eyeball-gap/#comment-291518
Jack,
I agree, that was a very good interview…The problem for Dems and the President is Romney doesn’t come across as extreme..I mean will the masses look at the Republican platform as I would when making up their mind to vote? IMO, Romney comes across as reasonable..Would i vote for him, NOPE but the swing voter Indy’s, i think so!
“Romney = Children of the Corn”
Monsanto corn….
Harborwoman shoots and scores — I’m glad to see some courts are finally deciding in favor of the farmers who fields have been contaminated by Monsanto round-up poison seed.
Tony,
I think there is something to what you say and the Obamarama should keep pushing at Romney to expose those extreme positions. And of course everyone is trying to nail down their tiny segments of the population that is going to make up this loooong slooow slog to November.
John King on CNN is playing fantasy politics to show how Mittens can win ..of course this is not a reality show
Thanks, kgc!
Harborwoman takes a bow….
Romney has spent the whole of his life being the glib scion of privilege. He may be a perfectly nice man to know, but he simply does not have what it takes to be President. Having had virtually everything just handed to him by his doing exactly what is expected, he now wants the job and figures he can get it by simply doing what his handlers want him to do.
If the so called media will do their job and simply keep asking him questions and pointing out when he doesn’t answer with anything other than platitudes and memorized set pieces, then even I cannot believe there is any way the President will not be re-elected.
Romney’s economic policies will be pretty much like Bushes policies, only slightly different.
Don’t take my word for it just ask them.
It really is about the economy stupid. Bush didn’t know it and neither does Mitt.
jace
And Obama?
How is he different than Bush Jr
Give the people a choice between a fake rpublican and the real thing and they will chose the real thing everytime.
“If the so called media will do their job and simply keep asking Obama questions and pointing out when he doesn’t answer with anything other than platitudes and memorized set pieces, then even I cannot believe there is any way the President will be elected”
See it works the other way around too, that is the problem with this election.
Jack
Jack,
He is not losing 600,000 jobs a month.
May not be much to some ,but seems like a significant difference to me.
Shrub had a bunch of unfunded wars
Obamarama has tried (had to whatever) to live within its means
Shrub was a spending fool
Shrub believes in a regulatory policy that could best be described as benign neglect I think Obama is trying to regulate in favor of the common good (most of the time)
KGC,
Spot on! Its exactly what team Obama should be doing but will they? I mean the President doesn’t even articulate IMO what a second Obama term would look like..As i see it the best thing the President has going for him is he’s not as bad as the real Republican’s…
Jack,
Ah Jack, you are batting 1000, keep em coming!
Jamie
Very nicely said. We are ill-served by people claiming expertise in reporting on the political affairs of our country. We like blaming the medium owners’, but the reactions to the President’s economic address last week, as he was still speaking, by the White House press mark them as a surly lot who should be looking for other employment.
“and open your mind it is just a depth and experience coming through that we have not seen related to the White House in a very long time.”
- the pong hallucinates again. Gotta lay off that bush coke, pong.
Mitt Romney’s “Secrets”
by Taylor Marsh
Clinton Used Media to Spook Chinese, Turning the Diplomatic Game in U.S. Favor
by Taylor Marsh
john kerry will play the second coming of w in the practise debates. He was selected for his uncanny ability to mimic a smug, arrogant, B!LL!ONA!RE.
I wonder who will play oh,bummer.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/06/18/eric-hovde-sob-stories-poor-people_n_1605343.html
Nothing like poor folk to spoil a GOP candidates day.
And you ask me why I won’t cast a republican ballot?
XR,
Oh,bummer don’t need no stinking practice.
Beside that, if debates decided elections,John Kerry would have been president instead of a stand in.
Again, there is only one campaign strategy that a sitting president can use to get re-elected : “Don’t change horses in mid-stream”.
Campaigning as ‘The Lesser of the Two Weevils’ is an open seat strategy.
The oh,bummer campaign must demonstrate to the indies in OH, VA, and FL that changing Admins at this time will erase our very modest recovery.
The message must always be, “we’re making progress”, and “w is a dangerous neo-con, who is likely to start another losing republican war, that will tank the economy”.
