Moving from high-fives to awkward white guy fist bumps

Tagg Romney, the suck-upiest one of the Romney brood, turns to average objective Americans to prove that his dad is too the bestest dad on the whole planet, maybe even the universe…if his religion lets him believe in that:

The response the campaign has been fielding to my Dad’s speech yesterday has been overwhelmingly positive and some of it has been deeply touching. My Dad and many of his family has received personal emails and phone calls from a broad spectrum of people who have been very complimentary of the speech–from evangelical leaders, politicians, and even some journalists. And while you’d never expect any speech to receive unanimous praise, the feedback on the TV, radio, and print has also been overwhelmingly positive. Here is a small sampling:

His list then includes, among others, Rush Limbaugh (drug addict, off-shore underage sex aficionado), Pat Buchanan (Nazi), Bill Bennett (compulsive gambling addict), Chris Matthews (man crush addict), Peggy Noonan (secret lush and Reagan addict) and Rich Lowry who had this to say:

He partially wrote and then delivered a speech that was a deeply felt love poem to America, a defense and celebration of its religious vibrancy and world-shaping commitment to liberty."

Rich then declared that Mitt Romney had won the election and is our new president because Rich still has that premature celebration problem

Someone is clearly excited…

I didn’t get to watch our man Mitt! come down from the mountaintop today and deliver the Founding Father’s Commandments or whatever they were. But, through the miracle of the internets, it’s almost like I was there. First to shoot his load was Hugh Hewitt who, well, let’s just say Hugh was less restrained than usual:

Mitt Romney’s "Faith in America" speech was simply magnificent, and anyone who denies it is not to be trusted as an analyst. On every level it was a masterpiece. The staging and Romney’s delivery, the eclipse of all other candidates it caused, the domination of the news cycle just prior to the start of absentee voting in New Hampshire on Monday –for all these reasons and more it will be long discussed as a masterpiece of political maneuver.

Far more important than all of that, however, was the content of the address, which was a brilliant explication of the American political theory of faith and freedom. Romney used the moment to defend not just himself but the American tradition of faith in the public square, of vigorous and valued religious plurality, and, crucially, why that tradition has allowed America’s role in the world to be so unqualifiedly good.

Not that Hugh has a dog-strapped-to-the-roof-of-a-station-wagon in this hunt.

In a somewhat more spiritual vein, we turn to the normally levelheaded Tits on a Blintz:

Mitt Romney gives his "Faith in America" speech. Starts at 10:30. Watch it live here. Another giant step for the new media ………….. yeah baby! Robert Spencer pointed out here, Romney is the only presidential candidate to use the word jihad – for that alone he deserves a listen.

[...]

UPDATE: Too much religious talk. If I want a religious sermon I’ll got to my house of worship. Where’s the beef?

10:51 am: Nearly tuned out. Glad I didn’t He is talking hate speech in mosques ………………… good

I have always said that what the Sermon on the Mount lacked was some old-time religion asskicking.

David Frum, on the other hand, felt the speech to be neither fish nor fisticuffs:

Had he focused instead on simply arguing that presidents need only prove themselves loyal to American values, he would have been on safe ground. Instead, he over-reached, super-adding to his civic appeal an additional appeal to voters who demand faith in Jesus as a requirement in a president. That is an argument that will not work – and a game Mitt Romney cannot win.

At the end of the day though, the only thing that really matters to a candidate is that his kids still look up to him as the superhero that he really is:

My Words Can’t Do It Justice Wow. As I’ve said before, I’m biased. But my Dad hit a home run with his speech today…

But was it a seventh game of the World Series, bottom of the ninth, bases loaded, down by three runs, full count , the kind that A-Rod would strike out on, kind of home run?

I find his lack of enthusiasm telling.

Tagg thinks Mitt bombed.

You read it here first…

Too many brothers. Not enough women.

The Wall Street Journal, ever on the cutting edge of things that don’t involve walking over people to make money, discovers that our man Mitt! has dispatched his five Mittlings to the four corners of a country he wants treat like a dog strapped to the roof of a station wagon. It is in these bucolic locales that the boys are supposed to look pretty, but talk…not so much:

Politicians regularly ask for help from their offspring on the campaign trail, but Mr. Romney’s sons, ages 26 to 37, stand out in a crowded field. All five — Tagg, Matt, Josh, Ben and Craig — look like younger versions of their father. They are clean-cut, handsome and married. Four have children; three have degrees from Harvard Business School. Since February, they have appeared at roughly 400 events on behalf of their father, and he has consciously made them a central part of his stump pitch.

"We’re a multiplier effect," Tagg said from his office at the campaign’s Boston headquarters this week. "We’re able to be in New Hampshire, South Carolina, Michigan, Florida and Iowa all on the same day."

But having the sons on the trail is a double-edged sword. Campaign staffers have instructed them to avoid talking policy — though childhood tales do little to satisfy audience members looking for answers on specific issues. The inexperienced sons also lack their father’s polish, and occasionally their privileged upbringing inadvertently distances them from the voters they’re courting.

