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Wednesday, August 15, 2007
Heads up, Fred: Mike Huckabee is snaring your audience
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Scott Johnson, the strictly neutral chairman of the Cobb County GOP, was among those checking out Mitt Romney at the Varsity on Wednesday.
He’s got no dog in the presidential hunt, at least publicly. But Johnson had this bit of news:
Mike Huckabee, who finished a surprising second behind Romney in the Iowa straw poll, will be addressing Cobb County Republicans at their monthly breakfast on Saturday, Sept. 8.
Huckabee also has appearances in Georgia on Sept. 22 and 23, though I’m not sure they’re campaign events. One is an appearance at First Redeemer in Cummings, one of the largest Southern Baptist congregations in the state.
Mitt Romney in Atlanta: On naked dogs, immigration and his stock in embryonic stem cell research
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Mitt Romney had an advance peek at the pop quiz.
The presidential candidate breezed into a packed room filled with hundreds of hotdog-eating Republicans at the Varsity on Wednesday, and was immediately put to the test.
House Speaker pro tem Mark Burkhalter, Romney’s highest ranking supporter in Georgia, hit him with four questions about Varsity lunch counter vernacular:
A) What’s a chocolate milk with shaved ice?
B) What’s a hamburger with lettuce, tomato and mayonnaise?
C) What’s a naked dog walking?
Romney aced the test. The answers were, in order, a P.C., or pure chocolate; a glorified steak; and a plain hot dog to-go. The candidate freely admitted the fix was in.
“If that wasn’t a set up, I don’t know what is,” he told the crowd — many of whom were obvious supporters.
But some in the crowd weren’t. They were among the large pocket of Republicans still without a candidate, and for them Romney’s test was a bit more serious.
At least a dozen or so supporters of the Fair Tax crowd showed up, though they weren’t able to question the candidate about his lack of support for a shift from an income tax to a national sales tax.
Pat Gartland, the former head of the Georgia Christian Coalition, also came to listen. “I just wanted to hear what he had to say. I don’t know anything about him,” Gartland said. The room was so packed that he was forced to stand outside.
And at least one spy from an opposing camp showed up. Rusty Paul, a former state GOP chairman who supports Rudy Giuliani, just happened to be driving past the Varsity at lunch time and decided to duck in for a hot dog. Really.
To the crowd, Romney delivered red meat — primarily aiming his barbs at Hillary Clinton, but also sending a few the way of GOP rival Giuliani. And he delivered a glancing blow to President Bush.
“The question is are we going to turn left, with the policies represented by Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama and John Edwards,” Romney said.
“When Hillary Clinton is talking about the economy, if you listen carefully, she’s saying she wants to raise taxes on individuals and raise taxes on corporations.
“She’s says we’ve been an on-your-own society. She wants a shared society, a we’re-all-in-this-together society. So it’s out with Adam Smith and up with Karl Marx,” the former Massachusetts governor said.
Romney promised to “end the death tax forever,” and declared that “people of moderate and middle income” ought not to be taxed on their savings.
On the issue of health insurance, he condemned Democrats for wanting to increase government involvement, but his comment also appeared directed at the current administration: “I don’t want the guys who managed the [Hurricane] Katrina clean-up running my health care system.”
Romney also kept up his running war with Giuliani on immigration, though he didn’t mention his Republican rival by name.
For the last week, Romney has pointed to a New York City policy adopted by Mayor Ed Koch in 1989 but extended by Giuliani during his terms as mayor, in which city workers did not provide information about illegal immigrants they came in contact with federal authorities.
“Let’s end this sanctuary city thing,” Romney told the crowd. The Giuliani campaign has pointed out that three Massachusetts cities have similar policies — and that Romney has expressed no objections about them.
“As a governor, I’m not responsible for what cities do,” Romney told reporters after he’d finished shaking hands. He accused Giuliani of trying to “obfuscate” the issue.
On other topics:
Romney said he wasn’t ready to commit to the CNN/youtube debate. The Democratic version this month featured questions from real people — and one, about global warming, from a snowman.
“I think it’s fine to have questions from the public. I think the snowman is a little less than the level of dignity you expect in a presidential televised debate,” Romney said.
The candidate also addressed a story in today’s Boston Herald, which had this first paragraph:
“Despite his “pro-life” campaign pitch, former Gov. Mitt Romney owns stock in two companies involved in embryonic stem cell research, a controversial field of study he previously cited as the reason for his rightward shift on abortion.”
Said Romney in Atlanta;
“My investments have been held in blind trust. Which means I have not directed where they invest, nor do I know where they invest,” the former governor said. “I did not direct my investments, nor did I know of my investments. The trustee of the blind trust has said that he will endeavor to make my investments conform to my positions.”
Kathy ‘with a K’ hops on the Giuliani bandwagon
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
The Rudy Giuliani campaign for president let slip this morning that it had pocketed the endorsement of Kathy Cox, the two-term Republican state school superintendent.
She becomes the first statewide-elected official, Republican or Democrat, to join up with a presidential campaign.
“His commitment to provide a high quality education to every child in America… will bring the same success to the country that he brought to New York City,” Cox said of her GOP candidate for the White House.
Feel welcome to consider the timing of this announcement. Mitt Romney, Republican victor of the Iowa straw poll, hits the ground in Atlanta in a matter of hours, for some hot-dogging at the Varsity in downtown Atlanta.
Look for illegal immigration to be the topic of the day.
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