Countdown to Election 2012: Week Seven in Review

by Sunnyjane

You silly old goat!  I'm the future PRESIDENT of the...wait, what did you  just say?

And the Mitts Just Keep On Coming

I was stupid.  I was wrong.  I was punked!  The ridiculous notion had actually crossed my mind that there couldn't possibly be a major follow-on to Romney's devastating Week Eight.  Well, I admit it: my gast was so flabbered when I got online early last Tuesday morning that  my computer found itself in grave danger of having two eyeballs popping their sockets and plastering sclera and cornea guts all over the monitor.

Lesson learned: Never underestimate the inelegance of Mitt Romney. 

In Memoriam: Compassionate Conservatism 

It had been on life support for some years and took a dramatic turn for the worse in 2010.  Today, the idea that conservatives in this country are even remotely concerned about half of the Americans in this great country died a quiet death when Mitt Romney showed that he would be president of One Percent of our citizens all the time, Fifty-Two Percent once in a while, and Forty-Seven Percent never.  

Romney reasons with his privileged Tea Partier intellect and speaks out of his posterior orifice.  He has been roundly criticized for his decided lack of diplomatic skills and knowledge of foreign relations during his failed European trip; lambasted for his scandalous rush-to-judgment mentality over the tense situation in Libya; and widely condemned for his remarks over how he sees nearly half of U.S. citizens.  And ninety percent of the criticism is from his own party.

It was conservative David Brooks who wrote of Romney, he really doesn't know much about the country he inhabits … doesn't know much about the culture of America ... doesn't know much about the political culture ... knows nothing about ambition and motivation, and that his interpretation of how the country works is a country-club fantasy.  Alex Castellanos, a Republican strategist who worked closely with Romney on his 2008 presidential campaign, said, He was talking about the electorate as if it were a ledger sheet. It diminishes him.  Yes, Alex, it also diminishes the American people to be reduced to emotionless data points.

Liberal Paul Krugman who, unlike Paul Ryan, is a real economist, wrote recently about the call from Republicans for Romney to change course:  The truth is that Romney based his whole campaign on the belief that he could blur his way to the White House, mouthing right-wing slogans, fudging the math, and counting on voter disillusionment with Obama to do the rest.  Now that this doesn't seem to have worked, he has no plan B.  Don't you hate it when that happens?

The damning tape obtained by James Carter IV and published online by Mother Jones is Mitt Romney's blueprint for governing this country were he to be elected president.  This is no longer a Let them eat cake campaign; now it has now been revealed that this is a Fuck ‘em all Plutocracy-in-the-making campaign.

I actually waited the Biblically required three days and no resurrection of Compassionate Conservatism occurred.

Nuggets from the Noggin of a Neocon Numskull 
           

 Whatever I said, I stand behind it. 
But do not judge me on what I said
because that's not what I meant!

Has Mitt Romney never learned the Be careful what you wish for lesson?  While attempting to quell the growing backlash from his inelegantly stated dismissal of forty-seven percent of the electorate by going on the offensive and declaring that we need a discussion on dependency in this country, he made the rash comment that instead of just selected clips, he wished they would release the whole tape. And of course, Mother Jones promptly and gleefully obliged him. 
  
So America was treated to almost fifty minutes of the true Mitt Romney, complete and unabridged.  It was very revealing and very ugly.

*Mitt's cognition-challenged vision on geopolitical issues closely resembled the old joke about an uninformed speaker who greeted his audience with: Ladies and jelly spoons, I come before you to stand behind you to tell you something I know nothing about. One example: The Palestinians have no interest whatsoever in establishing peace ... the pathway to peace is almost unthinkable to accomplish. You hope for some degree of stability, but you recognize that this is going to remain an unsolved problem and we kick the ball down the field and hope that ultimately, somehow, something will happen and resolve it.  Somehow,  I don't believe that tossing a penny in the old wishing well is a very good foreign policy plan.  As Johann Wolfgang von Goethe said, There is nothing more frightful than ignorance in action.

*While Romney believes that Republicans can capture the women's vote [heh] and entirely thumbs his nose at African American voters, he now thinks Hispanics are a threat to country: We’re having a much harder time with Hispanic voters. And if the Hispanic voting bloc becomes as committed to the Democrats as the African American voting bloc has in the past, why we’re in trouble as a party and, I think, as a nation.  Of course, there are many Republicans who agree with Mitt, such as Lindsey Graham who said recently, We’re not generating enough angry white guys to stay in business for the long term.

