The six year presidential campaign of Willard Romney is essentially done. It may or may not be successful in electing him as our next president. That will be hopefully be settled before the 2016 race starts in earnest. Like everyone else, I am not certain who will prevail. What I am certain of is that the campaign conducted by Governor Romney and his staff is the most despicable one I have witnessed, in forty years of actively participating in campaigns. Note, I am not saying that Mitt Romney is the most unsuitable person I’ve ever witnessed running for our nation’s highest office. Rather, I am saying that the campaign he has led is the most shameful one I have ever experienced. I say this for the following reasons:
The Campaign’s attacks on the President were largely based on blatant lies and/or openly twisting Obama’s words again and again, with full knowledge they were doing so. ‘You didn’t build that’ along with mythical Jeeps from China and fictitious ‘death panels’ in Obamacare, all the while savaging the President for failure to accomplish anything. Failure they had worked hard to ensure since Obama’s election in 2008, by a coordinated GOP effort in Congress to deny the president ANY legislative success, all while American workers and families suffered.
The GOP has made suppression of legal voting a mainstay of its victory strategy, with organized state-level efforts in Ohio, Pennsylvania, Florida, Wisconsin, etc. This is probably THE clearest distinction between the two major parties: Democrats welcome voters, Republicans purge voter lists, reduce voting resources in low-income neighborhoods making it more difficult to vote. They pass unnecessary ID laws to disenfranchise the poor, and threaten them with prison for voting illegally, while muddling the line on what is legal.
The Romney campaign is the least transparent in memory. No details on any budget proposal. No details on the candidate’s significant personal wealth, tax returns, etc. Just an assumption that we would trust his magic underwear math, which projects fictitious deficits under Obama and bogus surpluses under Romney.
The Republican candidate is on record, hell he’s on film, again and again, embracing both sides of most major issues. Abortion and contraception rights. Tax policy. Gun control. Budget cutting priorities. Foreign policy. A seemingly complete lack of concern for truth, with an equally complete faith that the American voter won’t notice or care.
A campaign that refuses to distance itself from the dog whistle racist politics of the birthers and their spawn – those descendants of the Dixiecrats and the KKK, whose heads are nearing the bursting point at the thought of a two-term black President.
A campaign based on the collusion between the ‘official’ apparatus and literally a billion dollars of private and corporate wealth, much of it anonymous, attempting to buy the White House and as many House and Senate seats as voters will sell. THE most naked attempt to buy power in the last two centuries.
And finally, a candidate who embraces patriotic symbols and words like a drowning man, yet offshores his wealth and our jobs, paying minimal taxes of his own, while avoiding any kind of military service, by himself and his family.
Worst. Campaign. Ever.
And I hope I never see Mitt Romney again after his concession speech later this week.
Posted on November 5th, 2012 by jack-of-all-thumbs
Filed under: Rants and Musings
I’ll be glad when this one is over too. However, I don’t expect the process will get any better in the future. Too much of the system is owned by big money interests. They will never allow the system to change in a way that works against their interests, no matter who is president. All I can hope is that the Occupiers and the 99%ers who supported them will rise up and throw the bastards out.
And yet I still see people saying that Romney is an honorable man. I just want to shake them and tell them to wake up. I truly went from just disliking his policies to actually loathing the man. The guy wouldn’t know a policy stance if it came up and bit him on the ass. I will not feel one tiny bit sorry for him when he loses.