RNC Bias for Romney? Evidence Says YES!

Did you know that the Republican primary is over?  Neither does anyone I know but that has not stopped the RNC from joining with the Romney campaign to raise money for Romney we assume for the general election but things are getting so strange who knows.

The #2 in the House, Eric Cantor, just gave $25,000 to a PAC looking to defeat Republican and Democrat incumbents.  Why?  But then leadership would like that same answer as they were caught off guard.  Sure makes the rumors seem more real that Cantor has been undermining other members of leadership and is not a team player.  The GOP is looking like the Stupid Party more and more as this election progresses.

The RNC declares they have not been biased like anyone believes them but this little gem they have filed the paperwork to raise money for Romney just reinforces what so many of us have thought about the RNC having a different set of rules for Romney and for everyone else.  The current chair is not making friends but then he doesn't seem to care as long as Romney gets the nomination.

Burns & Haberman
Romney camp and RNC make it official, moneywise 

By MAGGIE HABERMAN |
4/7/12 3:36 PM EDT 

POLITICO's Dave Levinthal reports:

As expected, Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney and the Republican National Committee have officially filed paperwork to form a joint fundraising committee, Federal Election Commission records from today show.

Formally dubbed Romney Victory, Inc., the joint fundraising committee will also include the Idaho Republican Party, Oklahoma Leadership Council, Vermont Republican Federal Election Committee and the Massachusetts Republican State Congressional Committee as participants, filings show.

Keith A. Davis of Alexandria, Va.-based political accounting firm Huckaby Davis Lisker will serve as treasurer.

See the filing here.

Joint fundraising committees may raise money on behalf of any or all of its member committees and distribute contributions to them at its discretion, so long as the contributions stay within federal campaign finance limits.

It has been on this site for months that Rove is in the tank for Romney -- that didn't take a math genius to add 2+2 =4 to figure out Rove was for Romney.  Some of us were well aware that he got Romney to endorse Kay Bailey against Rick Perry for Governor in 2010.  Perry won in a 3-way race without a run-off which shows that Rove and Bush 41 through Kay Bailey was more popular then she is in real life.  They must have used the same rose colored glasses to convince themselves that Romney is more popular then he is.  Anywhere from 65 to 70% of voters in most states vote against Romney.  He is not a likable candidate but is as stiff as a board.  His obvious dislike for being around the middle class has become legendary.  Mr. Etch A Sketch has as little gravitas as any candidate I can remember running as the Republican for President.  Had to laugh when the powers at be say he needs to run to the center -- that would actually make him more conservative then his true beliefs which are not conservative.

Welcome to the real world where more and more media members have figured it out.  The RNC Chair and Rove are right in the thick of pushing Romney.

Is Mitt Romney winning the Karl Rove primary? 

By KEACH HAGEY and KENNETH P. VOGEL | 3/30/12 12:33 PM EDT 

As a political analyst on Fox News, Karl Rove is often asked to play the role of hypothetical adviser to various GOP candidates. And no matter how hard Sean Hannity teasingly tries to get him to admit who he supports, he refuses to endorse one. When he riffs about what a “terrific speech” that Mitt Romney made in November, he’ll make sure to interject, “I’m not here to make his case.” 

But it’s hard to miss, among all of Rove’s Fox commentary and Wall Street Journal columns, that he seems to favor one candidate over the others. Over the last year, Rove has used these powerful media platforms to systematically undercut every rising Romney challenger in succession while lauding Romney’s victories as “historic.” The pattern has gotten under the skin of the supporters of Romney’s challengers, who argue that Rove has more ties to Romney and his super PAC than he is disclosing to his media audiences, and thus has no business assessing the Republican primary race as a purportedly independent analyst. 

Excerpt:  Read more:  Politico

This is one of my favorite articles in a long time about the bias of the RNC.  Did the members of the RNC think they could change rules that would favor Romney and not have people question if they were in the tank for him.  It has gotten more obvious all the time that Priebus is in the hip pocket of Karl Rove and the elitist Republicans for Romney for some time.  This has not been an honest primary season starting with all the debates by liberal moderators.   Trying to say it is conspiracy theory is a bad joke and tries to make those of us who believe the bias look like nutcases.  Not working, conservatives are flat out mad and will not be silenced.  RNC gets some conservative leaders to say Romney is okay expecting everyone to follow along and support Romney but conservatives for the most part are not little lemmings.  The very idea that Romney went to South Carolina Governor Haley to see how to deal with conservative women is a bad joke.  Most of us don't have the same values as Haley to be kind.