*It's pretty obvious that the $50,000 donors attending this shindig only read the financial section of the paper because they're just not keeping up with the news these days.  One thinks Nancy Pelosi is still Speak of the House, saying: Nancy Pelosi, who was supposed to give us an honest Congress, has given us just the opposite as speaker. And I think that’s a campaign issue that can work well. I’m optimistic that you’ll be elected president, and my recommendation would be to clean house immediately.  Duh...

*Another said he believes Romney should invent a scenario like Reagan had and get tough on Iran because that's what Ronnie did.  This fool has obviously forgotten that Reagan is the president who sold arms to that country in 1985.  That little fiasco was lovingly called the Iran-Contra  Affair.

Moving On...

*In what obviously seemed like a super deal for the Republican Party, unemployed Rick Santorum assured an audience at the Values Voter Summit that conservatives will never have the elite, smart people on our side.  You're half right, Rick; you've got the elite people, we've got the smart people.  It's a deal we can live with.

*Mitt admitted that his tax plan is based on a Fox News lie that's been debunked many times.  

*Paul Ryan dragged his seventy-eight-year-old mommy along to protect him from those gray-haired meanies at the AARP annual convention.  When he told attendees that repealing Obamacare would lead to a stronger Medicare, many booed, called him a liar, and walked out.  You lying idiot; seniors are not stupid, you know.   

*In a charming game of Can you top this hypocrisy?  John Sununu on Fox News defended Romney against detractors because it is President Obama’s very deliberate attempt to do class warfare as part of his campaign strategy.   

*Never one to let an opportunity go by to show his flip-flopping stupidity, Romney appeared on 60 Minutes this past Sunday night and said that people who don't have health insurance need not be concerned if they have a heart attack because We pick them up in an ambulance, and take them to the hospital [emergency room], and give them care.  However, as the Huffington Post points out, Romney ...passed a universal health care law in Massachusetts, in part, to eliminate the costs incurred when the uninsured show up in emergency rooms for care. Indeed, in both his book and in high-profile interviews during the campaign, Romney has touted his achievement in stamping out these inefficiencies while arguing that the same thing should be done at the national level.  Meanwhile, the Affordable Healthcare Act is being quietly implemented by GOP officials in several states. 

  
King Mitt and Queen Ann Have Come Unglued

Personally, had I just had my ass kicked, I would have gone to Margaritaville to salve my wounds. But Ann and Mitt took their snit to Pitch a Shit-fit City after the terrible, horrible, no-good, very bad week they'd just lived through.  

*In the Gospel According to Ann Romney, Chapter 1:1 Percent, Republicans critical of her husband should Stop It! because Mitt has sacrificed himself on the alter of the Republican Party and those not in the ring should prostrate themselves before him in worshipful faithfulness because the campaign is hard for her.  If you love someone, you see them maligned, attacked … you get very defensive.  Got that?  As Politicususa put it so succinctly, You People had better stop maligning Mitt Romney with his own words!  In fact, trying to make Mitt look like a real human being is such an ordeal for Ann that she has canceled all interviews for the near future -- or forever, perhaps.  I guess she needs to go ride her $77,000 tax deduction around the parade ring for a couple of weeks.

*Mitt got his sacred undies in a swivet before appearing on the Hispanic network Univision Town Hall because while introducing him to the audience, one of the anchors noted that the Republican candidate had agreed to give the network 35 minutes, and that Obama had agreed to a full hour the next night.  Romney refused to come out on the stage and instead demanded that the introduction be re-taped in such a manner that it did not include the time frames during which each candidate would speak.  But that's not all, folks!  Earlier Romney had threatened to scrap the whole interview if the campaign was not allowed to override the students-only rule and bus in some supporters to fill out the seats and root loudly for their guy.  I kid you not.  

It almost makes you break out in a cold sweat to realize that Mitt Romney is the best candidate the Republicans could round up for 2012.

End Note

The first Presidential Debate will be held next Wednesday, October 3, at the University of Denver,  moderated by Jim Lehrer of PBS, at 9:00 PM Eastern Time.  

According to the Commission on Presidential Debates: 

The debate will focus on domestic policy and be divided into six time segments of approximately 15 minutes each on topics to be selected by the moderator and announced several weeks before the debate.

The moderator will open each segment with a question, after which each candidate will have two minutes to respond. The moderator will use the balance of the time in the segment for a discussion of the topic.