I guess the idea is to convey to the curious that Mitt! has raised five strapping young men (okay, four strapping young men and Craig) and if he can do that, why we’ll be right as rain. Unfortunately some of the locals didn’t get the memo and they keep asking the boys questions that are above the Mittling’s pay grade to answer:

Josh, a 32-year-old Salt Lake City real-estate developer, gives an abbreviated version of his father’s stump speech when he campaigns, peppered with tales from his childhood. The curveballs come during the question-and-answer sessions. When he attended a gathering of Hispanic and Asian Republicans in Las Vegas, Josh couldn’t answer a question about the number of minorities on the campaign staff. One of the hosts asked that next time he come better prepared. (He was able to win the crowd back with a karaoke rendition of "Sweet Caroline.")

Thank the Angel Moroni that there are still people in America who can still be dazzled by karaoke. Meanwhile things don’t go much better for baby Craig in Florida:

On a swing through Florida earlier this month, Craig, the youngest, made 18 stops over three days. He flipped flapjacks, fed a watermelon to a hippo and tried to familiarize tipsy folks at a beer tent with his father’s efforts. "Who the hell is he?" a woman behind the bar asked with a laugh when Craig, who as a Mormon abstains from alcohol, said his father was running for president. "No way!" another man accused, pressing Craig to present his driver’s license as proof.

Nearing the end of the third day, Craig sat hunched over at a Chili’s restaurant near Orlando next to Orange World — a giant building that is both the shape and the color of the fruit it champions. Waiting for his lunch to arrive, he confessed: "Part of me just wants this all to be over."

Don’t we all…

Our man Mitt! has blown several lifetime’s worth of tithing on his campaign, and this is the thanks he gets?

Mike Huckabee’s surge apparently isn’t just happening in Iowa — he’s moving up nationwide, too. The new Gallup poll has Huck in a three-way tie for second. Rudy Giuliani leads with a 25% plurality, with Huckabee at 16%, Fred Thompson 15%, John McCain 15%, and Mitt Romney 12%. Huckabee has gone up an amazing ten points in the last month.

Part of the Romney Master Plan for the United States of New Zion was to sell America on God (well, his god anyway) and family. But it looks like America prefers Huckabee’s God and family instead.

The Romney boys:

Lil Huck:

It looks like it has finally reached the time to unleash Jon-Jon Romney:

Your move, Huckabee…

I realize that most Romney’s look alike but, when playing flag/touch/light tackling football, do they really need to wear colored bibs to figure out who is on which team?

“Throw it to the white guy! Throw it to the white guy!”

I don’t even want to get into the weird sexual dynamic of wearing one of your flags by your penis… unless you’re playing Badtouch Football.

Apparently internal polls within the Romney campaign show that people don’t think that DadMitt has been as active as, say, Fred Thompson who has been staving off decomposition by occasionally clearing his throat and shifting in his chair while he naps.

Therefore the Five Brothers theme this past week has been “energetic”.

Tagg:

I’ve stated a few times that one thing is for certain on this campaign trail—my Dad won’t get out worked by anybody. Matthew Miller at Race 4 2008 recently did a few hours or research using the Washington Post’s campaign tracker. Here are a few excerpts from his blog:

“1. Romney’s the hardest working candidate in the race. After tediously tallying each campaigns events, I’ve found that Romney has held 493 events since January 7th. 50 more then his closest competitor, John Edwards. 92 more then McCain. 95 more then Obama. 125 more then Hillary. And a whopping 227 more then Rudy.

Craig:

A Very Important Play Date

My dad was in town last week for a very important play date. I’ve rarely seen my dad outpaced by anyone, but he admitted he was exhausted after following Parker around the park, the merry go round, and FAO Schwartz.

Matt:

Yesterday I had the chance to spend the day on the campaign trail with my dad since he came for a visit to Southern California. I get asked all the time how my dad can maintain such a high energy level for so many consecutive days. Let me say honestly I just don’t know how he does it. It’s just the way he is. He’s the hardest worker I’ve ever known, and add the fact that he’s really smart and you’ve got a great combination. Hey this guy ought to be president or something.

5am: Wake up and go for jog. There are no pictures from this because I only woke up long enough to watch him go out the door … then I went back to bed.

6:45am – 9:15am: I took my dad for a quick tour of my community, Rancho Bernardo, so he could see the devastation from the wild fires first hand. I’ve been helping a friend of mine, Reed, whose house sustained damage in the fire. We’ve been working on removing a stump from a big tree in his front yard that burned down. My dad joined me and a few others (my co-worker, Greg, my uncle, Jim, and Reed) to put some more work into it.

Later Mitt met with scientists from Mountain Dew Laboratories who took a sample of his blood which they intend to synthesize in order to create MittXXXXtreme!!, the first Postum-flavored high energy beverage.

Suck on it, Red Bull.

