How Romney Ruined His Last Asset

I don’t know how closely any of you follow the news, be it political or not, but GOP presidential nominee Mitt Romney has been having an awful campaign. Like, seriously. Since its inception, no one really wanted him as the nominee, and he had gaffe after ridiculous gaffe, but his gaffes were outshone by the gaffes of others and his money blasted through all the other candidates like they were wet tissue paper.

Then, once he pretty much became the de facto nominee, he proceeded to continue slipping up all over the place. He got caught lying. He got the United Kingdom pissed off at him. It’s been a painful cycle. But, money and time does wonders, and people have let his screw ups slip into the back of their minds.

But the closer it gets to election day, the harder it is for Americans to simply forget these screw-ups. People will likely remember Clint Eastwood’s odd Republican National Convention speech for years. Romney’s failure to actually give any details on his policy at the convention was glaring, and people are starting to notice that he refuses to give details in any venue. Maybe he’s saving them for the debates, but he’s losing the interest of independents by the minute.

Last week, he made a crass, stupid and unnecessary comment about the tragedy in Libya that upset many people and broke his own promise to not make any personal attacks on President Barack Obama on Sept. 11. That outlined his complete naivete when it comes to foreign policy and his inability to properly handle a crisis.

But then, today, news broke out of something else he said that ruins his financial image, the one thing he’s been hanging his hat on since day one.

It started with a damaging video this weekend about how, while at Bain Capital, Romney went to China to help with the potential purchase of a factory there. The video, taken secretly at a high-dollar private fundraiser, puts a blemish on Romney’s tales of not sending jobs to China and also makes him look like a hypocritical fool, thinking of business before human rights. Sure, he’s trying to say “Americans have it easy,” I suppose, but it certainly doesn’t come off sounding that way, especially since he seems to buy the stories about the towers keeping people out. Which doesn’t seem highly likely.

But then, moving to today, another secret fundraiser video was taken. This video has a LOT to say.

Of course, there are many in the GOP that are actually okay with the things Romney said here. Considering it’s about slamming Obama inaccurately, but it’s all stuff that they’d already generally agree with, that’s understandable. But there’s a reason Romney was saying this stuff in a private fundraiser and not on the campaign trail: Because it sounds terrible to everybody else.

The video, broken up into a series of videos, has two main points to pull away, I think. First, it’s that Romney has absolutely no idea what’s going on when it comes the finances and the market.

“They’ll probably be looking at what the polls are saying. If it looks like I’m going to win, the markets will be happy. If it looks like the president’s going to win, the markets should not be terribly happy. It depends of course which markets you’re talking about, which types of commodities and so forth, but my own view is that if we win on November 6th, there will be a great deal of optimism about the future of this country. We’ll see capital come back and we’ll see—without actually doing anything—we’ll actually get a boost in the economy. If the president gets reelected, I don’t know what will happen. I can—I can never predict what the markets will do. Sometimes it does the exact opposite of what I would have expected. But my own view is that if we get a ‘Taxageddon,’ as they call it, January 1st, with this president, and with a Congress that can’t work together, it’s—it really is frightening.”

Allow me to pull out the good parts.

“[…] but my own view is that if we win on November 6th, […] we’ll see—without actually doing anything—we’ll actually get a boost in the economy. If the president gets reelected, I don’t know what will happen. I can—I can never predict what the markets will do. Sometimes it does the exact opposite of what I would have expected.”

He touts how the market would react to his getting elected. Then, in the immediately following train of thought, he admits that he “can never predict what the markets will do.”

Well! Sign me up! That sounds like a guy that knows what he’s doing.

The second major takeaway, the one that most people are getting from this video, is Romney’s complete disdain for about 50 percent of the country. In the video, Romney talks in length about the people that will vote for Obama… he initiates a class warfare similar to the one Republicans have tried to say Obama’s been perpetuating. Obama is separating classes by demanding more from the rich. Romney is separating classes by writing off 47 percent of Americans, the lower class, as a lost cause to be ignored.

There are already many who are pointing out how massively false and misleading Romney’s statements are, but this is the campaign that said they weren’t going to be letting fact checkers dictate how they run this thing. Who needs facts, anyway? Others have pointed out that Romney’s suggestions that people wanting food and shelter are (implied lazy and) looking for entitlement is extremely unpalatable. It’s like a “let them eat cake” moment. Or a moment where Romney basically says, “Let the starving starve.”

The thing is, from his point of view, it’s all about math. He just needs that 270th electoral college vote. That’s it. So he’s gerrymandering his campaign. He’s abysmally low in popularity among blacks, Hispanics and every other racial minority, and he isn’t doing great with women or the poor. But he’s got a cold, hard game of calculations that leads him to think all he needs to do is appease a very specific demographic, and damn all the rest.

