#gop 2012

Ryan Lizza ‏@RyanLizza

"The gamble was that by denying Obama any support, they would render his presidency wholly partisan at best, and a dysfunctional failure at worst. They would increase their own chances of denying him a second term, and that their return to power would allow them to claim a full and absolute break with the past. They shoved all their chips onto tonight’s election. When the networks called it at 11:15 p.m., the totality of the right’s failure was clear. And because they bid up the stakes as high as they could, their loss was unusually devastating."

Florida Early Voting Fiasco: Voters Wait For Hours, Locked Out At Polls As Rick Scott Refuses To Budge

Posted: 11/04/2012 3:42 pm EST

WASHINGTON -- Once again, Florida and its problems at the polls are at the center of an election.

Early voting is supposed to make it easier for people to carry out their constitutional right. Tuesdays are notoriously inconvenient to take off work, so many states have given voters the option of turning out on weekends or other weekdays in the run-up to Election Day.

But in Florida this year, it has been a nightmare for voters, who have faced record wait times, long lines in the sun and a Republican governor, Rick Scott, who has refused to budge and extend early voting hours.

"People are getting out to vote. That's what's very good," said Scott.

People are getting out to vote -- but many of them are having to wait in line for three or four hours to do so. One contributor to DailyKos claimed it took 9 hours to vote. In Miami-Dade on Saturday, people who had gotten in line by 7:00 p.m. were allowed to vote; the last person wasn't checked in until 1 a.m., meaning it took some individuals six hours to cast a ballot.

Miami-Dade attempted to deal with the problem on Sunday by allowing voters to cast absentee ballots in person between 1:00 and 5:00 p.m. However, after just two hours, the Miami-Dade elections department shut down the location after too many people showed up. People outside the locked doors were reportedly screaming, "We want to vote!"

And if getting turned away from the polls weren't enough of an indignity, some of those 180 people ended up getting their cars towed from the parking lot across the street, according to a Miami Herald reporter.

On Twitter, former Republican governor Charlie Crist -- who is now an independent -- responded to news of the office's closing, writing on Twitter, "Let the people vote!"

“We had the best of intentions to provide this service today,” said department spokeswoman Christina White. “We just can’t accommodate it to the degree that we would like to.”

About 30 minutes later, a Miami Herald reporter tweeted that the Miami-Dade location was reopening its doors.

Palm Beach, Pinellas, Orange, Leon and Hillsborough Counties also opened up in-person absentee voting on Sunday.

President Barack Obama's campaign and some of its supporters were attempting to keep people's spirits up -- and discourage them from abandoning the lines -- by bringing in food, water and even local musicians and DJs as entertainment.

North Miami Mayor Andre Pierre brought 400 slices of pizza to voters in line at 10:30 p.m. last night at the city's public library, according to an Obama official.

A major reason there are so many problems at the polls is that last year, Florida's GOP-controlled legislature shortened the number of early voting days from 14 to eight, meaning all early voters are trying to cast their ballots in a shorter window. Previously, Floridians were allowed to vote on the Sunday before Election Day -- a day that typically had high traffic.

Scott has refused to extend early voting hours, essentially arguing that there is no problem, despite calls from Democrats, independent groups and even a Republican elections supervisor. He is arguing that he can extend early voting hours only when there is a true emergency -- like a natural disaster -- that warrants it.

"I'm focused on making sure that we have fair, honest elections," said Scott. "One thing to know, these early voting days and on Election Day, if you're there by the time the polls close, you get to vote."

Scott has some of the lowest approval ratings of any governor in the nation. In recent Quinnipiac poll, just 39 percent of Floridians said they approved of the job he is doing. Scott, unlike many other GOP governors, has not hit the campaign trail much on behalf of Mitt Romney.

As Florida Democrats have pointed out, the state's previous two Republican governors-- Jeb Bush and Crist -- both extended the hours.