That shifthead axelrod had it figured all along that o’s bending over backwards for the Wall Street con artists would bring an abundance of contributions from the pirate community. With the pirates behind him, o wouldn’t need the lefties’ help to win the election. He’d do it all through tv ads paid for by bank executives.
That turned out to be a moronic idea, as anyone with any campaign experience and brains could have predicted. Now o has to curry the lefties’ favor, and he has a really bad 3 year 5 1/2 month track record with them. Before it’s over, I hope to see him grovel before AFSCME and America’s teachers, before the Greens, and the supporters of the 1st, 4th, and 5th Amendments.
You will have noticed that o’s campaign to bring civility and sanity back into American politics has failed miserably, yet indies are only dimly aware of who has been increasingly uncivil, obstructionist, and psychotic. Guess that tactic didn’t work either.
Now it will be hard to get the $$$ to buy the ads o needs to sell the indies in the crucial states. rippers may lament that they blew a 15% lead in the 1st 5 months of 2012, but o’s campaign team is turning a potential monster landslide into a tight contest.
It makes me sick to watch this incompetence.
The willard interview is okay. w the 2d is a blinking stiff.
I really like the image of the moving van to the right rear. If he were reeeaally an aristocrat, it wouldn’t read ‘romney’, it would read ‘Mayflower’. The moving van will spark all sorts of positive emotions for indies.
o ought to have one.
Wellstone had his green bus. It was iconic. o ought to have one : blue, white, and red, natch.
X,
You are the best! Your commentary is priceless to me! Thank you!
Willard has a backhanded way of stimulating the economy.
The more he talks the more inclined I am to send a cash
contribution to Obama.
http://craigcrawford.com/2012/06/18/mitt-on-cbs-the-eyeball-gap/#comment-291543
Jack
I haven’t seen the President fail to answer a question. He may be long winded, too geeky and nuanced, but he does actually answer the question asked as opposed to “I don’t want to talk about that”.
When the supremes overturn the affordable care act, what will Romney have to repeal?
More importantly, how will he propose to replace it?
Wanna’ bet that he has a secret plan that he will never reveal?
Put him on the stump and let him explain it, and he will sink like a rock.
Tonyb,
I like you, too. Not only that, I feel indebted to you for posting all the great articles.
Jamie
He ducks and weaves with the best of them. Like his economic speech the other day that could have save an hour of boredom if he had boiled it down to his basics “Romney bad, Obama Good” everything else in the speech was ducking and weaving around the main thing he is scared to talk about. “Why now with all the good ideas , why not 2 years ago”
The sad thing is with a little vision rather than focus grouping he could answer that question and give himself a theme.
But it ain’t a gonna happen.
Jack
Jace
If you watched the clip Craig posted , he answered that question.
Might even work better than the current health law. Not that that is a very high bar.
Jack
If the SCOTUS rips up obamacare, they will set the stage for either single payor or public option.
As martha stewart would say, “It’s a good thing”.
Big Inshu had better pray that the SCOTUS approves obamacare, cuz they’ll lose a bundle otherwise. I presume that scaley, peeping tom, and alitogator are collecting enormous bribes as we e-chat.
xrep
if the mandates are tossed but the rest is in place, (a likely out come imo) look for a push for a pay or play system. Because the insurance folks are gonna scream to get the dead beats out of their system and that maybe the only consensus way.
So after 20 years we end up with Hillarycare after all.
Jack
I can’t imagine the o team even conducting focus groups -- unless they skewed the room to favor the opinions of people we used to call yuppies.
The decision to not prosecute the Wall Street vermin, but to extend their tax breaks instead was reprehensible. As was doing a 180 on Public Option, not closing the secret gulag, and not ending domestic spying, etc, etc.
Whskyjack,
If they toss oh,bummercare, I wouldn’t bet against your pay for play scenario.
Someday, someone is going to figure out that for profit health insurance costs 60+% more than medical care does. When folks make that discovery, they will eventually force Congress to cut out the expensive middle man. People who can’t afford insurance will then be brought under coverage, and the general public will still save bundle.