The problem is, the president, once president, is president of the entire United States. Sure, you may not get many votes from the poor, minorities or women… but that doesn’t mean you write them off in your campaign promises.

I suppose, technically, Romney’s last asset is that he’s not Obama. But with everything that he’s been saying, and all the other assets he’s been burning behind him, even that’s starting to look more like a problem than a benefit.

The Weirdest Sauce Commercial Ever

Well, in America at least.

…okay, so, I don’t have much to say today. I’m tired and not feeling all that grand. This is not a good combination for me writing much. Furthermore… there’s really not been much going on as of late. Work’s piled up, of course, my “Macbeth” adaptation is about halfway done (which is good, because I’m about halfway through the play), I’ve possibly been given the opportunity to do some freelance writing (also good, because I like not being poor) and… seriously, nothing’s happening. I mean, there’s a new pro-Barack Obama PAC ad that came out insinuating Mitt Romney and Bain Capital were instrumental in a man’s wife’s death by cancer… but I’m content letting them bicker about it for now. I don’t really much care.

Politically speaking, we’re just gearing up more and more for the attack phase. Elections are only a couple months away now, Romney’s primed to pick his vice presidential candidate soon… but for now, it’s the same old same old. Even Congress isn’t doing anything, though the twist is that this time it’s because they’re in recess.

Still, there is ONE ad I want to share with you. It’s an ad for Ragu pasta sauce.

And, as chuckle worthy as it is… it makes absolutely no sense.

Do any of you consider Ragu as a comfort food? Particularly a comfort food to fend off trauma? Did you consider it thus as a child? Me, I considered it the thing that made the pasta taste less like water. But you tell me. Here’s the ad. I don’t know how a kid seeing his “parents in bed,” clearly doing something he doesn’t like to see, thinks Ragu will solve it all. Or how he’s okay eating with his parents. Or why his dinner is after 8 o’clock. Unless they mean a.m., but then why is he eating spaghetti so early in the day?

…It’s just weird, okay?

Sorry for the non-substantive post. Tell me something to write about, something I can think about and get an opinion on (I can have opinions on so many things it’s not even funny) to avoid pointless pasta discussions.

Bain: The Bane Of Romney

First, let me be clear… Yes, “The Dark Knight Rises” comes out on Friday. Yes, the villain is the rather terrifying Bane, the man who broke Batman’s back. Or, if you don’t know anything about the comics and had the “pleasure” of watching “Batman & Robin,” the brain-dead overly muscular luchador/chauffeur for Poison Ivy. …I suggest you at least get some knowledge of the comics if that’s all you know of Bane.

My point is, unlike some people (yes, you, Rush Limbaugh, and even if you didn’t mention a conspiracy you definitely left the insinuation there, so stop trying to cover your tracks), I don’t believe there is any sort of dastardly connection between the villain of this film and Mitt Romney’s connections with Bain Capital. Especially since no one really even wanted Romney to get this far, as you may recall.

Okay. That now being out of the way, time to talk about the actual matter at hand.

Romney’s associations with Bain have become a huge problem for him. President Barack Obama’s campaign has hit him hard and heavy over this issue, especially after a report in The Boston Globe suggested Romney’s not-quite truthfulness concerning his involvement at Bain.

I don’t know if it’s all true. Is it possible Romney committed perjury? Sure. Is it possible he remained involved in Bain after he claims? Certainly. Is it possible he oversaw the creation of businesses in countries other than America? Definitely. But whether he did or did not doesn’t much matter. It’s how terribly he’s handling this entire thing that’s causing his nightmares.

First off, this “retroactive retirement” thing… That’s just… I don’t know what that’s supposed to be. I mean, you’re working at a place, you take a leave of absence, like being gone, so you say, “Hey. Instead of ‘leave of absence,’ let’s just say I retired back then, okay? But I’ll totally keep the money and the benefits I had during that time. Thanks.” That’s just… stupid and disingenuous. Not to mention, it really doesn’t make much sense. The New Yorker has a pretty decent humor article lambasting the entire procedure.

Second off, there’s this whole tax returns thing… Pretty much everyone that has tried to be president has released years and years of their tax returns. Lets Americans know what you’re doing with your money. Romney swears he’s got nothing to hide… but then proceeds to hide all but two years of tax returns. The two most recent ones. Y’know, during his actual presidential run.

…sigh. No, Romney, that doesn’t show people anything. That shows us that you only want people seeing what you’ve done with your money during the time you’re trying your best to look good.

I don’t know if he’s got something to hide, really. And I don’t much care. I’m not going to vote for the guy, if you haven’t caught onto that. The problem is that, unless you’ve shown yourself to be an utterly honest person, people won’t trust you when you say “I have nothing to hide” while you openly hide things. It arouses suspicions, makes people raise questions and the like.

