Friday, May 25, 2012

Putty


Richard Cohen isn't a guy I read very much, but I hear his name tossed around from time to time. I infer he leans left, but as an opinionizer for The Washington Post, he seems able to piss off both sides with regularity. I can't vouch for his wisdom one way or the other, but he's written something that's entirely consistent with what I believe about Mitt Romney, with respect to how he'd govern: namely that, contrary to claims he'd be a centrist, in fact he'd remain beholden to and afraid of the most radical and moneyed forces in the Republican party, and be putty in their hands. And he agrees that The Rominee seems not to have any core vision other than that he'd love to be president (or that, as was the case with Perry and Bachmann and Gingrich and Santorum, god told him to do it):

In the first place, Romney would likely have a Republican House, and maybe a Senate, too. This means he has to work with a party that has just recently punished Richard Lugar for excessive moderation and is willing, at this very moment, to bring down the country’s credit rating another notch rather than budge on the debt ceiling. To Romney, who made a fortune with the clever prestidigitation of debt, this has to make no sense, but he would go along because (1) he’d have to, and (2) he always does.

Congress, though, would be the least of President Romney’s troubles. The real threat will come from the Republican Party’s very core, which likes him little and trusts him less. The moment he shows the slightest moderate or rational tick, someone such as Rick Santorum will barrel out of the GOP’s piney woods, screaming oaths, and enter the 2016 Iowa caucuses that, you might remember, Santorum won in 2012. ...

[...]

It’s hardly conceivable that, as president, Romney will become the Romney some think he is. The forces that shaped him in the primaries and caucuses will not go away. He has been clay in the hands of the political right, and this will not change. After Romney recently disparaged Carter’s political courage, Gerald Rafshoon, once Carter’s communications director, shot back with this viaBloomberg View: “Scour Romney’s record for a single example of real political courage — a single, solitary instance, however small, where Romney placed principle or substance above his own short-term political interests. Let me know if you find one.” Rafshoon’s phone has not been ringing.

[...]

According to what a family friend told the New York Times, Mitt and Ann Romney decided he should run for president because they both “felt it was what God wanted them to do.” Having done just that, Romney has left it to others to define what sort of candidate he would be. Nothing would change if he were president. Weakness is his one consistency.


The election will come down to whether there's more people that hate their imaginary version of Barack Hussein Obama than there are those that recoil from a candidate who is imaginary, whole-cloth-constructed by anonymous (or, sometimes, not) self-interested billionaires, who's never stood for a thing, who'll say anything, lie without remorse, as long as it'd get him elected.

We'll find out soon enough. And I don't think I want to know.


4 comments:

  1. Umm right on Sid,
    See, thats Pathopneumonic for Ass-Burgers's agreeing and then talking about something else.
    It's like Alzheimer's patients having to ask their(:) wives how they voted...
    But my affection for Joe Lieberman has nothing to do with his Politics, Religion, or Creed(what the hells a Creed anyway?)
    Bumped into Joe at a Reagan/National Bar circa 1995, didn't know him from Adam's Housecat, dude said he was from Connecticut, takin the shuttle into god-for-saken Newark, to save some coin, when I bought a round(I used to do that) dude orderd a friggin COKE...
    and I never would have remembered it till I saw "Joe" on TV several years later, reading Clinton the Riot Act on the floor of the Senate...

    Frank

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  2. Well I, for one am curious. A Romney win would mean that our long experiment in the democratic process has come to an end. Money killed it.

    Then when Romney finishes the job W started, namely killing the economy and what is left of our democratic institutions, we'll get to find out what comes next.

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  3. I admit I've had the occasional bout of morbid curiosity myself; although no matter how bad things got, I doubt people would learn from it. Assuming, that is, there'd be a way back if they finally did figure it out.

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  4. According to what a family friend told the New York Times, Mitt and Ann Romney decided he should run for president because they both “felt it was what God wanted them to do.”

    Actually, the wimp factor kicked in absolutely no later than Romney--ostensibly a grown man--claiming that a deity was responsibile for his own decision to run for office.

    Molly, NYC

    ReplyDelete

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