Based on latest polling, I figure that if the election were held today, oh,bummer would win 282 -- 256. A short time ago, I had oh,bummer figured for 348 -- 190. This demonstrates a dramatic erosion of support.
He’d better straighten up and fly right from here.
I have been enjoying Team Romney being caught so flat-footed in any response to Obama’s immigration-deportation announcement last Friday. To have otherwise had a pretty good past couple of weeks, when team Obama put them in Latino vote “check-mate” the other day, they have since had one giant Etch-A-Sketch moment!
But Billy, how does semi-amnesty play with working whites/rurals? I can’t decide. Was even a medium risk among voters you’re struggling with worth catering to voters you’re already winning 2-1? Those who benefit from this policy shift (it’s NOT an Executive Order, btw) still won’t be able to vote because they’re not being offered a path to citizenship, not now or ever.
When i put myself in the shoes of the supposed beneficiaries i think would i really show up at a federal office, declare myself and my family undocumented and pay a fee (the amount not yet determined) simply to get a two-year work permit with no guarantee i wouldn’t be deported after it expires? (That’s why this is officially being called “deferred deportation,” nothing more.)
Of course it’s a no brainer for those already in our squalid detention facilities (an issue Obama hasn’t addressed) but they are a small fraction of the numbers the White House claims to be helping. For those who have so far escaped capture it seems the better gamble is to stay on the lam. But turn yourself in and you’ve only got two years of peace (even less if Romney wins and changes the policy).
This whole thing strikes me as cynical atmospherics. Once those affected read the fine print (which is still being written) will they still be so giddy about it?
Jack,
I’ve heard those answers before especially in regard to block grants. States, and Arizona is a perfect example, just love block grants. They can take them and then fund or defund anything they choose.
Another republican, leave it to the states panacea that benefits no one.
If this is Mitts idea of improving or sustaining health care then he is as out of touch as many of us here have imagined. As for his stand on pre-existing conditions, he is like most republicans a day late and a dollar short.
Insurance companies don’t care if they take people with pre-existing conditions, as long as they can continue to drop them when the cost of care becomes too high.
Craig,
I’m not so sure, in Arizona at least, republicans have one standard immigration policy. Build the dang fence.
I suppose the beauty of it lies in it’s simplicity and lack of nuance, however unworkable it might be.
Compared to that, Obama’s plan albeit short term, looks fairly humane and reasonable, and will have a good deal of appeal to Latino voters.Especially in light of anything republicans have offered to date.
If Obama gets 271 I’m going to call it a mandate and so should he.
Karl Rove damn sure would.
jace, i get ya but still, if i was undocumented and looking at this policy, i’d see it as an illusion and not worth the risk of turning myself and family in for just a 2-year work permit. Nope, i think this was more designed for the rest of us no-nothings about the realities of this stuff to think that he’s done something humane, when in fact it’s nothing at all.
Indeed, this plan strikes me as a trap, perhaps unintentional, to lure undocumenteds to identify themselves to the authorities and get deported in two years (or sooner, if the policy changes). Nope, if i was still practicing law and had a client in these circumstances who asked advice I’d say don’t take the bait, keep your nose clean and out of sight — and we never had this conversation.
After all we are talking about an Administration that has doubled deportations to record highs since the Bush years, despite promising a year ago to scale back deportations of young people and not doing it. So those affected should bide their time and see if this is another broken promise.
I watched Face the Nation on Sunday and right at the end of the segment the camera had backed off and showed the lights that were over and pointed right in the faces of Bob Schieffer and Mitt Romney. Craig knows what the TV lighting is like. I always see Craig’s eyes.
What I can’t stand is Mitt Romney’s fake laugh. It is so phony.
purp, new thread
Craig, rural whites pretty much see it as another blow economically, another political pander to another group that will take away more jobs from them and their kids. Many I talk to “feel the pain” of the younger immigrant children and teens who are here through no fault of their own. Still, they see this as a simple political pander to get the votes of a specific minority and ethnic group, without actually addressing the long term issue of illegal immigration. Most will vote their pocketbooks come November, with their culture and it’s values following close behind.