Now the RNC refuses to acknowledge that Florida and Arizona should not have been winner take all.  How can any of us believe one word that comes out of the RNC.  We have missing ballot boxes, dead people voting, people voting in two states once again, keeping caucus goers from going to caucus', taking forever to count caucus ballots, etc.  Took weeks for Iowa to finally declare Santorum the winner after the missing ballot boxes that were never found.  Then the RNC tells states that vote before 1 April they have to proportion but that doesn't apply to Florida and Arizona.  Crooked primary and most of us know it.  Also the primary with the nastiest people demanding that you quit supporting your candidate and support Romney.

Where is it written in stone that any of us have to vote for Romney ever?  One person told me that he wants to make sure he can continue to drink Coke, Tea, Coffee, and Alcohol so he is not voting for Romney who thinks will get the FDA to find something wrong since the Mormon Church doesn't recognize those beverages.  Is the rumor true that the Convention is going to be alcohol and caffeine free?  That I want to see.   Some people only go to the convention to have fun.  I will take John McCain and his people any day of the week at a Convention versus Romney's.

Critics say RNC was in tank for Mitt Romney

By KENNETH P. VOGEL | 4/6/12 4:27 AM EDT Updated: 4/6/12 3:17 PM EDT 

The Republican National Committee was supposed to play the part of umpire in the GOP presidential primary, but some Republicans are grumbling that the committee wasn’t just calling balls and strikes. 

Critics, including supporters of Rick Santorum and Newt Gingrich and even neutral Republicans, argue that the national party took steps that helped tilt the contest toward Mitt Romney — an allegation that the RNC rejects but is taking very seriously. 

The list of specific grievances ranges from issues that even the party acknowledges are legitimate to those that they dismiss as desperate fixations from Romney’s flailing rivals. 

For example, the committee agrees that some states that went for Romney jumped the line in the primary schedule, a violation of party rules. But RNC defenders shrug off other complaints, that they undercut Santorum and Gingrich by formatting a delegate tracking list to pad Romney’s tally, by forming a fundraising alliance this week with Romney and by highlighting a rule that would block an unlikely path to the nomination for Gingrich. 

And it’s possible there will be other clashes in the coming weeks, with the RNC signaling Thursday its opposition to a push by Santorum backers in Texas to alter the rules surrounding that state’s May 29 primary to help the former Pennsylvania senator.

Critics of the RNC’s handling of the primary are so sensitive to signs that the committee may be pulling for Romney that they’ve even detected evidence of favoritism in the staff ties between his campaign and the RNC — though some concede such speculation veers more toward conspiracy theory than legitimate concern. 

Still, taken together, the perception that the primary wasn’t a fair fight could damage the party’s standing with the big donors and grass-roots activists it needs to rally this fall to defeat President Barack Obama. And if Obama wins reelection, that angst could create problems for the RNC and particularly for its chairman, Reince Priebus. 

“The chatter is that the fix is in, and that’s created a great deal of consternation,” said Michael Steele, Priebus’s predecessor as RNC chairman. 

Steele said he’s been approached “very quietly” by about ten of the RNC’s elected members who expressed misgivings “about the influence that the Romney campaign seems to have in dictating the terms of what the RNC is going to do and how it is going to follow the rules.” 

A source with a rival GOP campaign said supportive RNC members have raised concerns about a pro-Romney bias within the committee’s full-time leadership, and suggested they were dissatisfied with Priebus’s stewardship. 

The RNC defended its neutrality in the race, with spokesman Sean Spicer explaining, “We followed the rules exactly as laid out,” and questioning Steele’s credibility to comment on RNC affairs given “the state of disaster Mr. Steele left the RNC in.” 

The handful of 168 members interviewed for this story all rejected the idea that there was a concerted effort to favor Romney — and one even emailed the next day after talking with Spicer to more assertively defend the RNC. 

However, some did acknowledge that individual RNC moves seemed to benefit Romney, conceding that those decisions could be fueling the perception that the national party had its thumb on the scale.

“I would like to discourage the public from believing that there’s been monkey business going on that’s giving Mitt Romney any kind of an advantage,” said Phyllis Woods, an RNC committeewoman from New Hampshire. Woods, who didn’t endorse in her state’s first-in-the-nation primary, said she’s “concerned that there may be some perception that the RNC or maybe even some state parties anoint candidates.” 

But she asserted that’s not the RNC’s fault. “It’s just part of the culture right now that there is a mistrust of the establishment.” 

