I am so glad that I have a DVR that allows me to back-up on
live television. I was quite sure I had misunderstood that story this morning,
but even on second hearing it was the same. Can you believe the unapologetic duplicity
of the statements that Mr. Romney made to his supporters this week!? He seems
to be completely unaware of how inanely disingenuous he is being.
No! His excuse was nothing so direct. Mr. Romney blamed his
defeat on the president's buying the votes of the special interests. He blamed
his lack of success on the Dream Act, Obamacare, and progressive programs that
help the poor and the homeless. This seems on the face of it to be a strange
and disconnected way of thinking, but carry it through to its logical end and
you will see that it is even worse than dishonest, it is delusional. Can he not
see that what is in play here is not some unusual and covert strategy; it is –
at its very core – the same strategy he used, the winner simply
"pandered" (if you want to call it that) to a much broader audience.
Really, Mitt, really!? What happened last Tuesday was not a
mystery, it was not magic, it was Math! The president espoused policies that
were popular with the masses. Healthcare, jobs, etc. You promised to codify in
law religious beliefs of a small minority and give HUGE amounts of money to
people who are already rich. That made the president slightly popular with LOTS
of people and you HUGELY popular with a few people. It's Math, Mitt – Pure and
simple!
The Republican course of action, once again, was to promise
huge tax breaks to the wealthiest minority of the country; offer draconian
reductions of basic human rights for women, immigrants, and minorities; and to
make the long discredited claim that it is because the reason we have been in a
hiring funk for the last six years is that the regulations that protect our
food, air, and water make it hard for a good, altruistic, corporation fear for
its financial future and prevent business expansion.
C'mon, Mitt! If you truly believe this, you are not being
honest. Not with yourself or your supporters. Or perhaps you are just REALLY
bad at arithmetic. There are far more people who benefit from the very programs
you want to cut and the policies you abhor. If you want to call the difference
in policy between the president and yourself "pandering," or
"political pay-off" then please, at least phrase the results of both
campaigns in the same terms. Don't claim that "He" was pandering. He
just pandered to a more populace base.
At least your running mate was honest about it. In the
Washington Post, Paul Ryan explained the reason he failed to carry even his
home town in the presidential race because he was "Ryan the
Republican" and not "Paul the Hometown Guy." He failed to
live-up to his personal convictions, joined the vitriolic campaign based on (at
best) half-truth, and promising unpopular policies based on unfounded
economics.
That is why you lost, by the way. You pandered to a shrinking
base of voters, promising them things that could do no good whatsoever to the
masses. You lost because, to quote Lindsey Graham: "[you were] not
generating enough angry white guys to stay in business for the long term."
It is the new political reality. The majority of the US is a group of people
who don't look like you. Unless the Republicans can return to their core
principles of fiscal restraint you are doomed join the Edsel and the Ice Box as
things people remember but don't really miss. And, by the way, spending
BILLIONS of dollars on an ELECTION does not show fiscal restraint! If you’re going
to spend that much money getting elected – most of it from secret rich donors,
we have to wonder what you're going to owe them afterward.
Wherever you are today I hope that you will not try blaming
your bad decisions on the actions of others.
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