How Witless The Mittness With Which He Carries On

It became apparent during the early moments of this year's first presidential debate that Willard Romney would lie like a rug to become President of the United States. Untethered from that which we recognize as the truth, Romney has floated away from those of us bound to reality. At most any fair or festival some unfortunate, or perhaps aeronautically inclined, child will lose his helium balloon, and then we see the gas bag float effortlessly away from us. It is a prisoner of the winds, tied no more to terra firma until its lighter-than-air contents fail it, and it descends inert, lifeless and tethered once again to a shrub or a fence. Reality.

Unless Romney scrambles Lincoln's assessment of fooling all of the people some of the time , into "you can fool just enough of the strategically situated people to get 270 electoral votes", he will find himself, come Wednesday, like the spent balloon, ingloriously grounded.

That fate, I hope, comes to pass for Romney.

Theoretically, he could have run his campaign differently. It is theory because quite possibly Romney is such a product of his skewed, privilege-borne, vision of America and Americans that no other words, save lies, could have come from him. And he has birthed some whoppers. His insistence that Obamacare cuts $716 billion from Medicare is untrue, but it also offers a tip of the hat in the direction of Bush II in that it also plays a fear card, so Medicare recipients can be made afraid of losing life-saving benefits. Leave aside the fact that the$716 billion in Obama's plan cuts billions of over payments to providers of Medicare services, and elimination of subsidies to Medicare Advantage providers, like Humana, for senior citizen gym memberships and the like. Leave aside also that Medicare operates its massive bureaucracy on about three percent of overhead expenses while privately provided health coverage had to be mandated, through Obamacare, to limit its overhead costs to 20%.  On Romney's delusional first day in office he plans to scrap Obamacare.

When the day that will never come, comes in Romney's mind, and in the mind of his fervid followers, he will also throw out other parts of Obamacare while surgically avoiding those parts of the plan, such as allowing young people to remain on their parents' health plan until age 26, that might appeal to his targeted voters. He would dismantle the plan by eliminating the mandates of the plan. His market-driven solution to health coverage would result in millions being left out of the nation's health plan. He doesn't want health coverage for citizens, he wants an applause line at rallies, he wants a bait and switch move.

Romney attacks the president for a failed attempt at green energy through the start up company Solyndra. This company went bankrupt, and Romney said half of all the federally assisted investments in green energy went belly up. In fact, about six per cent of federally supported green start ups failed. As a principal in a vulture capital firm, Bain, Romney should know that a failure rate on start ups south of ten percent is pretty good. In this case, though, a lie works better for his purposes. The lie better appeals to his extremist right wing backers in the carbon fuel industries to whom he would cater if elected.

While abortion is, of course, an emotionally freighted topic Romney could not bring himself to put distance between himself and his support of Indiana Senate candidate Richard Mourdock. He didn't ask to have his endorsement ad for Mourdok taken down because he didn't want to possibly risk alienating the ardent foes of abortion with a hint of moderation on the point. He further risks any appeal to women voters by failing to support equal pay rules, such as the Lilly Ledbetter law. Women are rightly sensitive about wanting equal pay for equal work, and they fear such a plight befalling their daughters.

On the issue of Medicare the Romney campaign reveals much about the candidate's view of the American populace. In Romney's view the nation is a pool of Darwinian or perhaps Randian isolates on their own journey through life with little concern of other isolates making the same journey. John Sununu made a bombastic defense of the Ryan Medicare plan by reassuring voters that the cuts/reforms to Medicare would not, " affect those age 55 or older." So there you have it, the Romney philosophy is "if you've got yours why have any concern for those who don't?" Wouldn't that mentality have worked wonders during the northeastern hurricane, Sandy?

The increasingly violent weather the world is experiencing has convinced scientists that the earth's climate is indeed changing. The northeastern hurricane was made worse by the higher sea levels. Romney's earlier reaction to the threat of global warming/climate change mouthed at the Republican convention mirrored the esteemed Limbaugh wing of scientific thought when the candidate snarkily opined that President Obama  wanted to lower the level of the ocean and help heal the climatic woes. While of course that's a good laugh line among the de-intelligentsia, in the wake of hurricane Sandy, it's not quite so funny these days. And yet the avoidance of  the issue of climate change was painfully obvious from both the Romney and Obama camps throughout the campaign.

Romney has disdain for nearly half of the nation as shown in the taped event where he speaks of 47% of the population as slackers and writes them off as lesser signs in the equation of our nation. Perhaps this is due to his availing himself of tax laws for which the rest of us don't qualify. Maybe that is why we can't understand that he simply wants to grease the skids for the vaunted job creators while putting in place policies to fund tax cuts for the rich on the backs of the middle class. Harry Reid charged that Romney paid no taxes for a number of years. Romney vehemently denied the fact, but recently, proof of Romney's tax-avoidance has surfaced.

The recollection of Romney's illusory truths could be a full time pursuit,and this is a pursuit no one need be worried with after early November. Fortunately for the nation, I believe enough of the electorate will see through the empty suit to realize that although Willard is a good salesman, he won't be closing this deal.

(Obama 310 or more electoral votes, or room to spare)