It's no secret that I do not like Mitt Romney. Frankly, in my view he's an arrogant prick: the spoiled little rich boy who thinks living an apartment while living off of trust funds while attending graduate school was a struggle. And his equally bitchy and arrogant wife, Ann "Marie Antoinette" Romney is no better in my book. Fortunately, some of Romney's arrogance and sense of extreme entitlement came through last night - along with his patent dishonesty mentioned in a prior post. Also telling was Romney's failure to give any specifics on how he would grow and strengthen the U.S. economy. He merely said that he would and that was supposed to be all the voters - who he views as peasants and would be serfs to GOP plutocrats - need to know. Thus, the real issue becomes whether or not voters wake up to who the real Mitt Romney is over the next couple of weeks or not. Are Americans as stupid as Romney believes them to be. I for one hope not. A column in the Washington Post looks at these issues further. Here some highlights:
[T]he most electorally significant performance was Romney’s. Under pressure this time, the former Massachusetts governor displayed his least attractive sides. He engaged in pointless on-stage litigation of the debate rules. He repeatedly demonstrated his disrespect for both the president and Candy Crowley, the moderator. And Romney was just plain querulous when anyone dared question him about the gaping holes in his tax and budget plans.
Any high school debate coach would tell a student that declaring, “Believe me because I said so,” is not an argument. Yet Romney confused biography with specificity and boasting with answering a straightforward inquiry. “Well, of course, they add up,” Romney insisted of his budget numbers.
Romney’s stonewalling was so obvious that it opened the way for one of Obama’s most effective lines of the evening: “If somebody came to you, Governor, with a plan that said, here, I want to spend $7 or $8 trillion, and then we’re going to pay for it, but we can’t tell you until maybe after the election how we’re going to do it, you wouldn’t have taken such a sketchy deal. And neither should you, the American people, because the math doesn’t add up.”
The most instructive contrast between Debate I and Debate II was the extent to which Romney’s ideas crumbled at the slightest contact with challenge. Romney and Paul Ryan are erecting a Potemkin village designed to survive only until the polls close on Nov. 6. They cannot say directly that they really believe in slashing taxes on the rich and backing away from so much of what government does because they know that neither idea will sell. So they offer soothing language to the middle class, photo ops at homeless programs to convey compassion and a steady stream of attacks on Obama, aimed at shifting all the attention his way.
In the first debate, Obama let Romney back into the race by failing to shake his opponent’s self-presentation. But Romney also put himself into contention by pretending to be a moderate, shelving his plutocratic side and hiding his party’s long-term objectives.
In the second debate, the disguise fell. Romney revealed more of himself than he wanted to and asked voters to endorse a radical tax-cutting program without providing them the details that matter. Sketchy is one word for this. Deceptive is another.
No comments:
Post a Comment