Why I Can't Vote for Romney, part II

In the early 1990's, as Mitt Romney was launching his political career, he used to make the rounds of local Boston businesses to take the temperature of the people working there. He seemed an intelligent and thoughtful guy, pro-business but progressive on cultural issues. He impressed us with his balanced and hands-off attitude toward personal values--he was pro-choice, fine with gay rights, supportive of all our progress on civil rights. He believed in the social safety net and an enlightened foreign policy. He foreshadowed some of what he would do as Governor, especially on healthcare reform.

It is hard to capture the sense of disgust and disappointment at seeing and hearing this guy sell out every ounce of reasonableness to cater to the lunatic right. He is trying to out-tea-party the tea-party. Even Rick Santorum expresses concern for the poor. Even Newt Gingrich gets the importance of science and technology--heck, he gets laughed at for his visions of moon colonies, which are actually kind of interesting. Ron Paul offers an alternative to the Rambo foreign policy advocated by most of the party. Huntsman acknowledged climate change. Even W advocated a humane immigration policy. Romney has taken the most extreme position on every one of these issues. If you believe him, his conversion is complete.

Many on the hard right distrust him because they don't believe it. If only we could be sure! If his new-found ideological purity is even half real, his election would be a tragedy for this country. Newt Gingrich is correct that Mitt was once a Massachusetts moderate. And that is a a terrible irony, because we could use a Massachusetts moderate in the Republican party.

Why I Can't vote for Romney, part I

You see, the hardest working people in the country are actually not the middle class, to whom all the politicians pander. The hardest working people are the ones at the top and the bottom. The 1% and the bottom 20%. The ones at the top work hard because they have set themselves up for huge payoffs if they succeed. (Don't believe all the rhetoric about lazy fat cat bankers. The typical investment banker works 90 hour weeks and only goes home to pick up his dry cleaning.) The bottom 20% work hard because their lives depend on it. They get no breaks, and the common slander that they just sit around and sponge up government benefits is just that, slander.

The Democrats, Obama and the rest, have made a fetish of pandering to the "middle class", despite the very obvious fact that it hasn't won them any more votes from whoever makes up that amorphous group. Now Mitt has joined in the chorus, if only to try to rationalize his dismissal of the poor. Wow! These are the people who waste their lives tracking the Kardashians, support five ESPN channels, and have made a fetish out of "Thank God It's Friday"--they even named a restaurant after it. There are exceptions, of course, but if they are hurting it is because most of then never met a credit card they didn't like, and they worship fake luxury brands because it makes them feel like, well, the 1%. They do not deserve pandering, from either the Democrats or the Republicans, and the funny thing is, they know it. Otherwise they wouldn't hold their noses when they hear the politicians sucking up to them.