I haven’t got much to say about the debate yesterday. (I watched it.)
Romney, as discussed, it seems to me, will say anything, whether he believes it, or whether it will stand scrutiny or not,
The ‘Etch-a-sketch’ illustration his campaign organiser Eric Fehrnstrom forecast in March (wherein Romney could pretend to be a ‘conservative Republican’ for the primaries, then bait-and-switch to a ‘moderate Republican’ for the election) certainly made an appearance.
“Everything changes,” Mr. Fehrnstrom, 50, said on CNN, with a slight smirk that suggested he believed he was about to use a clever line. “It’s almost like an Etch A Sketch. You can kind of shake it up and restart all over again.”
But I didn’t expect such lies. More fool me.
– P
Update: Paul Krugman in the New York Times Romney’s sick joke;
What Mr. Romney did in the debate, in other words, was, at best, to play a word game with voters, pretending to offer something substantive for the uninsured while actually offering nothing. For all practical purposes, he simply lied about what his policy proposals would do.
Reminds me of another politician…
Poormastery is no fan of either Mr Obama or Mr Romney.
So who do I support?
It’s time to break this down.
What will happen if Mr Obama wins?
Carter. Nothing. Four more years of nothing. This is almost certain. Platitudes. Great speeches. And nothing. Just four long years of drift.
What will happen if Mr Romney wins?
I’m not sure, because he is a flip flopper. All things to all people, he promises. Do you trust him?
And yet.
I sense that Mr Romney is not the extremist nutjob that the sickly liberal’s portray him to be. He might even turn out to be boringly middle of the road, once campaigning is over. Furthermore, I sense he realises that something has to be done. He might reason thtat fine sounding platitudes might not be enough? Mr Romney might actually do something, if he had the chance.
Usually, I would side with the “nothing” politician. Government is often the problem, rather than the solution. The idea that sone politician can save us all is childish…
And yet. This time, it really is time for change, to steal the rhetoric of the last election.
Mr Obama represents the status quo. In most circumstances, this is fine.
Yet I am not sure that the US can afford this indulgence at the moment. Four more years of nothing is a big gamble.
To be sure, Mr Romney might prove to be no good. This is a risk. It is a chance I hope the US citizens take anyway, for this reason.
Mr Obama has had four years, and achieved virtually nothing. If he wins again, I suspect that another four long years will be wasted again.
The biggest risk is not to take a risk?
Poormastery backs Mr Romney.
Rgds,
*p*
I’m interested in your endorsement, and the reasons for it.
This:
“Mr Obama represents the status quo.”
and this:
“Mr Obama has had four years, and achieved virtually nothing. If he wins again, I suspect that another four long years will be wasted again.”
… are, in my view, looking at things too superficially. (Yes, I’m a fine one to talk, I admit it).
Sure, Obama is president at the moment, so a re-election would maintain the status quo, but that and your ‘achieved virtually nothing’ claim ignore the extreme state of political affairs and the hyper-partisan miasma which has characterised Washington DC during his first term.
The total goal of the hard right wing-captured GOP has been to frustrate and cripple the President’s initiatives, using block-voting, counter-democratic, no-compromise tactics while smearing him as some kind of muslim socialist sent by the devil to tear up the Constitution and (as one of the links above quotes Romney as saying) ‘wage war on religion’. … well, you get the picture.
Gingrich said it best about Romney. He is a liar.
We may disagree about this (that’s fine) but I think Obama’s election and the Republicans’ hardline reaction to it is such an unusual state of affairs it can’t justifiably be called ‘status quo’. Elsewhere we’ve (you and I) talked about the liberal over-reach which saw Nixon’s ‘Silent Majority’ pendulum swing-back, and the same can be said (even more so) of Reagan, and selling the sizzle but not the sausage, GW Bush talked about ‘compassionate conservatism’.
Romney the flip flopper seems to have no principles. Here’s Gingrinch:
I don’t propose to list Obama’s ‘achievements’ but suffice to say, the healthcare reforms, so tenuous if he is not re-elected, are themselves worth the price of admission. Ending Bush’s stupid imperialistic misadvised misadventure in Iraq ditto. I strongly believe the off-budget expenditure of those wars has benefitted the Military Industrial Complex (to quote Eisenhower’s term) and corrupt war lords (same thing?) and that’s about it.
Romney, if he wins, (says) he wants America to be miltarily ‘strong’ and he (says) he wants to ‘get tough’ with China. Do you sense an arms race, by any chance?
As Kiwis, you and I, we don’t get a vote for the US President, but suffice to say poormastery, if we did, it seems ours would cancel each other out.
🙂
-P
Your bang on. PM
But Romney has no chance. Even though as you say
Obama has done nothing.
And has lied himself by the way.
The Obamabots fall for his preaching and his charisma and the stupid public will yet again vote him in.
I reckon Jon Stewart’s comments are hard to beat: http://www.thedailyshow.com/full-episodes/thu-october-4-2012-bill-o-reilly
Yes it seems clear Romney lied his way through the first debate, and that that is accepted.
http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/the-first-debate-mitt-romneys-five-biggest-lies-20121004
Some in the media fear we are entering a “post-truth” phase in politics, where if, say, polls (or unemployment statistics) don’t reveal what partisan players want them to, the partisans just lie about them. Spin makes way for outright lies.
‘Perception is reality’ Geoffrey Palmer once told me ruefully.
We shouldn’t be surprised that some are willing to distort and lie in their scramble for power. Gingrinch warned the electorate that Romney lies with smoothness and impunity. Style over substance.
Perhaps it has always been so?
The truth can be squeezed out of most viewpoints/statistics/lies
It happens here on this Blog all the time.
Is Mr Romney really the undisputed heavyweight champion of the world at telling lies?
Poormastery is not so sure:
http://www.amazon.com/No-One-Left-To-Lie/dp/1859842844
Rgds,
*p*
I don’t even have to look to know that’s a book about Clinton.
Of course. And, apparently, JFK and RFK were’t completely honest. And LBJ wasn’t just a liar but a blackmailer, according to his biographer Robert Caro.
Reagan, whose folksy charm it appears the plutocrat Mr Romney is doing his best to channel, deployed a different tactic:
But my point about the news media and politics entering the ‘post-Truth’ era, is that the media (honeymoons and those besotted with candidates aside) seemed before to be scandalised by bare-faced lies, and saw ‘fact-checking’ as part of the beat.
Now, with Romney, it’s just taken as a given that the candidate and his campaign use deceit, almost without consequence.
We’ll see.
from The Economist Oct. 5, 2012
http://www.economist.com/blogs/democracyinamerica/2012/10/presidential-election?fsrc=scn/tw/te/bl/campaginstilldontmatter
Worth a read, and noting the suthor’s own ‘human’ tendency to suppose events in ‘the race’ matter.