Comments (2)

By Gregory Taggart, February 28, 2012 3:31 pm

Blogger Ann Althouse asked that question in a poll that gave all the current Republican presidential candidates and President Obama as potential choices:

Now I’d characterize Althouse as an agnostic on the Republican candidates, though I’m guessing she’d vote Romney, push come to shove. She voted for Obama in 2008. Those who comment on her blog, and there are a lot of them, seem to disparage Romney much more than they praise him. Some are not fans at all. I’d wager that 75% of them have claimed they would vote for someone else in an election; many of them that they would vote Democrat. All this, by the way, is just my impression as one who reads her blog and the comments regularly. Of course, it is possible that a bunch of Romney fans flooded the poll, though I doubt it. Ann gets plenty of traffic on her own; certainly, enough people drop by daily to account for the number of votes in the poll. That said, here are the results:

Now be honest. You would have voted for Romney in that poll as well, wouldn’t you? Now, who are you going to vote for as president? If your answer is anyone other than Romney, why?

UPDATE (8.22.12):

I just re-posted this on Facebook and in re-reading it, I noticed a contradiction in what I wrote vis a vis what’s in the poll. I’ve fixed that problem. Changes are in bold.

Comments (0)

By Gregory Taggart, February 23, 2012 11:47 pm

I planned on writing about Romney’s tenure as bishop and stake president. I may still do so. But for now, this will do.

A few years back, a hive of hornets decided to make its nest on top of a second-story swamp cooler outside my cousin’s Boston-area home. My cousin made an ill-fated attempt to remove the hornets, which resulted in a two-story fall and a broken arm.

“This looks like a job for your home teacher,” said my cousin’s home teacher.

The home teacher brought over his own ladder and clothed himself in homemade beekeeping gear. He then made his way to the hornet’s nest and gathered the whole thing up in a garbage bag, avoiding any stings or the more severe injuries that had beset my cousin. He did this with no public fanfare, no accolades, and no thought of collecting payment for his efforts.

And who was this noble home teacher? A man by the name of Mitt Romney.

And Romney’s out of touch? Don’t think so.

Comments (0)

By Gregory Taggart, February 17, 2012 4:55 pm

The AP’s Kasie Hunt and Jennifer Dobner go round and round before they essentially acknowledge that, yes, Romney played a big part in saving the Salt Lake Olympics, a conclusion I came to years ago. During the run-up to the Games, I wrote an extended profile on Fraser Bullock for the Marriott Alumni Magazine, a publication of BYU’s Marriott School of Management.

Bullock was Romney’s right and left hand man and the CFO of the olympian bid to save the SLC Olympics. I interviewed Bullock extensively and Romney once for the article, among a variety of other people. To quote from my article:

According to his boss, SLOC President and CEO Mitt Romney,“he is one of the best CFO/COO’s in the country, if not the best.” And Romney needed the best because when he took over on 11 February 1999, SLOC was tottering at the top of a very challenging bobsled run of its own, one littered with tawdry headlines of tarnished Olympic rings, unhappy sponsors, and financial mis-management. “I always joke that I was already living in Utah, and Mitt wanted to save the relocation expenses,” Bullock adds.

Actually, saving those expenses was a harbinger of things to come. In short order, Romney and Bullock discovered that what you don’t know can hurt you. It was no secret that the media’s new favorite target was SLOC, that the Justice Department was looking for skeletons in SLOC’s closet, and that radio talk show hosts were shouting SLOC’s name from the rooftops. Moreover, SLOC had no operations plan, they weren’t using appropriate financial systems, and they had no Paralympic organization—SLOC is the first organizing committee to do both games. Morale was nonexistent. “The organization was virtually paralyzed; it didn’t know which way to turn,” Bullock explains.

What wasn’t readily apparent at the time of the scandal was that there was a severe financial crisis. Adding up all the numbers, Bullock and Romney discovered that SLOC was headed for a projected $400 million budget shortfall. And the previous twelve months gave little reason for confidence that they could fix the problem: SLOC had raised only $13 million the year before the scandal hit the headlines. “It doesn’t take a math degree to figure out that with about three years to go, the Salt Lake Olympics were in trouble; and at that rate, we weren’t going to be able to raise the funds to close the budget deficit, ” Bullock explains.

Now imagine Santorum or Paul, Gingrich or Obama in the same situation. Hard to do, isn’t it?

So how did Romney and his crew manage? Well, according to my article:

As of the end of October, SLOC had raised $859 million dollars, $395 million more than Atlanta,the previous high. Because SLOC gives 40 percent of what it raises to the United States Olympic Committee and because some of the donations were in kind and therefore not budget relieving, the net impact of the fund raising was to reduce the budget deficit by about $200 million dollars. Add that to the $200 million Bullock and his team were able to cut, and the snake was dead. “So at this point, we believe we’re in a break-even situation, which is exactly where we want to be,” reports Bullock, who recently relinquished one of his SLOC titles, CFO.

