Look, we both know that you're lying to me.
I know why I support Barack Obama. He's not a perfect President, but he's done a lot of good things during his time in office. When I weigh the positive things that he says he will do (and the positive things that he has done) against the points where I disagree with him I come out with a net positive. He's a worthwhile person to vote for on his own merits, although I remain hopeful the Democrats will present even better candidates in the future.
But I have absolutely no clue why you support Mitt Romney, and that's because you keep lying to me about it.
This isn't a politician or a political pundit problem, this is the problem that happens when you, as a Republican voter, try to explain to me why you support Willard Mitt Romney, especially after having supported George W. Bush.
You don't like East Coast ivory tower elitists? Bush went to Yale. Romney has two degrees from Harvard. They both have rather advanced degrees in business too. It seems like you're pretty comfortable with East Coast elitists, actually.
You want business experience? You know that Bush's oil company eventually had to be shuttered and bought by family friends, right? And both of them started in management because of their fancy educations, it's not like they worked their way to the top of a company through the sweat of their brow. And don't get me started on the multi-million dollar loans that Romney got from his father in order to found Bain. He didn't inherit anything from his father, right.
"Someone that you can have a beer with?" That's bull. Obama drinks beer. Bush is an alcoholic and doesn't drink, Romney just doesn't drink for religious reasons.
A good Christian man? Okay, just to point out that the only Protestant in the race for President or Vice-President this year is Obama, and that Mormonism is generally considered a cult by evangelical and fundamentalist Christians.
But remember when you Republicans said that we needed someone with military experience (which neither Romney nor Ryan has), a Washington outsider (which neither Romney nor Ryan are), someone that understands middle class values (please), and then attacked Kerry for being a flip-flopper (because consistency is key to winning conservative votes or something)? All of those things are lies. Obvious lies, because when Democrats put forth candidates that fill those qualifications, Republicans don't vote for them.
I'll grant you that Romney and Bush have had more business experience than Obama and Clinton have had (possibly combined . . . did Clinton run his own law firm? I don't think so.), although I'd be more than happy to argue the content of that experience with you. Romney's experience is in capital investment, so are we going to stipulate that the experience that running the U.S. government requires right now is giving massive amounts of money to private corporations? But you know what, Republicans also ran John McCain, a man with zero business experience and teamed him up with Sarah Palin, a woman with zero business experience. So, you know, it's not even like Republicans have this single issue as a consistent thread through their candidates.
Altogether, the general comments about why you should vote for the Republican are transparent lies, because your criteria change from election to election.
I vote for the person that (1) can win and (2) best represents my opinions on national issues. That's just me, not every Democrat in the country, but it's better than the 50 million people in this country that are going to vote for a Republican candidate for reasons that they're not actually going to talk about truthfully.
And after all that, all the lies about why Bush/Romney/McCain are just the kind of guy that you want in the White House, then there are all the things that the specific accusations that you make about Obama that are patently false.
He's a communist or a socialist? Hardly. He's a darn good capitalist with minimal regulatory impulses. Oil drilling permits are up, banks are still allowed to speculate with invested money still, and Obamacare was a massive boon to private insurers.
Speaking of Obamacare, he's not going to sentence your grandmother to death panels, doctors don't hate him, and repealing Obamacare would
cost America billions of dollars. Heck, even the "he's cutting $700 billion dollars from medicare" thing is a transparent lie under even cursory examination.
He doesn't believe in America? Okay, aside from the ludicrous nature of accusing the President of a country of "not believing" in the country that he leads, every action he takes as President and speech he gives just underlines the lie in this. A President that didn't believe in America wouldn't have necessarily have fought for American jobs in the car companies.
He apologizes for America? No, he really hasn't and anytime anyone asks for actual video footage of these world-wide apology tours that he's rumored to have done, the answer is "Well he has!" Gods, what terrific lies.
He's bribing voters with government handouts . . . ? That argument would make a lot more sense if the Bush taxcuts hadn't involved sending out checks, poor white people on government assistance didn't vote for Republicans in such high numbers, and the number of government workers wasn't falling under Obama.
Obama is so weak that terrorists are going being emboldened to attack the USA? Again, that's bull. He killed Osama bin Laden, he's the one that conducted operations in Libya, he's
not the one that couldn't even declare a date for leaving the countries he invaded because he didn't know what he was doing.
I'm not even going to touch the insanity that is birtherism or the claims that he's a Muslim. I'm just going to pretend that you don't believe that stuff for a minute.
He's a divider not a uniter? He bent over backward to work on Republican proposals and plans, and couldn't even get votes on
their own legislative agendas. They just quit working to prevent him from having any achievements for even the smallest things.
He's attacking freedom? Okay, first, the party of George W. Bush is making that claim, really? How can you mantain a straight face. Secondly, how exactly is he rolling back, attacking, or otherwise limiting freedom? A reminder that Obama's not proposing a constitutional amendment to limit your ability to form relationships, nor your ability to control medical decisions regarding your own body. Those are Republican proposals (so much for the limited nature of the federal government, eh?).
You get what all of this stuff has in common, right? All of the personal attacks on Obama, all of the party attacks on the Democratic Party, and all of the bizarre policy attacks?
They're all f*cking lies.
None of this bullshit is true at all. Seriously, look through the list. None of those positions or accusations are true.
So here's what I'm asking you to do. Please, just stop lying to me. In the meantime though, while you continue to spew this filth all over yourselves and your reputations, I'm just going to have to stand back and try my best to ignore you.
Maybe, when you've stopped lying about every conceivable political stance that you and your party hold I'll reconsider.
Labels: politics, rants
