stillidealistic's picture

    Help Me Sort This Out

    I need some help in reconciling the idiot I suspect Romney to be with the "successful" business man and devout Mormon he is purported to be.

    I think we all accept that that he is a man void of guiding principles that propel him. He has switched positions too many times, often with just a few hours or even minutes separating the opposing statements of belief, to accept that any of the positions mean anything to him deep down inside.

    I was raised Mormon (although I haven't been a practicing one for many years) so I have an understanding of what his core beliefs are "supposed" to be. If I were still a Mormon, I would be highly offended that this man would be considered a model for my faith. Hell, I'm offended, even as a former Mormon. He has distorted the President's actions and outright lied about others so frequently, that my default position on anything he says is that he's lying.

    I would like to believe that a Mormon would at least be honest. I would like to believe that a Mormon would not be in a business that destroys so many lives (the picture in my mind of the man who helped construct the stage where hours later he and the rest of his fellow employees would be given the news that their plant would be closed is a shocking example of insensitivity!)

    I really want to believe that he is decent man who has gotten caught up in something over his head and doesn't know how to get out. And I don't like "judging." But good grief. The evidence is mounting that he is at BEST, clueless, and at worst, bordering on psycho.

    I've always assumed that in order to amass a fortune legally, one must at least be somewhat intelligent. Now I'm wondering. How can he be so clueless about what it takes to be a politician? How can he, in any part of his brain, think that writing off half the population as free-loaders would be a good idea? How can he not know that the things you say yesterday are available to be seen today, in your own words, coming out of your own mouth? How can you justify in any way that destroying jobs as you pillage companies for personal gain will be perceived as a good thing? How can you think that hiding assets in the Caymans will make people who live paycheck to paycheck think you give a fig about them? Or that it will be perceived as the American way? Or that if it IS the American way, it is something to be proud of? That standing on a stage where people are chanting "Ryan, Ryan" and you stop them and encourage them to say "Romney/Ryan, Romney/Ryan" (and they don't) would look anything but foolish?

    To me he looks like a man who doesn't WANT to be President anymore, but who has decided the only way out is to tank his campaign. If he DOES want to be President, how does he expect people to think he could competently run the country, when he can't even run a competent campaign?

    And given all these deficiencies, how the HELL are the polls so close?

     

    Comments

    Stilli, 

    Agree with everything you stated, but as for the polls, it's been published widely that many of those in the GOP column aren't voting for Romney as much as they are voting for 'anyone but Obama'.

    Most Repubs don't even like Mitt, much less hold him in any esteem, they know who and what he is (and if some don't by now, they are choosing to be ignorant about him and his candidacy) but he's all they've got now, so realistically they only have three choices:  vote for him - don't vote - or vote Obama. 


    Anecdotally, I know of several people who cannot, in good conscience, vote for either, Romney because he belongs to a cult, and Obama because he's a socialist and probably not even an American, so they just aren't voting this time. Fortunately they are all repubs...


    OKAY,

    Let us discuss these matters one by one.

    First, if you pay someone to lie for you, you have simply taken advantage of your right to a lawyer under our Constitution.

    So it is not the same as if you, yourself lied.

    Second, if someone surreptitiously records you whilst you are surreptitiously asking for money from evil evil bastards; well your Constitutional Rights have been abridged!

    Third, when you are acting as a capitalist and work to destroy everybody and everything in your path; YOU ARE A REAL AMERICAN!

    Fourth, Mitt and Ryan are attacking other people's children; not their own for chrissakes!

    I mean babies are of import but only your own babies! And that is a Constitutional Right.

    Fifth, there is no law on record castigating a politician for lying all the time on any issue presented; it is his Constitutional Right to do so.

    Sixth, if competence were a requirement for office; well half of Congress would be run out on a rail and half of the half remaining would be put in prison for outright felonious theft!

    That's all I got right now.

    hahahahahahaahahha

    Get your facts first, then you can feel free to distort them later

     

    http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/authors/m/mark_twain.html

     


    "Get your facts first, then you can feel free to distort them later"

    Gotta love it!

    But has it EVER been this bad? I know everyone spins - but seriously! This guy is just BRAZEN - but they won't let their campaign be dictated by the fact checkers!

    I'm hoping the American people aren't that stupid, or don't hate Obama that much.


