<a href=”http://www.flickr.com/photos/[email protected]/7777961354/” title=”Romney-Ryan-2012-logo by dengre.bj, on Flickr”><img src=”http://farm9.staticflickr.com/8300/7777961354_f1d35b7733.jpg” width=”416″ height=”448″ alt=”Romney-Ryan-2012-logo”></a>
One thing is clear about Mitt Romney: he will do what he is told to do.
He is frightened by Grover, Rush and the rest of the wingnuts. He walks the earth in fear of his next beating. When they tell him to jump, he jumps–end of story. It is impossible to name a single time when he ever stood up to the crazies in his Party. It never happened and it never will. Romney is a coward.
Last week they demanded that he pick zombie eyes as his running mate. Mitt jumped and acted so quickly that the announcement and roll out was a sloppy and botched affair.
They want him to lie shamelessly about President Obama and so he does, constantly. Mitt is more afraid of wingnut disapproval than he is of any fact checker. He’ll embrace any lie as long as as it stops the crazies from hitting him for a moment or two.
The nutters hated McCain for failing to launch an aggressive race-baiting attack on President Obama. In wingnutopia it is a crime that a black man ever became President. McCain decided that this line of attack was a gutter so foul that even he was not willing to crawl through it. The wingnuts never forgave him for that and remain convinced that a campaign rooted in mobilizing white fear and race anxiety is their best and only path to victory.
Mitt Romney has bought into this strategy hook, line and sinker. He lacked the backbone to say no.
And so he has jumped into the swamp of racist code-talking with gusto. It is 2012 and yet, Mitt Romney is basing his campaign on race-baiting rhetoric about welfare pulled from the toxic swamp section of American history.
No surprise. The selection of the cat food voucher man as his number two has changed the race into a choice of competing visions for the future of America. When folks learn the details behind any of the Romney/Ryan plans, they hate them. And so, race-baiting is all that Romney has left.
As mini-Drudge pointed out today: “Romney needs to dominate the white vote huge to win this race”.
The Welfare attack ads are racist code talking bullshit, as is almost everything in Romney’s stump speech these days. That is a feature and not a bug. The goal is to get 65% or more of whites to vote based on race identity and their fears. Does this mean that Romney is a racist? I don’t know and I don’t care. Who can say what is in Romney’s heart? It doesn’t matter. He can be judged on his actions and based on the campaign he’s run so far–his actions are despicable.
The lies and rhetoric of the Romney campaign are ugly now, but it will get a lot worst. Mitt has decided to run as a protector of Anglo-Saxon heritage and the principles of the Confederate States of America. He has decided that running as a neo-Confederate–as the last, best hope of the white race–is his best shot. Maybe it is. Maybe the age-old appeals to racism and the baser demons of white fear can still pull out one more victory for these Confederate traitors. It has worked before.
The press will be reluctant to call him out on this tactic. They will treat the race-baiting as a “he-said/he-said” story or a “both-sides-say-mean-things” story or (more often than not) just repeating the code-talking without comment. The reporting so far on Mitt’s Welfare ads proves it. This can change. In some small ways it is changing. Some voices are talking about Mitt’s race-baiting.
It is up to us to yell loudly and demand that Romney’s race-baiting is discussed. Mitt, his wingnut handlers and the stenographers posing as journalist cannot be given a free pass on this. If Mitt wants to run on race he should be forced to do so out in the open. That is something each of us can demand to the best of our abilities. Many voices cannot be ignored.
Romney is a weak man. He cannot stand up to his base even as it demands him to embrace the politics of hate. He is a coward. He should not be President.
It is August and the main focus of Romney’s campaign is a series of ads about lazy brown people on welfare.
We must defeat this weasel in November.
Cheers
Todd
Good work, but needs a bit of an edit.
Valdivia
Amen.
Funny thing though: Romney today held a fundraiser at a store owned by a cocaine trafficker. Kid you not. Can you imagine what the Village would do if that were Obama?
Dennis G.
@Todd: Always open for suggestions…
Wag
@Todd:
…gutter so foul, not fowl…
Hunter Gathers
The last person to get that number was St. Reagan in ’84. He’s dead now, and a lot of those voters are as well. It’s going to be quite a tall order for Mittens to get to that number. He can race bait all he wants, but unless an ass ton of dead people vote for him, it ain’t gonna happen. He’ll have to take the consolation prize of going home to count his money.
