Sometimes the daily newspapers catch the essence of the man more accurately than all the psychological evaluations and punditry. So it was with Mitt Romney in his trip to England. The Daily Mail headlined " Mitt, the Twit" while other papers were even less kind one saying that Mitt came on a charm offensive but there was no charm and lot of it was offensive.
The fact is that during the last month I have watched with growing horror the campaign of Romney: his ability to tell lies convincingly, to distort and to change his opinions within twenty four hours without blinking an eyelid, to hold two contrary position on every subject and yet pretend that both are honestly and deeply held. It is no secret that I am an unabashed admirer of Obama but I have never seen a presidential candidate who is so mendacious and so without any deep convictions of his own as Romney.
The november election has become like a game where one side has openly declared its intention to cheat : a large number of republican governors have passed laws ensuring that the poor, the elderly, the disadvantaged can no longer vote. Of course this is cloaked under the need to prevent voter fraud but the real facts are they are but one part of a strategy to keep a all white oligarchy in power since the demographics point in a different direction.
Charles Blow, a New York Times columnist, put it even more bluntly:
"First," he says, " there’s the specter of the oligarchy lingering over this election, which disproportionately benefits Republicans." So far this year, 26 billionaires have donated more than $61 million to super PACs, according to the Center for Responsive Politics. And that’s only what has been publicly disclosed.” That didn’t include “about $100 million that Sheldon Adelson has said that he is willing to spend to defeat President Obama; or the $400 million that the Koch brothers have pledged to spend during the 2012 election season.” And it should not also be forgotten that Romney has his own wealth of a quarter of a billion to put into play as well.
The fact is that during the last month I have watched with growing horror the campaign of Romney: his ability to tell lies convincingly, to distort and to change his opinions within twenty four hours without blinking an eyelid, to hold two contrary position on every subject and yet pretend that both are honestly and deeply held. It is no secret that I am an unabashed admirer of Obama but I have never seen a presidential candidate who is so mendacious and so without any deep convictions of his own as Romney.
The november election has become like a game where one side has openly declared its intention to cheat : a large number of republican governors have passed laws ensuring that the poor, the elderly, the disadvantaged can no longer vote. Of course this is cloaked under the need to prevent voter fraud but the real facts are they are but one part of a strategy to keep a all white oligarchy in power since the demographics point in a different direction.
Charles Blow, a New York Times columnist, put it even more bluntly:
"First," he says, " there’s the specter of the oligarchy lingering over this election, which disproportionately benefits Republicans." So far this year, 26 billionaires have donated more than $61 million to super PACs, according to the Center for Responsive Politics. And that’s only what has been publicly disclosed.” That didn’t include “about $100 million that Sheldon Adelson has said that he is willing to spend to defeat President Obama; or the $400 million that the Koch brothers have pledged to spend during the 2012 election season.” And it should not also be forgotten that Romney has his own wealth of a quarter of a billion to put into play as well.
"Then," he adds, " there’s the widespread voter suppression mostly enacted by Republican-led legislatures." According to the Brennan Center for Justice at the New York University School of Law, at least 180 restrictive voting bills were introduced since the beginning of 2011 in 41 states, and 16 states have passed restrictive voting laws that have the potential to impact the 2012 election because they account for 214 electoral votes, or nearly 79 percent of the total needed to win the presidency.
The blunt fact is that the Republicans are leveraging the deep pockets of anti-Obama billionaires and sinister voter suppression tactics that harken back to Jim Crow to wrest power from the hands of docile and still sleeping Democrats. "And", says Blow " if Democrats don’t wake up soon, this election might not just be won or lost, it could be bought or stolen."
And that might bring the twitt to be the President!!
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