    Those who've been through them say going through a presidential election campaign is a searing experience.  For Romney, given where the GOP is now, getting through the primaries was a test, but nothing like the general election campaign, where the level of scrutiny of his past statements and actions is a few orders of magnitude amped up.

    Several of us have, along with you (most recently AuntSam) wondered aloud whether one of the things he may have learned in recent weeks is that, in the end, he does not really want the job.  

    I guess I'm supposed to believe this, but I'll say it anyway: the GOP bubble is significantly more detached from the reality of what people are going through in this country than the Democratic party bubble.  This is because the GOP worldview is so much more extreme, and has so much less facts-on-the-ground data to lend it credibility, than the Democratic worldview.  Because of this extreme separation from reality, lying is both more necessary and more accepted within the GOP camp as a perhaps regrettable, but still forgiveable, campaign offense.  It's the FoxNews ethic at work, with its rejection and contempt for nonpartisan attempts at reporting wrapped up in its MO, year after year.  They've made a great contribution to moving us towards the post-factual US some think we have arrived at.   

    There are all kinds of things an aspirant for today's GOP nomination is almost required to say that are virulently supported by a minority of our population and are also considered beyond the pale by much of the rest.  As Romney is learning.  The 47% statement is an example.  Within today's GOP tent, that might be seen as a bit awkwardly phrased, but clearly it is not much if at all out of line with powerfully held sentiments among many diehard Republican party supporters.  Say that stuff in the white hot glare of a general election campaign, and whoah.  Reality check. 

    I don't see any other way of explaining how, as someone wrote earlier today, with this lousy economy, the race can be where it is now.  As has at times happened in the past, it's far more the case that the Republicans are so far doing an awesome job of losing this election than it is that Democrats are doing a great job of winning it, because, frankly, the Democrats are offering not much of anything going forward beyond "we're not [crazy, dangerous, etc.] them".  Rather, the GOP is in the process of being exposed, finally(?), for the lying sacks of useless, reactionary, destructive shit that they are, pardon my French.  That seems to me just where we are right now as a country.  So Obama and the Dems may, just may if the House flips, almost inconceivably get a 2nd chance.    

    I think acanuck may be right when he offers that the American public may be in the process of, finally, beginning to wake up to a growing recognition of just what today's GOP really is, of how utterly bankrupt they are of any ideas which have not already been tried and found deeply destructive, of the unpatriotic depths to which they will stoop to try to destroy Obama and the Democrats with a wrecked economy viewed as collateral damage to that primary commitment, etc. 

    In response to your (rhetorical?) request, that's what I got right now.

     

     


    Here's hoping Dreamer!


    You've made some fine points...

    If Willard truly believes it's his "mission" in the eyes of his God to be POTUS, then there is the ol' saying amongst the faithful: "Lying for the Lord..."

    You should know that if you spent time in the clan...

    ~OGD~


    I'm pretty sure he thought so at one point...just not sure he still thinks so. He HAS to be trying to lose this. Could he possibly be this incompetent otherwise?


    I think he's a smart guy, sure.  Well educated, well connected, worldly, all of that.  I think that he holds himself in high regard, which might be a symptom of the authority and money he's had all his life, or it might just reinforce his self-esteem.  When everybody has to call you sir and you can buy a car elevator it's easy to think you're special.

    He wants to be president and feels he deserves it and I'd even go so far as to say that he honestly believes that the country would be better off for it.  He ran once, lost in the primaries, probably spent the 2008 general thinking he could have beaten Obama and now he's taken another swing.

    And, damn it, he was not going to repeat his mistakes and lose in the primary, especially to the lightweight field around him.  So, because you can't do all of the great things you'd do as president if you don't win the primary, he set out to invent himself as somebody who could win the primary.  And, damn it, he took the party with him, kicking and screaming.  Seemed like everybody but Ron Paul had a shot this time around, but they finally settled on Romney.  Mission accomplished.

    Problem is... you can't do all of the wonderful things you're going to do as President if you don't win the general election.  So Romney reinvents himself again. And again.  And again.  He's probably doing it right now.

    Because in the end, he knows that being a "man with a core" or a consistent philosophy or whatever is not as cool as being president.  And so if he has to lie, he'll lie.  If he has to run against his record, he will.  If he thinks it makes sense to brag about MassCare to one person and to keep quiet about it to another, he will do that.