Read the story(beginning on page 21). It tells of a turnaround effort that should cause everybody to take a second look at Romney–and then beg that he ask Bullock to be his VP.

UPDATE: On my Facebook page, BYU Professor Warner Woodruff responded to this post:

Warner Woodworth – This sounds too naive, or at least too one-sided. This guy must be a Mormon or a Republican fanatic to have such a love affair with Mitt’s Olympics. From the sources I knew who helped manage the games in 2002, it was a lot more complicated, and Mitt was made to look better than his leadership really warranted. But maybe they were all wrong back then.

And I responded:

Gregory Taggart – Warner, this guy is me, and the article was for an alumni magazine–your school’s–and written before the games even started, so yes, it is one-sided. Nevertheless, the sources I know give him great credit, even as they acknowledge that Mitt didn’t carry the Games on his back, something I don’t think he has ever claimed. Finally, I plead guilty to being Mormon–how did you guess?–and a Romney fan. Fanatic? No. Neither am I naive. Just someone pulling for a guy I like, gaffes and all.

I’ll add that I’m vaguely aware that some of the people involved in bringing the Games to SLC were put out that Romney got so much credit and they so little, due in large part to the scandal. I can understand that. My feelings at the time were that the original organizers were unfairly tarred by the so-called scandal. Not that there was no scandal, mind you. There was, but the goings on seemed to be part and parcel of the bidding process, a process–tainted as it was–that apparently had been going on for years. The unfairness was that it came to light on SLC’s watch. (I stress that these are vague memories, so don’t quote me on this.)

Comments (0)

By Gregory Taggart, February 16, 2012 4:11 pm

So I”m reading my Twitter feed again, and I see this by the Washington Post:

The Washington Post @washingtonpost Man seated next to crying child on plane opens door, deploys emergency slide:

I click on the accompanying link and read the first body paragraph:

HANOI, Vietnam — A mom with a screaming child wanted a quick getaway from a plane on the tarmac in Vietnam and asked for help. The man next to her obliged by opening the emergency exit and triggering the escape slide.

But that’s as far as they got.

Do you see the problem? The headline gives the impression that we’re going to get a great story about a man doing what everybody has wanted to do once a baby starts crying on the airline. But no. The story is really about how an apparently kind man helped a stressed mother who was looking for a quick exit for her and her crying baby.

In this case, no harm, no foul. Yes, I was disappointed that the story didn’t live up to its headline, but that’s it. But how about this headline: Romney on Birth Control, or worse, the Tweet the lead me to it, both by David Frum:

davidfrum @davidfrum Endorsed “greatly expanded programs of …. family planning services to all those who want but can’t afford them.”

Yes, I know Frum was being cute, but was he being fair? Did he have an obligation to be fair, especially in this birth-control charged moment? You be the judge.

Comments (0)

By Gregory Taggart, February 2, 2012 4:49 pm

This

Caused me to think of this

Mitt, Trapped by the Donald?

Comments (0)

By Gregory Taggart, February 1, 2012 8:57 am

The Apostle Paul could have been thinking about the Republican chattering class as he scribbled his letter to the Ephesians:

That we henceforth be no more children, tossed to and fro, and carried about with every wind of doctrine, by the sleight of men, and cunning craftiness, whereby they lie in wait to deceive. (Eph. 4:14)

Substitute “another Romney misstep” for “doctrine,” and you get my meaning. Fortunately, cooler heads occasionally talk as well. And on a long, hard slog–and the campaign for the presidency is certainly that–cooler heads almost always prevail.

Comments (0)

By Gregory Taggart, January 24, 2012 5:23 pm

Hey, I’ve been posting irregularly and with little enthusiasm because some twit had compromised my blog so that every time I opened a page, popups would appear and/or my anti-virus software would announce that it had stumbled upon some malware. I’ve been so busy that last four months that I’ve not had the time to figure out and fix the problem.

Well, no more. My wife worked tirelessly yesterday and cleaned up our blogs–or most of them–including updating the the WordPress software to 3.3.1. And just in time, too! We’re in the middle of a hot race for the Repulican nomination for president, and now I have another stage from which to talk about that race and the one to follow.

Go Mitt!

Comments (0)

By Gregory Taggart, January 21, 2012 3:20 pm

What if Newt decides the Presidency is beneath him?

Comments (0)

By Gregory Taggart, August 12, 2011 10:55 am

Stephen Colbert has a little fun

with presidential hopeful, Mitt Romney, and this:

He does a pretty good and fair job, though I’d stay inside when the thunder clouds gather if I were him.