From a “liberal” perspective, the President’s record is
anything but satisfactory. Our wars drag on, some have been dramatically
expanded: Afghanistan,
Pakistan. We
are outraged over drone airstrikes, and consider them to be counterproductive.
We are outraged by selective “killing” of civilians,
including
American citizens---. Beyond this, our government has become involved in a
number of other struggles, as in Syria
and Somalia.
There are endless other examples of failed policy on social
and environmental fronts. The President was late on “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell,”
forced into moving on marriage rights by his vice president. This insane "war on drugs" still rages-- (aside from the toll that criminalization of drugs
takes on our youth, who thinks that if the Canadian government outlawed
tobacco products, our government would kill 70,000 of us to stop the
flow of cigarettes across the Canadian border?); and he's been MIA on
reeling in the financial establishment that has brought the world economy to
its knees. These men should be in jail, not collecting record bonuses for their
illegal practices (see accompanying article.)
Admittedly, much of candidate Obama’s “promise” was actually
“expectations” on the part of the left wing. The president is a “Corporate
Liberal:” he tilts left, but remains well within the bounds of the existing
power structure. No corporate feathers are ruffled. Republican claims of
liberal takeover and socialist decline are inane blather. (Comparisons with
Hitler, Stalin, etc. are such vapid dribble that they magnify the irony: Hitler
and Stalin were right-wing despots, not liberals. The Republicans have adopted
and fully endorsed these leaders’ programs of propaganda/brainwashing, fear and
hate mongering to gain political support.)
We can tell ourselves that if reelected, Mr. Obama will
pursue the agenda that is really in his heart in his final years. But history
has shown this to be unrealistic. Emerging from a triumphant, first term in
1996, President Clinton brought in enormous political capital, and many
expected his second term to yield tremendous positive change. This was
short-circuited by Republican exploitation of his personal foibles.
The real question looking forward to November is: which of
our two candidates will make a better President for the next four years? While
Mr. Obama is a known entity, we can only speculate about Mr. Romney. A more
protean character has not been seen on the contemporary US
tableau.
The Republican base, and the “Tea Partiers” in particular,
have not lost their taste for the GOP promise to cut taxes, cut government
services and balance the budget on the backs of the irresponsible, undeserving
poor. The fact that this program has met with dismal failure every time it has
been put to the test causes no caution or skepticism among this group of
“believers.”
Mr. Romney has opted to 1) discard the conventional “shift
to the middle” expected of general election candidates; 2) double down on
expansion of our wars and our vast war-making capacity; and 3) glorify our
nation’s position on the world stage, defying widespread international
opposition, even among our “allies,” and fully re-endorsing “American
Exceptionalism,” the primary source of the vast majority of our domestic
insecurity and international mischief. Please re-visit our discussion of
American Exceptionalism.
With almost daily faux pas that would make G. W. Bush blush,
frequent disclosures of his shady business practices, even shadier personal
financial practices, frequent offensive remarks made to almost every interest
group, daily reversals on policy positions, evasion of almost any kind of
concrete proposal or policy stance, the candidacy remains afloat.
Romney comes from a political family. Father George was a
long-time political activist,
governor
of Michigan in 1962, and ran for president in ‘68.
His
mother ran for U. S. Senate. Both were moderate, and pursued many
progressive programs. As Governor of Massachusetts, Mitt followed a moderate
course and set up the archetype of “Obamacare,” which he now vilifies.
But in order to run as a Republican, he must run as an
extreme “conservative.” (Extreme conservative is an oxymoron, my friends.) His base,
the one that led George W. Bush to office, is incredibly active, angry and
energized by racial hatred of our African American President. We believe that
the dichotomy between his personal beliefs and the “conservatism” which he’s
forced to profess lies at the core of why the man makes so many mistakes. His
blunders are a reflection of the battle going on inside. This does not, however, explain his personal
problems, such as his tax returns. The man has been running for President for
probably six years, or more. Reputed to have wealth approaching ten figures, as
a future presidential prospect, everyone knows that the public expects him to
pay taxes! Certainly he can afford it.