That mistrust is justified, said supporters of Santorum and Gingrich. They complain that the RNC’s interpretation of rules padded Romney’s delegate lead and could stymie Gingrich’s attempt to compete in a brokered convention in Tampa, Fla., this summer — the increasingly far-fetched scenario that the former House speaker contends is his route to the nomination.
“It’s probably not coincidence” that both interpretations favor Romney, asserted former Pennsylvania congressman Bob Walker, a top Gingrich campaign adviser. “But the fact is that we’ve known all the way along in our campaign that we are faced with an establishment that has made their decision.” 

Gingrich’s allies lashed at Priebus late last month after he suggested in an interview on MSNBC’s “Daily Rundown” that “an important rule” of the RNC could bar Gingrich from having his name presented as a candidate at the convention. 

The rule states that candidates have to “demonstrate the support of a plurality of the delegates” from “five or more states prior to the presentation of the name of that candidate for nomination.”
Priebus explained “when these candidates are adding up their delegates … they had better make sure they at least have a plurality of five states to make these things happen.” 

Gingrich — both at the time and still — has won only two states’ primaries, but his supporters contend that he could cobble together pluralities of delegates even without winning additional contests by wooing uncommitted delegates from states that have already voted. 

When Priebus cited the rule in the context of Gingrich’s campaign, it “was disturbing to me, and I think he’s wrong about it,” said Rick Tyler, a former close Gingrich aide now running a super PAC devoted to the former House speaker. The super PAC, Winning Our Future, is “doing some things on the delegate front,” Tyler said, asserting Priebus failed to take into account Gingrich’s efforts to court uncommitted delegates. “We’re one delegate behind in Mississippi. You don’t think we can get one delegate to say they’ll support Newt?” 

The Gingrich and Santorum campaigns found common cause in challenging the RNC’s handling of the allocation of delegates from Arizona and Florida — both of which violated party rules by holding their primaries before this month. 

The rules — which were approved during Steele’s tenure in an effort to extend the primary to give voters in more states a chance to weigh in — stipulate that states that hold nominating contests prior to April 1 are required to allocate their delegates proportionally. But Arizona and Florida approved plans allocating all their delegates to the winner of their primaries and, in both cases, that ended up being Romney. 

While the campaigns have indicated they intend to challenge the winner-take-all delegate allocations at the convention, the RNC’s delegate tracking list continues to count all 29 delegates from Arizona and all 50 from Florida in Romney’s column. 

Excerpt:  Read more:  Politico 

Why would the RNC have someone speak from New Hampshire to defend the RNC.  It is noted that none of the Committee from Middle America are speaking.  It is the Romney group giving the comments.  Then they wonder why we don't believe them because it is the nature of people today.  Shame on on for wanting fair primaries not stacked to favor Romney.  Frankly, I wouldn't believe the RNC now if they told me the sky was blue, I would have to go check.

Romney is at it again, getting ready to clobber Santorum in his home state to get him out of the race.  Romney has used his Super PAC and money to make sure he won this primary by trashing other Republicans but the one time independent/democrat seems more in tune with the 'scorched earth' of the Democrats then the Reagan type campaigns.  That should not be surprising since Romney NEVER supported Reagan.

Rumor had Romney pulling back on negative advertising but looks like that was premature.  Are those people who supported Romney after they were assured there would be no more 'scorched earth' going to continue to support Romney or is it going to be lackluster support?

Apr 7, 2012 1:34pm
Mitt Romney Plans Multi-Million Dollar Pennsylvania Ad Buy

ABC News’ Michael Falcone reports: 

In an attempt to eject Rick Santorum from the presidential race by force, Mitt Romney’s campaign will unveil a nearly $2 million television ad buy on the Pennsylvania airwaves beginning on Monday. 

According to sources tracking TV ad spending the buy, totaling $1.9 million, is widespread, hitting media markets from Philadelphia to Erie between April 9 and April 22 — two days before the state’s April 24 primary. 

(The Pittsburgh Tribune-Review’s Salena Zito reported that the buy could grow even larger — eventually ballooning to nearly $3 million.) 

Rick Santorum has already made clear that “we have to win” Pennsylvania and Romney predicted this week that Santorum, who served the state in the House and Senate, is “obviously going to do well in Pennsylvania.” A loss in the Keystone State would be exactly the knock-out blow the Romney campaign is seeking to finally shut the door on the GOP primary. 

Excerpt:  Read More at ABC