With Mitt Romney flip flopping more than a freshly caught fish in the bottom of boat and telling one untruth after another, it would seem that sentient voters would get the message that a return to the policies of Bush/Cheney and a new Gilded Age would not be in the best interest of America or average families. Yet, by prostituting itself to the Christianists, playing on the paranoia of the Tea Party, promising lower taxes to the greedy and wealthy, and throwing in a good dose of thinly veiled racism, the GOP remains competitive in the 2012 election cycle. A piece in the Washington Post looks at how the Obama campaign is striving to convince voters to look beyond their own greed and prejudices and move the nation forward. Here are excerpts:
President Obama’s bus tour through Ohio and Pennsylvania late last week offered a striking look at the evolution of a president. In 2008, Obama used soaring rhetoric and personal biography to talk about binding together a red-blue nation. His message today is about the urgent need to defeat a stubborn opposition party in order to move the country forward.
Four years ago, Obama used themes of hope and change to suggest that he could bring a new politics to Washington. . . . . Today, the battle-scarred president who has met almost uniform resistance from the Republicans sees the world differently, or so it seems from the way he talked in Ohio and Pennsylvania. At nearly every stop, he made it clear that he sees November in the starkest of terms and that there can be but one winner. He asked supporters to help deliver a victory in November that would carry a message that his vision is superior to that of the Republicans.
In Maumee, Ohio, under a blazing sun on Thursday, he put it this way: “What’s holding us back from meeting our challenges — it’s not a lack of ideas, it’s not a lack of solutions. What’s holding us back is we’ve got a stalemate in Washington between these two visions of where the country needs to go. And this election is all about breaking that stalemate.”
On one side, it is seen as the threat of big government, shackles on the economy and an end to freedom. On the other side, it is seen as shredding the middle class in order to reward the rich. Swing voters in the middle are being asked to pick one side or the other . . . .
“I’m not a Democrat first,” he told the audience in Maumee. “I’m an American first. I believe we rise or fall as one nation, as one people. And I believe what’s stopping us is not our capacity to meet our challenges. What’s stopping us is our politics. And that’s something you have the power to solve.”
But at its core, Obama’s message has shifted. The urgency in his appeal is grounded in his conviction that this is an election about ideas and policies and political philosophies, that the country faces a crucial moment and a clear choice. The country is in a far different place than it was when he first ran for office, and he is in a far different battle. And he has decided how he will fight it between now and November.
Am a I fearful of a Romney victory? Most definitely. I'm afraid of the damage it will do to the country and how it will continue the destruction of the middle class. I'm also afraid that it would bring even more religious extremism into the mix as Romney whores himself out to the far right in the hope of avoiding a primary challenge in 2016. We cannot afford to have the future of the nation be decided on the basis of hate, greed, selfishness and intolerance - the hallmarks of today's GOP.
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