The latest flap is a case study in the difficulty of the
campaign. In a video clip produced by
Priorities USA, a senior citizen
whose wife died from cancer after he was laid off from a steel plant,
perhaps displaced by Bain Capital,
alludes to Romney’s culpability. To cast
her candidate in a favorable light,
Andrea
Saul, Romney’s press secretary, stated that if the woman had been a Massachusetts
resident, Romney’s healthcare plan would have covered her and saved her life.
(Actually, the woman had private healthcare insurance.) But the Republicans
want to distance themselves from Romney’s plan in Mass.
Ann coulter, Rush and the GOP establishment
demanded Saul’s head for going “off message,” “message” being reiteration
of the same meaningless and misleading blather over and over ad nauseum.
It gets better! The most intriguing thing about this flap is
that the video clip was an allusion only. There’s no claim of Romney’s blame.
More significantly, it was never commercially broadcast…it was a brief bit on
the internet. The Romney camp took the bait and in their indignant zeal to
repudiate Mr. Obama, they forced the issue to public attention---the clip goes
viral.
Meanwhile, the Obama campaign
is circulating ads referring to Romney’s personal and business
financial practices. With Romney as head of their audit board, Marriott Hotels
was running a
“Son
of BOSS” tax evasion scheme for several years in the ‘90s. The IRS
sued and Marriott was hit for back taxes and a multi-million dollar fine. This
coupled with Romney’s personal tax avoidance schemes present an effective
negative ad campaign. The Romney camp hasn’t bothered refuting this ad.
Instead, he counters with the claim that: Mr. Obama is
trying to “undo welfare reform.” This is false. He signed an executive order
which allows individual states discretion in implementing welfare. Republicans
are supposed to favor “States’ rights,” but really they simply oppose
everything Obama does.
We might assume that if elected, Romney will revert to the
moderate policies that have highlighted his career, but that would be naïve.
The reality of modern American politics is that immediately after election, a
first term president begins running for reelection. That will demand continuing
gratification of his boisterous, right-wing constituency. Robbinsense believes strongly that the spectacle that we have seen,
which prompted most prominent Republicans
to dismiss him as the worst candidate that the party could put forward, will
continue to play out on the national and world stage. Romney will become George
W. Bush II, a better-educated, perhaps more polished version, but every bit as
embarrassing and disastrous for our country.
We know that there are good people at various levels of
government still holding onto the Republican banner, but it’s difficult to get
behind any candidate pandering to this base. For the last three years
Republicans have shown that they have no interest in advancing the welfare of
our country. In fact, they have been up front with this, announcing to the
public that their legislative and political agenda for the next 3 ½ years was
to unseat the President. In the process, they have done everything possible to
aggravate our recession, including opposition to any program that might create
jobs or restrain businesses from exporting jobs. Much of the President’s
moderate policies have been pulled right from the GOP playbook, yet they still
oppose and revile the man.
The Republican Party tosses the terms “liberal” and
“conservative” around like pillows at an adolescent slumber party. “Liberal”
comes from the root: liberty. The
classic liberal is one who advances
freedom, generally through change in
social and political processes and institutions. “Conservative,” in contrast,
is one who resists change, or strives to conserve
the status quo. It doesn’t take much to see how the modern Republican Party has
stood these terms on their heads.
While extolling the virtues of “understood” American freedom
and “liberty,” the GOP pursues an agenda that actively
suppresses our freedoms: freedom to vote, freedom of speech, freedom to
assemble, the right to an abortion, freedom to control the size of our families
(through birth control), freedom to practice any religion (except GOP-favored
Christianity) and freedom to conduct our lives in a style that is different
from their norm. They claim they want government “out of our lives,” but
actually, they demand to have it in YOUR bedroom, monitoring your private
affairs. This hypocrisy should not be tolerated.
While Robbinsense
is dissatisfied with the record of the president, and recognizes that progress
on any number of fronts toward reforming our society has been poor, the prospect
of a Romney presidency is even worst. We advocate reelection of President
Obama.
