CATCHING UP

Pres. Obama and Gov.Christie on Marine One

        To those who have been following my posts I apologize for my recent inactivity, but I was without Internet access for a few days because of hurricane Sandy and unable to access my blog.
        That was frustrating for me, as I’ve had so many thoughts I wanted to share. I was so impressed by President Obama’s immediate and forceful response to Sandy, and especially by his and New Jersey Governor Christie’s commendable cooperation in dealing with the disastrous effects of the storm. The President’s actions drew high praise from the man who gave the keynote address at the Republican Convention and who has until now been a blistering critic of Barack Obama. His praise of the President’s leadership and the help of the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) completely contradicts Mitt Romney’s campaign rhetoric!
        Meanwhile the Republican candidate is desperately trying to lie his way into the White House. He keeps on trying to scare Ohioans by charging that the Chrysler Corporation is planning to ship the manufacturing of Jeeps to China, despite the angry contradiction of Chrysler’s CEO.  Romney’s ads continue to level a similar charge against the General Motors Corporation, drawing an unprecedented blast from GM.
        In a blog post many weeks ago I coined the term “karlrovean,” which refers to the campaign tactic of accusing your opponent of the very things of which you yourself are guilty. The Romney campaign has been employing this tactic to an extreme. So we have Mitt Romney, Mr. Out-Sourcer himself, accusing the President of out-sourcing! And the man who has run the most negative campaign in my life-time, with the most false statements about his opponent I’ve ever heard, acting as if he’s the one being falsely accused (“Attacking me is not a plan for improving our economy.”)
        It is distressing to me that this presidential election is as close as it is. But what can we expect? The same uninformed Americans who voted George W. Bush into office will choose the flip-flopping Mr. Etch-a-sketch, who hasn’t the backbone to condemn the outrageously extremist statements of some of the members of his own party or to renounce the disgraceful efforts of Republican election officials to suppress the vote in their states, and who disdains the 47% of Americans he accuses of expecting handouts and paying no taxes, while refusing to reveal his own tax returns! Too many people have been hoodwinked by Romney's platitudinous rhetoric. They  can’t tell the difference between a boast and a plan.
        Not all Romney supporters are unintelligent and uninformed, of course. Yet they choose to believe the lies of the "birthers" and Romney's unsupported generalities, and they ignore his gaffes and overlook his faults because they hate Obama so much. They want to believe everything Romney and his surrogates say about the President because they want to believe it, whether it's true or not.
        Romney supporters have flocked to see the "documentary" "2016: Obama's America," ignoring the fact that it is a slick infomercial produced by Citizens United, the conservative advocacy group whose 2010 Supreme Court victory over the Federal Elections Commission led to the outlandish campaign spending by the SuperPACs, as President Obama predicted it would. Critics have pointed out that the film totally ignores what Obama has done as President. It's not about his record; it's CU producer D'Souza's speculation about the President's secret intentions, based on D'Souza's psychological analysis of Barack Obama's memoir, Dreams from My Father. Having read that book, I find D'Souza's conclusions insidiously far-fetched.
         But honesty is not a virtue with the current brand of right-wing Republicans. And their leader is setting the example. Fact checkers consistently show that everything Mitt Romney says about President Obama is a misrepresentation or an outright lie. The Republican candidate has exceeded the limits of decent political discourse. He refuses to answer questions and has not granted an interview with the press for over three weeks!
        Meanwhile, his supporters refuse to consider the facts. They hate Barack Obama, and despite their denials, much of that hatred is semi-concealed or blatant racism. Why else do they refuse to acknowledge the President’s accomplishments? Why are they so ready to ignore the facts and to believe the lies of the Romney team?
        In case you have forgotten some of those lies, here’s a good summary from the Tampa Bay Times to refresh you memory: click on Romney’s lies.
        After perusing that list, how could any fair-minded American who really loves this country choose a man like that over Barack Obama, who is the same consistent, trustworthy person he was when he took office, whose goals for this country have not changed, and who has made remarkable progress toward those goals, despite the total lack of cooperation of the Republicans in the House and Senate?
        This election is a choice between truth and falsehood, between integrity and hypocrisy, between character and shamelessness, between genuine love for America and partisan loyalty. The plain truth is that our choice will say more about us than about the person we choose!