https://www.theguardian.com/world/2000/nov/04/uselections2000.usa4

The Democrat activist lawyer published the story in September. You certainly have the right to your opinions.

A 2% shift would have avoided the Florida problem.

It was a late October surprise, and I doubt it cost him 10 votes among politically-committed evangelicals. If it cost him, it was among a small corps of swing voters who hadn’t made up their minds. James Neuchterlein’s take on these types: they cast their vote based on observations like ‘she reminds me of my first wife’. Lawrence Walsh was playing to the same corps of voters with his bogus indictment of Caspar Weinberger in 1992.

I’ve a family of partisan Democrats and I cannot remember one of them remarking on the November-December 2000 imbroglio after it was over. The chairman of the local Democratic caucus in the small town where I was then living was a personal friend. I cannot recall it was taking up space in his head, either. I have a suspicion that at the source of the intense hostility to George W. Bush was a generational shift in the Democratic Party and the media, especially the media. Gen-X cohorts are now replacing Boomer cohorts as organizational chieftains, but it hasn’t had a discernible salutary effect; if anything, things are worse.

Mitt..ens has always played the Mother Teresa part. Unfortunately the other side isn’t, so in my opinion Dirty Harry (Trump) is appropriate at this time.

“Make my day”….

“Ann is a troll.”

That’s giving her too much credit. Ann isn’t an outright opponent. That takes, you know, guts. She’s an “ally”. Nothing brings out Ann’s monomania like Trump’s tone and language.

And few things annoy me like the Concerned Gentle-people who refuse to face front and fire at the enemy. Or at least just get out of the damned way and keep their mouth shut. They are concerned about tone, about language, about fair play. Concerned about all of these things when the enemy arrayed against you wants to make you and yours extinct. Hell, if given the chance, they’d make half of their own side’s ‘wrong thinkers’ extinct.

An enemy that doesn’t give a damn about their tone or yours, unless its useful to them. An enemy that doesn’t give a damn about language, unless its useful to them. An enemy that never plays fair but expects the rest of us to.

Here’s a question Ann: Can you offer a constructive method for fighting an enemy like that in an existential fight-and make no mistake, this is existential-a method that is fighting fair and nice and polite?

Coming as a September surprise, it hurt him badly with Evangelicals. I did not like Bush in 2000 and volunteered for McCain in the primary. I voted for Bush but was not that concerned about Gore, who I thought was a sensible Democrat in spite of his loony ideas about global warming. I think Gore went psychotic over losing. The Democrats did, too.

They obstructed Bush’s appointments until 9/11. At the time of the attack, Rumsfeld had one appointment filled at DoD. Bush was treated as badly as Trump but did not fight back like Trump. I supported the Iraq invasion but now think it was a mistake. Most of the mistake was Bremer and State.

Romney was a talented businessman and made a lot of money. His political skills were enhanced by a willingness to say what people wanted and a lack of commitment to principles. In Mass he was pro-abortion and pro-single payer.

As a GOP nominee, he was the opposite although he never really made an argument about why Romneycare was not Obamacare. I supported him but thought he took a TKO in the second debate.

He is now getting a lot of blowback from his op-ed, which will be seen by a lot more people than he realizes as treason to the party.

If he were ‘one of the most untalented politicians around’, he would not have performed so well in Republican primary and caucus donnybrooks, would not have been elected Governor of Massachusetts, and would not have been able to rescue the Olympic games. Unlike in re Obama, you can’t make the argument Romney was spam-in-a-can marketed by the likes of David Plouffe.