America: Risk vs Reward

Man, if it wasn’t for Citizens United super-money, poor perennial also-ran Mitt Romney wouldn’t stand a chance in hell…

Look at the odds against this guy.

His base hates him. Voting for him will be like cleaning the yard of dogshit; they won’t do it because they want to, but if they don’t they’re afraid the smell will become unbearable.

It’s not exactly ‘hope and change.’

A lot of people—not anecdotal people, people I know—long-time GOP voters refuse to vote for him because he is a Mormon. It says more about those voters than it says about Mr. Romney, but it is a fact.

Which makes him the first GOP Presidential candidate in a generation who can no longer be counted upon to deliver the Moral Majority vote. That right there would have sunk him in previous election cycles, and says volumes about the Republican money-boys’ confidence in the results their hush-money is going to buy them.

Save us, Citizens United!

Personality-wise, Romney has no game at all. Stiff and awkward on the stump and in press interviews, I’ve never once seen him give a thoughtful answer. I’m not saying he isn’t capable of ‘thoughtful,’ but so far all I’ve heard are talking points, assiduously adhered to and repeated with perfunctory gusto until the interviewer gets tired of finding ways to rephrase the question, and moves on.

When he is required to produce a witticism, or interact with Common Folk, the writers at Comedy Central might as well take that day off. Their shows have just written themselves.

And I don’t just watch the people with whom I agree. I watch Fox News, too, and those on-air people hate Romney. It just oozes out of them, even as they reach for Emmy-worthy performances in support of their employer’s editorial edict. Watching fire-breathing Conservatives like Laura Ingraham and Sean Hannity having to twist themselves into knots to find nice things to say about this man they had previously spent their entire professional lives decrying is a sidesplitter.

Speaking of sidesplitters, did you hear the one about the GOP candidate who went to the NAACP to talk smack to black power?

It was a hell of a show. Afterwards, the cackling class went off about what a blunder it was, or how brave it was—depending on their respective marching orders—but I’ll tell you what I saw. I saw B-Roll for a Mitt Romney ad to be played in the cracker states, where he looks resolute, even a little sad, in the face of the rudeness of this audience of, you know, those people. In the background of the ad, someone is whistling a minor-key “Dixie;” just familiar enough that it pushes the buttons of its intended demographic, but not so obvious that Jon Stewart can credibly call them on it.

This was a calculated move to show his base (who hates him) that he is really is one of them. Watch me disrespect this room full of The Help.

It oughtta win him back at least a few of the ‘values voters.’

Then there is the matter of his experience. Besides the Olympics, which seem refreshingly controversy-free, he’s running on his governorship, where he passed the tax plan that is the template for ObamaCare, and his tenure at Bain Capital, making money for a handful of wealthy investors.

Put ObamaCare aside. No matter what anyone says, it’s perfectly clear that ObamaCare mimics Romney’s Massachusetts plan in so many key ways that the similarity is inarguable.

(And Romney’s base hates ObamaCare.)

So let’s look at the single other bullet-point on his otherwise pristine CV: Bain Capital. And just to make it interesting, let’s imagine we’re talking about a Democratic candidate here.

This hypothetical Democratic candidate founds a company that makes a fortune off of buying and usually (meaning more than 50% of the time) liquidating American companies; not only eliminating American jobs, but then taking those suddenly-available jobs and shipping them overseas, to our international competition.

Imagine a Democrat did this.

Then, he took a high-profile side gig. While he was doing that, he remained titular head—Captain of the ship, if you will—as the money-changing company he founded ramped up the domestic unemployment and job export businesses, apparently paying him $100k a year either to do nothing, or buy his silence.

Imagine a Democrat making $100,000 a year for a job he doesn’t have to show up for. I’m picturing a well-connected dockworker, not a Presidential aspirant.

Imagine a Democrat whose company was discovered to have raped and pillaged American industry, said revelations coming out during an election year that is entirely about jobs and the economy. I’m thinking Congressional inquiry, not Romney’s plaintive bleating for an apology.

Quick, who was the last Winner you can name who was also famous for insisting that someone owes them an apology…!

Your Kindergarten teacher doesn’t count, neither does your Nana.

Imagine a Democrat whose Swiss bank accounts have to be outed by busybody members of the press, at the same time as he is refusing to release all his financial disclosure information, a first for a major party presidential candidate.

I’m thinking that is a story Fox News could sink their teeth into. Imagine Rush Limbaugh’s indignation! Oh, the hand-wringing that would follow in all the Murdoch-owned ‘news’ organs in the world…

But these same outrages, perpetrated by their candidate of choice? They’d like to see Obama’s birth certificate, please.

To sum up, Mitt Romney admittedly doesn’t have charisma, at least not the kind that translates to the cameras.

So far, he doesn’t have a single mechanism on the record to enact any of the sweeping changes he has promised to make immediately upon becoming President, or in the case of ObamaCare, what he would do with all the Americans currently enjoying coverage under it.

The religious core of his base doesn’t trust his religion; they’re actively scared of it. And they’re scared of him too, and not in a good, daddy-will-protect-you kind of way.

He’s cagey about his money. Why? When I’m cagey about something, it’s because I don’t want to get caught.

His bona-fides for the Oval Office are limited to the governorship of the most liberal state in the Union—which his base hates—and his career as a corporate raider during a time of Wall Street bailouts and rampant, exhaustively-documented big-business rapacity.

He is in every way, literally the wrong man at the wrong time for the wrong job.

And yet, he stands roughly equal in the polls with the President who saved the American auto industry, provided health care for millions of Americans previously denied by insurance companies for pre-existing conditions, ended the war in Iraq and killed Osama bin Laden, the world’s most-wanted man.

On paper, it’s a rout, shitty economy notwithstanding. Most people go online or turn on the TV and understand the whole world is circling the drain economically, and that the problem is hardly exclusive to America. That Obama has been able to steady the slide is an impressive enough accomplishment. That’s all FDR did until World War II came along and saved us from economic ruin.

Romney’s experience with companies—and in the case his campaign is making, one must assume he would run countries the same way—is to unload the ones that aren’t turning a healthy enough profit. For instance, consider America, long in the red, in hock up to our armpits to our creditors and bleeding money on enforced entitlements and stop-gap infrastructure expenses.

Based on Romney’s tenure at Bain Capital—which the GOP insists we consider—would America be considered a good investment, or a likely prospect for a quick fire sale by occasional-CEO Mitt Romney?

Rescue or resale?

Let the record speak for itself. And hope it can be heard over the sound and fury the money of a few prominent billionaires will buy, the closer we get to election day.