A judge extended the hours in Orange County after the state Democratic Party suedfor more time. The location was closed for several hours on Saturday when everyone was evacuated due to a suspicious package.

Democrats are traditionally more likely to vote early, which is why many in the party have ascribed political motives to Scott's restriction of the process. According to areport in the Miami Herald on Saturday, Democrats were leading Republicans "by about 187,000 early in-person ballots cast" as of that morning.

Director Joss Whedon Endorses Mitt Romney

Activist Actor Martin Sheen, who played President Josiah Bartlet on The West Wing, talking about Mitt Romney's attempt to spring a "gotcha" blow on President Obama in the second presidential debate.  x

Sheen also said:

“He is, in essence, a very arrogant, very successful businessman [who] believes in unreined free enterprise,” Sheen said. “He doesn’t have a clue what 99 per cent of the people are going through. He’s never lived on that level. He’s never had to compete for a job or face eviction or struggle to get a college loan. He’s a guy that the old phrase applies to: ‘he was born on third base and thought he hit a triple. He would be a reflection of the one per cent.

Michelangelo Signorile

Editor-at-large, HuffPost Gay Voice

Romney: 'Some Gays Are Actually Having Children. It's Not Right on Paper. It's Not Right in Fact.'

Posted: 10/26/2012 8:53 am

We've witnessed many Mitt Romneys, but the oneunearthed by the Boston Globe's Murray Waas yesterday is perhaps the most vicious and cruel: a zealot who, as Massachusetts governor, became hellbent on stigmatizing the children of gay and lesbian parents, labeling these kids as outcasts and causing them to suffer hardship throughout their lives.

Waas reveals how, after gays and lesbians in Massachusetts won the right to marry in 2003, Governor Romney wouldn't allow the Registry of Vital Records and Statistics to revise birth certificate forms for babies born to same-sex couples. The plan was to have the box for "father," for example, relabeled "father or second parent." But according to documents obtained by Waas, Romney rejected the plan, demanding the agency continue using old forms. Romney then demanded hospitals get permission from his office each time a child was born to a same sex-couple in order to cross out, with a pen, the label "father" or "mother," and write-in, with a pen, "second parent." (Romney also required gay male parents to get a court order before any birth certificate was issued.)

Those children would then go through life with birth certificates that marked them as strange, abnormal, less than everyone else, punished because Romney didn't approve of their parents. As a Department of Health attorney warned Romney, the children would be disadvantaged and would have trouble applying to school or getting drivers licenses as adults, particularly in a post-9/11 world where they might be considered security risks, having birth certificates that appeared altered. It was a "violation of existing statutes," the attorney warned Romney. But Romney waved off the warnings, not caring about the the legal, psychological or personal ramifications.

Romney hadn't even previously fathomed that gay people had children. Boston Spirit magazinereported last month that when gay activists met with him in his office in 2004, as Romney was backing a failed constitutional amendment to ban gay marriage in the state, Romney remarked, "I didn't know you had families." Julie Goodridge, lead plaintiff in the landmark case that won marriage rights for gays and lesbians before the Supreme Judicial Court, asked what she should tell her 8-year-old daughter about why the governor would block the marriage of her parents. According to Goodridge, Romney responded,"I don't really care what you tell your adopted daughter. Why don't you just tell her the same thing you've been telling her the last eight years."

Romney's retort enraged a speechless Goodridge; he didn't care, and by referring to her biological daughter as "adopted," it was clear he hadn't even been listening. By the time she was back in the hallway, she was reduced to tears. "I really kind of lost it," says Goodridge. "I've never stood before someone who had no capacity for empathy."

Months after his battle with the Registry of Vital Records began, as Wass reports in the Globe, Romney spoke before the Senate Judiciary Committee in Washington:

He outlined his misgivings about the request from the Registry of Vital Records. "The children of America have the right to have a father and a mother,'' Romney said in his prepared remarks. "What should be the ideal for raising a child? Not a village, not 'parent A' and 'parent B,' but a mother and a father.'' Romney also warned about the societal impact of gay parents raising children. "Scientific studies of children raised by same-sex couples are almost nonexistent,'' he said. "It may affect the development of children and thereby future society as a whole.''