With baseball season ended, Los Hermanos Mitt are finding they don’t have much to do until DadMitt gets elected Supreme AmericaGod Prime and they can start cashing in, so they’ve been killing time surfing on the internets at hotmormongirlsdrinkingRedBullandswearing.com and also at YouTube because, quite frankly, they’re getting tired of driving around in the fucking MittMobile, talking to the fucking yokels, and faking admiration for their fucking Worlds Largest Screen Door or Worlds Largest something-the-fuck-or-another that people living in these fucking podunk towns build in the futile hope that a tourist might stop and take a picture of it and then might be convinced to help them escape from their smalltown hellhole of boredom, Sams Club, and American gothic existential horror before they go into the barn one gray and unrelenting afternoon with a rope and a footstool, praying that God will forgive them…

Next week the boys will be in Dyersville to see the Worlds Largest Water Heater.

The horror…the horror…

Let’s start with Tagg because he’s the oldest and the favorite:

My Mom always taught me growing up that people would judge me by the friends I kept, and that I needed to be careful to develop friendships with people that would help me want to be better. On the campaign trail, I’ve been so gratified by the people who are associated with the Mitt Romney campaign. The staffers, both at the HQ and in the states, are almost universally pretty great people whom I’m proud to have as my colleagues and in many instances, my friends. And the list of endorsers we have compiled is made up of great men and women from across the country whom we’re proud to have on our team. I was in Florida recently with my parents at the Presidency IV convention, and have attached a photo of some of the people that were on the stage with us—Secretary of Agriculture Charles Bronson, Congressman Connie Mack, Congressman Tom Feeney, and Al Cardenas, a leading Florida business person.

That would be this Tom Feeney:

Federal investigators are continuing on Rep. Tom Feeney’s (R-FL) trail. The latest pin to drop — the FBI has asked Florida Today for a video of an interview with Feeney. During the interview, from September of last year, Feeney minimized his relationship to Jack Abramoff to the vanishing point, saying that ““My office has never done anything for Jack Abramoff” and that “he’s never asked us for anything.” (The St. Petersburg Times later found a possible exception to that.)

“We didn’t have any relationship at all with him other than he gave us a contribution” was the kicker.

Feeney, of course, accompanied Abramoff on one of his infamous golf junkets to Scotland in 2003. Feeney was one among three lawmakers on the trip — the other two were ex-Reps. Bob Ney (R-OH) and Tom DeLay (R-TX).

The assumption being that Feeney can help Tagg with his short game and playing out of the rough.

Meanwhile, Craig (the youngest) dresses up like his dad for Halloween:

…and hey! he has a great idea for his wife Mary, she should dress up like his mom!!:

I thought Mary would have made a great Ann, but she was set on Pocahontas

I know that there is this whole kinky/slutty thing going on with Halloween costumes these days, but asking your wife to dress up like your mom?.

Ew.

Creepy.

Let’s see…the Red Sox are in the World Series and Tagg invokes the dreaded “we“:

A few of you have asked how I was able to watch the debate Sunday night as well as the Red Sox game. I had the hotel tape record the game for me and I watched it early (very early) Monday morning. The hard part was keeping people like Ben Ginsberg from telling me the score. And I started every interview in the spin room after the debate with, “If you tell me the score of the game, you will die. What’s your next question?” My Dad was getting score updates while he was on the stage of the debate, and he got back in time afterwards to watch the magical 7th and 8th innings when we went from a 3-2 (should have been 3-3) lead to an 11-2 romp.

No, Tagg. Unless you were warming up in the bullpen or down in the clubhouse reviewing tape before you were due to pinch hit… you are not part of “we” even if you do have a cool warm-up jacket that you got for Christmas. And put your damn hat on right. Also, would it kill you to buy a fitted instead of an adjustable?

Wife #1 Ann issues boilerplate best wishes to the people of California:

In the course of visiting our son and my brother in California, Mitt and I have always been struck by the strength of character of California’s residents. Californians have faced these types of natural disasters in the past and have demonstrated the strength and determination to persevere and rebuild their homes and lives. The families affected by these fires and the courageous public servants fighting the fires will be in the thoughts and prayers of the Romney family.

Thanks Ann, You still not going to get our electoral votes, but we appreciate the thought.

Fortunately for Matt (who lives in San Diego) he won’t have to demonstrate his strength and determination and perseverance and rebuild his home. That means his neighbors won’t have to put up with looking at the MittMobile up on blocks on his lot for the next nine months.

I would say their prayers have been answered.

It’s video week as La Famiglia di Romney hits the airwaves.

Here’s Josh delivering an in-depth and comprehensive MittPlan for what ails MiTTchigan:

….and here is Ann (Mitt wife #1 with a bullet) talking about the family

Maybe it’s just me, but after she said “We have five boys. Five boys and ten grandkids…” I though for sure that she was going to tell us how to get out those tough ground-in stains using OxyMitt! for that whiter than white clean…