Speaking as a journalist, but with not special knowledge of Florida law, I’d say that taping a private event inside a closed room wouldn’t fall under ‘things done in public’. So taping it may get him in trouble, but only if someone wants to drag the republican party through the old mud of this thing for a few months. There’s no political profit to be made from going after this guy.
I think he’s legally OK. FL requires consent from both parties if they’re in a setting where the person doing the talking can’t reasonably expect to be overheard. I don’t think anyone giving a speech in a hotel ballroom with staff and waiters and the like moving in and out of the area can reasonably expect his conversation to not be overheard by people other then his audience.
(Plus, as the previous poster mentioned, its pretty unklikely the Romney campaign is going to go after the guy at this point even if they could. “Butthurt millionaire goes after unemployed bartender for accurately reporting something butthurt millionaire said” isn’t really a headline the GOP needs)
Hmmmmmmmmmmmmm …
Lt. Col. Fletcher Prouty was supposedly the basis for “Mr. X” as portrayed by Donald Sutherland in Oliver Stone’s JFK. He was the one who spotted the whole Oswald story as a fake.
Dun dun dunnnnnnnn…
Add in Jimmy Carter’s grandson and Dun dun dunnnnnnnn… indeed!
Read his Wikipedia entry.
It seems he was something of a conspiracy nut, and was involved with Scientology.
I can understand disagreeing, but surprise? It shows selflessness, which is almost universally thought of as a good thing. And, as he pointed out, making it about him would have likely lessened the impact, and given the Republicans someone to attack.
It’s not like he won’t be able to capitalize on it now, anyways. Sure, he might have made a bit more money at the time, but this thread alone shows that there’s still a lot of interest in his story.
Plus, as he said, there was a big risk that his former employer would sue him for the bad press. He did technically violate their policy, after all.
If Prouty is charged, I hope he gets convicted and fined.
Forty-seven cents.
Lol
Another wack liberal response. This Is the kid of idiocy that gave us another for years of this lying Marxist.
If you need to engage in name-calling against other posters, use The BBQ Pit forum. Such insults not permitted anywhere else on the SDMB.
[ /Moderating ]
Conspiracy nut? Anyone who believes Kennedy was killed by Oswald is a nut.
I’m taking “Before Dawn.” Any other takers?
Moran.
We found him.
Do you agree that there appears to be a family resemblance, that I’m not just imagining it?
Well there are some numbers to consider. The Fair model takes into account incumbency and election year economic growth: these factors worked in opposite directions for Obama. As of July 2012 they predicted that Obama would win 49% of the popular vote. As of early November the 2 party vote share gave Obama 51.3% and that number rose and returns trickled in through November.
It wasn’t as much of a blowout as Bush v. Dukkakis. Obama’s margin was a little less than a single standard error. Now the data can’t really distinguish between Obama’s strength and Romney’s weakness. But I opine that Obama was solid, Romney was lame, the conservative noise machine was helpful and Romney’s nuts and bolts management of GOP GOTV was awful. Closer to John Mace’s POV.
Oh yeah, and the 49% baseline made it an exciting race.
Data subject to revision: I hope to look at it in July 2013. Vote-Share Equations: November 2010 Update
Again: no insults, and take this discussion to an appropriate thread.
What I find interesting is how quickly the conservative establishment has ditched Romney after the loss. Folks are attibuting this to his poor campaign or the need to turn the page, but it’s a pattern that seems to pop up frequently on the conservative side: Once you’re a loser, they turn on you pretty quickly. Just ask Bush Sr., Bob Dole (other than those ED commercials, his only public appearance was his recent effort to rally conservatives behind a disabilities bill by appearing on the Senate floor. No surprise, they didn’t bite and the bill went down), Bush Jr. (after the 2006 shellacking), McCain (despite his constant Sunday show blathering), and now Romney. Even their vice presidential candidates either disappear once they lose (Quayle, Kemp) or pander shamelessly to the conservative base in a way that makes them politically toxic (Cheney, Palin, and soon Paul Ryan).
Democrats don’t seem to do this; Joe Lieberman is the only one I can think of who has been actively shunned by Dems (maybe John Edwards, but only when his personal indiscretions became impossible to ignore). The Clintons are still rock stars, Kerry is Secretary of State, and Gore is still highly respected.
And that get’s me back to the “47%” comment. IMO conservatives don’t blame him for saying this because it’s wrong, they blame him because it cost him votes–in thier hearts they believe much of the country are moochers. This IMO leads them to punish their candidates personally for ruining the chance at winning because–naturally–they believe their ideas are so good that a competent candidate couldn’t lose with them.
The bartender who posted the video said he thought Romney was completely out of touch with most Americans. But he was wise to simply post the video as-is, without comment, because it emphasizes a conservative mindset that, when laid bare, most of this country rejects. Of course conservatives never believe this, so they blame Romney’s diction, or the fact that his staff was incompetent to allow someone to videotape what he was saying. It’s never the message itself that’s at fault; conservatism can’t fail, it can only be failed. I hope they continue with this delusion for the forseeable future; it’s one of the main reasons they’ll continue to lose.
I wouldn’t make too much of this. Mondale and Dukakis weren’t given a lot of respect after their losses. Carter has gone out and created his own space to work in and the party didn’t give him much respect. Mondale got an ambassadorship. Bentsen and Kerry got cabinet positions. But those weren’t really political insider positions. Ferraro didn’t get anything at all. Gore is no longer an insider. It’s only Clinton that has remained an important party figure, and that’s because he is considered a master politician and he didn’t lose.
The Democrats may not shun their losers to the extent Republicans do, but Dukakis and Mondale weren’t exactly headliners after their losses.
Romney is a leader without followers. There never was a Romney wing of the GOP. Conservatives tolerated him just long enough to try to beat Obama, the minute he lost a lot of them headed for the shower to rid themselves of the Romney stench. Until the Republicans nominate a far right winger and lose, they’re going to tell themselves that each failed candidate wasn’t conservative enough. Conservatism is never the problem in their eyes, deviation from the hard right line is.
Romney may well have lost even without the 47% video. Even with it, he had the momentum between the first and second debates. All the polling showed a Romney shift at the time. I became convinced he was going to win. Without the video, he would have had a very solid lead after the first debate. We’ll never know for sure, but I’ll always say the 47% video was the key moment of the campaign.
Well, you’re half right. I’m not sure he’s a leader, though.
He was losing before the video came out. That’s a pretty good reason to think he was going to lose anyway.
Just because this sentence could be read a few different ways: the video came out about two few weeks before the first debate.
No, that’s not at all clear. Nate Silver had Romney trailing by 1 or 2 percentage points even after that first debate, and it’s not clear the 47% tape was damaging enough to cancel that out - let alone that it cost him enough to turn a 1- or 2-point deficit into a very solid lead.