    Because he thinks he deserves to be president.  There's a real awfulness to that sense of entitlement, if you think about it.  But he has it.  And to him, it's okay, because he will do wonderful things for the country, if we'll only let him.  And he'll do whatever it takes to get us to let him.  He's actually more Messianic than Obama ever was, but he's so darned goofy about it, nobody will ever say so.


    I totally agree with this, but would add a few things.

    The Prosperity Gospel: Romney is the Mormon version of this, but it is no less real.  A lot of people got rich offering some philosophical / spiritual guidance to non-religious (ie not affiliated with a institutional religion) individuals who got filthy rich in the dot com boom.  It is in our human nature to try and figure out the reason why good and bad things happen to us.  Serendipity does not sit well with us.  So we get books with a title like "Why do bad things happen to good people." 

    If someone like Romney finds himself with more money than he knows what to do with, the adoring wife, the five healthy boys who reflect what a wonderful father he is, etc etc than the conclusion can only be that somehow God shines his blessing on Romney than the family struggling in the trailer park. 

    The CEO Syndrome: this is part of the "yes sir" syndrome, but the added factor is that one takes credit for the hard work of those below you - from the VPs just below you and part of your excutive circle, and the grunts who prepare the reports for the VPs and do the research and develop the PowerPoint presentations.

    An outcome of this "taking credit" is that CEOs see they are more capable than they really are.  Because they are CEO and no one ever tells them they're just average or whatever, they begin to think they're brillant.  At the same time this happening they begin to rely more and more on the support to provide them the reports, to complete the tasks.  Like a muscle not used and goes into atrophy, the ability to handle the little details done by others for so many years slips away.

    The Smooze Crowd:  To really understand Romney, one only has to watch that clip of him singing America the Beautiful

    This is the guy at his mansion hosting a little get together with a few 50 or 100 other uberrich friends, and everyone claps and laughs and clinks their champagne glasses in approval.  For most of us, when we go up on karaoke night and drop a bomb, not only the strangers, but our friends are letting us know we just stank up the joint.  In Romney's world, where every social event is also a business network event, honesty is the last thing you will hear.


    You could be right, des, but jeez...Is he just so in denial that he doesn't see what a laughing stock he is?

    How could anyone with a shred of self-respect not be humiliated by the caricature he has become?

    That thing the other day with the chanting - seriously? Is he REALLY that insecure? Does he not see what a dufus he looks like?


    I think Trope supplied the missing part of the answer... When you're constantly surrounded by people who believe that being around you is a potential path to prosperity, you tend to be surrounded by people who never call you out.  Even when you know you're messing up, the people around you are giving the thumbs up.  O e of the tricks in life, and certainly one I haven't mastered, is figuring out that not all praise and fawning is genuine or deserved.  He's not there.


    Paul Begala was one of the people who kicked B Clinton's ass to his face, told him when he was wrong and needed to change course or do something he wasn't otherwise going to do.  People at the Commanding Heights who are somehow able to maintain some semblence of their own fallability, and earnestly desire to avoid bad mistakes, will respond to experienced truth tellers like Begala who have real standing not by firing them but by listening to them.  

    I worked for the chair of a congressional committee some time ago.  There were two people working in his personal or committee office who had both the standing and the guts to tell him privately to his face when he was wrong.  (I wasn't one of them.  I don't know if I would have had I had a longer working relationship with him than I did, which was a bit over 3 years, but I didn't.)  One was the staff director, who later became his wife.  The other was a long-time aid who the boss knew thought the world of him and loved him.

    Here as in so many other ways, the TV show The West Wing was insightful in those episodes showing Bartlet's chief of staff and longtime friend Leo at times telling him he was wrong or FOS, and the kind of interplay that can lead to.  

    Any presidential candidate who surrounds him or herself with ciphers is someone the voting public should, if they can somehow learn this about the candidate before the election (which good reporting can sometimes bring out as an established tendency), respond to with alarm.  Savvy political insiders know that a candidate's spouse often is the person who has the most standing and ability to save them from themselves when the need arises, which is why instead of ignoring the spouse as some adornment or whatever they will try to develop a relationship with them.


    I just wonder how long anyone is going to be able to take the republican part seriously as a political entity when they keep running ding bats and radical idealogs for office.

    There really is a serious risk of them going the way the Federalists and Wigs did.


    I like to think that they will become irrelevant, but 2010 makes me wonder. So many of those whackos came into office that year. Do people realize what a mistake they made? Or are they hoping for more? I just don't know.


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