The following year, 2005, Romney spoke to conservative voters in South Carolina, as he trained his eye on the presidency. "Some gays are actually having children born to them,'' he said. "It's not right on paper. It's not right in fact. Every child has a right to a mother and father.''

ROMNEY: NOT GOOD FOR WOMEN, NOT GOOD FOR THE ECONOMY, NOT GOOD FOR THE COUNTRY

Mitt Romney Adviser On Lilly Ledbetter Act: 'He Was Opposed To It At The Time'

Posted: 10/17/2012 10:12 am EDT

HEMPSTEAD, N.Y. -- Had Mitt Romney been president in 2009, he would not have signed the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act into law, a top adviser to the Republican nominee told The Huffington Post Tuesday night.

Now that the law has been passed, Romney has no plans to get rid of it, that adviser, Ed Gillespie, added. But Romney didn't support it while it made its way through Congress.

"The governor would not repeal the Lilly Ledbetter Act," said Gillespie, following Tuesday night's presidential debate. "He was opposed to it at the time. He would not repeal it."

The statement from Gillespie is the furthest that the Romney campaign has gone in detailing the candidate's position on the law, which allows women greater opportunity to sue over pay inequity at the workplace. Previously, the governor's campaign has said that he would not repeal the Lilly Ledbetter Act, which was the first bill President Barack Obama signed into law, while leaving unanswered whether or not he would have signed it had he been president at the time.

The topic came up during the debate, with Obama criticizing Romney's campaign for demurring when asked about the legislation.

"I just want to point out that when Governor Romney's campaign was asked about the Lilly Ledbetter bill, whether he supported it, he said, 'I’ll get back to you,'" Obama said. "And that’s not the kind of advocacy that women need in any economy."

In the spin room after the debate, other Romney surrogates tried to skirt questions regarding the legislation, arguing that it was more valuable to look at how the candidate had constructed his staff while in public office.

"Governor Romney feels that he is absolutely in favor of equal employment opportunity for women, equal pay for women. I don’t think he wants to be cornered into talking about this particular piece of legislation as a tool of a campaign," said Kerry Healey, who served under Romney as lieutenant governor of Massachusetts. "I think Governor Romney wants to be judged on his own record and how he has dealt with women in his administration and with women's issues throughout his career."

But Gillespie's admission that Romney opposed the Lilly Ledbetter Act while it was being debated -- there is no evidence readily available showing Romney weighing in on the topic in the months before it was signed -- provided ample material for his critics.

"Is that leadership?" said Cecile Richards, the president of Planned Parenthood, who is on leave to serve as a surrogate for the Obama campaign. "If he was president, we wouldn't have equal pay. I think that's the point. He doesn't lift a finger to do anything for women."

Mitt Romney 'Binders Full Of Women' Claim Misleads

Mitt Romney raised eyebrows during the presidential debate Tuesday night when he claimed that as governor of Massachusetts, he had been so dismayed at the lack of female cabinet candidates that he sent women's groups out to find them.

"I went to a number of women's groups and said, 'Can you help us find folks?' and they brought us whole binders full of women," he said.

In fact, Romney did not direct women's groups to bring him female candidates,Boston Phoenix reporter David Bernstein points out. A non-partisan collaboration of women’s groups called Massachusetts Government Appointments Project (MassGAP)was responsible for the effort in 2002, when the group's leaders realized that women held only 30 percent of the top appointed positions in the state.

Romney boasted that during his term as governor, Massachusetts had more women in senior leadership positions than any other state in America. "Now one of the reasons I was able to get so many good women to be part of that team was because of our recruiting effort," he said.