So, with all of this, Bain is really weighing Romney down. Badly. The more he goes on about the entire issue, the less in control and trustworthy he seems.

Take, for example, this clip from “The Daily Show” wherein Jon Stewart meticulously breaks down the issue and lays out all the problems Bain and Romney’s responses are causing Romney. Meticulous in this case also means humorous. (I will argue that Bane is not the most frightening Batman villain… That’s totally Joker.)

Stewart raises some excellent points. Romney is attempting to distance himself from his finances and business creation, the two things he’s been counting on to put him ahead of Obama in the race. The clip of him in 1994 talking about how blind trusts are ruses is extremely damaging to his credibility as well… and then there’s Stewart’s last argument.

I really have to applaud “The Daily Show” for this bit. Somehow, it wasn’t even a connection I had made. Romney, and the GOP at large, have condemned the lower classes and their attempts at “class warfare,” asking the rich to give a little. They have scoffed at government programs and people being given things for free. They have declared the system broken.

Yet Romney, and so many other affluent people, use that system to dodge taxes. To retain and regain money that they should be paying to the government. The system IS broken, but they don’t offer to fix the parts that get them more money. Instead, the offer to correct the parts that help some people do things such as survive.

Until Romney comes clean with his finances and admits that the rich benefit disproportionately from a broken system, his clout will likely continue to dwindle rapidly. And he will ultimately fail.

The Problem Romney Faces With The “Private Sector Is Fine” Gaffe

Recently, President Barack Obama made a somewhat rare gaffe and stated that the private sector is doing fine. Now, to be completely fair and actually in context, I’m not exactly certain it was a gaffe at all. Everyone is treating it like a gaffe, so it’s kind of become one simply from the fact that he probably should’ve found a clearer way to say what he meant.

I think what Obama was trying to say was that, in comparison with the public sector, the private sector is doing fine. It’s been healing itself. Slowly, sure, but it has been steadily improving. Meanwhile, the public sector has been struggling. I get it. We’ve been adding jobs as opposed to losing them. It’s not great, but it’s doing fine. Getting better. Perhaps he should have said “getting better” instead of “doing fine,” but what’s said is said.

Of course, Mitt Romney and the Republicans jumped all over this statement, trying to slam Obama in any way they could. And Romney went and did it in the worst way possible.

Romney said, “He wants another stimulus, he wants to hire more government workers. He says we need more firemen, more policemen, more teachers. Did he not get the message of Wisconsin? The American people did. It’s time for us to cut back on government and help the American people.”

Now, the Tommy Christopher column I’ve just linked to makes the argument that Romney is treating public sector workers as less important than the rest of America, kind of like how in 2008 we discovered there was a “real America” hidden inside the liberal “fake America.”

Sure, that’s one takeaway from Romney’s statements. And it ain’t good for him. But I see something stranger and more dangerous for Romney, especially if Obama’s team catches it and spins it this way.

Obama’s statements were basically in support of leaving the private sector alone. Basically, Obama said, “We’ve done work for the private sector and it’s improving on its own. We should let it continue to do that.”

Romney, who is basically suggesting our education system and police force need no bolstering (which is its own brand of stupid, and even the Republican Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker to whom Romney alluded thinks Romney made a mistake in his comments), essentially supported the government’s interference in the private sector.

He wants the government involved in the market. And that goes against everything economic Republicans are supposed to stand for.

Republicans, and to a larger extent Libertarians, are supposed to be promoters of the free market. A market in which there is no ruling body. The only thing that affects the market is the market itself. An entity separate from interference, particularly from the government. That’s why they all cry foul anytime some new regulation gets written up, trying to regulate and control business.

But Romney has just said, between the lines, that the government needs to do more with the market. And that could be a huge problem for him. Especially considering his past affiliations with Bain Capital and what exactly he did there. It could be spun in a way to make it seem like Romney wants the government to treat the market the same way Bain did: Buying private businesses, scrapping them, retooling them, selling them. It would be a huge merger of the public and private sectors that almost no one, especially conservatives, would stand for.

Is that what Romney wants? I doubt it. I can’t be sure, to be honest. I personally figure he just wants to let the rich keep getting richer and help them any way he can. But with his response to Obama’s slip-up, the possibility of this outcome in a Romney presidency is lying right there, ready for the ad space. If Obama and company really want to turn this back onto Romney, that’s exactly how they should do it. Point out that Romney wants more interference in the private sector from the government. Liberals and democrats wouldn’t vote for him anyway, and conservatives and republicans might looking for other options.

But the likelihood of that being played out is small. Still, Romney needs to watch what he says. He’s had far too many gaffes in this campaign already. A few more well-placed, well-capitalized ones could do him in.