SLICK MITT ROMNEY UPDATE - ROMNEY wants to spend up to $3 MIL of Utah's Tax $$$ to rig the primary system in his favor

SLICK MITT ROMNEY UPDATE

Looks like the editorial board of the Salt Lake Tribune sees right through the "shallow as piss on a flat rock" move by ROMNEY to gin up the primary system by trying to move the UTAH Primary at an estimated cost of $2.5 million to $3 million to Utah Taxpayers.

Well, after all, that is the little people's money and why should we care about wasting that??? There's plenty of where that came from after all. We'll just make them pay more...

Is this REALLY what you want to see? Another stuffed shirt with delusions of grandeur, preaching cost cutting to you out of one side of his mouth, while WASTING tax dollars to try & rig the primary system in his own favor.

We have been living under a " DO AS I SAY, NOT AS I DO " President for the past 2 1/2 years, the last thing we need is another.

To the citizens of UTAH, Tell SLICK MITT to take a flying leap into the Salt Lake as otherwise, he'll be hosing you down for a few million tax dollars that I would suspect are sorely needed elsewhere.

Don’t move primary
Editorial / Salt Lake Tribune

If individual Utah residents want to write a check to support the presidential campaign of Republican Mitt Romney, there is nothing to stop them.

But if Romney backers want the whole body of Utah taxpayers to cough up as much as $3 million to hold an early 2012 primary election, one that would serve no purpose other than to make Romney look good for about a third of the next 24-hour news cycle, that’s asking way too much.

Romney is said to be leaning on his many supporters in Utah political circles — prime among them Lt. Gov. Greg Bell, whose portfolio includes supervising the state’s elections — to move up the state’s presidential primary from late June to sometime in early spring.

The acceptable reason for such a move, which would require an act of the Legislature, would be to make Utah more of a player in the nominating process by drawing the attention of all of the candidates at a point when it still matters.

But the real reason for such a shift would be so Romney could maximize his standing as the favorite candidate of Utah Republican voters and embarrass one of his chief rivals, former Utah Gov. Jon Huntsman. Polls show that Romney now outpolls Huntsman among Utah Republicans by a margin of more than 2-1.

Bearding the lion in his own den, which is how Romney would spin a Utah primary victory over Huntsman, would clearly be of more value to Romney if it happened in early March, when the nomination will likely still be up for grabs, rather than June 26, when one, or both, of the candidates with Utah links may already have been eliminated.

Now the state’s presidential primary is set for the same day as the primaries for those seeking state office. It’s a lot cheaper that way. Estimates for having a separate election just for the presidential hopefuls run from $2.5 million to $3 million.

That is money that would be hard to find, and harder to justify, in such tight fiscal times.

It is also doubtful that it would really boost Utah’s profile that much. Other GOP hopefuls would be unlikely to spend much time or money here, knowing that they’d be all but lost in the Mitt vs. Jon tug o’ war.

It’s too late now. But anyone who really wanted to make Utah a destination for presidential candidates would have long ago gotten behind a plan from four years ago to unite with New Mexico, Arizona, Idaho, Montana, Nevada and Colorado for a real Western States Primary. That would truly offer candidates a trove of delegates worth pursuing.

Of course, that was Jon Huntsman’s idea.
The Salt Lake Tribune.