Wag
@Wag:
Unless your idea of sport is rolling bowling balls down the gutter at restrained chickens
Dennis G.
@Wag: thanks
Violet
So true. Romney is a coward. He’s also not up for the job, as his “too exhausted to keep one of his campaign stops” today showed. His campaign had to walk back that statement, but just how incompetent are the people he’s hired that they don’t know enough not to tell the press the candidate is “exhausted”?
Wag
@Hunter Gathers:
That can be arranged if there is a GOP Secretary of State in your state.
JGabriel
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Dennis G. @ Top:
Well that’s not gonna help Mormon recruitment efforts in minority communities.
.
Pen
@Wag: What, he’s not talking about gutter fowl? Those things are nasty, with big pointy teeth. They’ll gouge out your eyes they will.
Steeplejack
@Dennis G.:
A few quick fixes:
Todd
@Dennis G.:
Just a few grammar matches.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
anyone in what I consider the Big Three of Broderism? WaPo, CNN and Politico? IOW, someone not affiliated with MSNBC? I know MIllbank did at WaPo, but he had that bullshit line about Romney being afraid to stand up to his supporters, as if that ad were being run by an outside group. He’s Willard Romney and he approved that ad. His use of words like “foreign to us” and “he doesn’t understand our ways”, his palling around with Trump, it’s all of a piece with the welfare demagoguery. And as I said earlier, sending Gingrich out to push this further feels like Fernstrom et al are taunting the Villagers, daring them to acknowledge they’re being played and treated like the weak little puppets they are.
ShadeTail
DennisG: You keep saying Romney lacks the backbone to refuse to do what the crazies in charge of the GOP want him to do. I think you’re being too kind. I think Romney isn’t being bullied into this at all. I think he’s an enthusiastic partner in this whole idiotic charade. He is *willingly* going ahead with an extremist strategy of race baiting and bald-faced lying. Whether it’s because he himself is a black hearted racist, or he just sees this as his best shot at the White House, I couldn’t say. But the bottom line is that this isn’t cowardice. It is cynical opportunism.
Belafon (formerly anonevent)
If they are willing to say “Romney needs to dominate the white vote huge to win this race” this early, they’re going to have to scream nigger by October just to get people to look up.
My answer to people when they start talking about “those others” taking their hard earned money is that when the wealthy talk about “those others” they mean you, anyone who is not rich.
Nutella
I hear the actual Anglo-Saxons weren’t too thrilled with him when he came over to visit.
And that’s very southern of you to use “Anglo-Saxon” when you mean “white”. They do that in the southern Appalachians where the whites are all Scotch-Irish with Irish and Scottish surnames and ancestry but they call themselves Anglo-Saxons.
beltane
@Valdivia: Being that Romney pays as much in taxes as the average homeless crack whore, holding a fundraiser at a cocaine dealers house is strangely fitting.
Here’s a bit where the Conservatives’ new steaming hot rent-boy refers to progressives as a “cancer” http://www.dailykos.com/story/2012/08/13/1119884/-Paul-Ryan-calls-progressives-a-cancer
If the Left is a cancer, it is fair to say that the Right is like HIV, a slow-acting virus that destroys a country’s immune system to the point where it just becomes a weakened shell of its former self.
Violet
Romney reeks of fear. It’s what motivates him. I’m not exactly sure what he’s afraid of, but that’s the fuel he runs on. It’s the exact opposite of what you want a President to be.
Valdivia
@beltane: @beltane:
here is where I saw it in case anyone thinks I made it up (I truly could not believe it. Who is running his campaign?)
https://twitter.com/burgessev/status/235196969881047040
Also, too. Love how everything they hate is a cancer. Soon enough voting will be a cancer to democracy.
Wag
@Nutella:
They call themselves Anglo-Saxons because Celtic-Druids doesn’t roll off the tongue with the same flair, and it scares the Evangelicals among them.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@beltane: JEsus that’s just weird shit. If our rights come from “nature and God”, which our blue-eyed boy is saying in every speech?– does that mean nature and god were all about race-based slavery and the vote limited to property owning white males?
Cassidy
Ryan/ Romney 2012: Two white dude’s trying to convince all the other white dude’s that’s it the black dude’s fault they’re unhappy.
Wag
@beltane:
Or perhaps Kuru, a true slow virus that causes dementia and death.
Cacti
I’m not surprised race baiting comes easily for Mittens. The Mormon church is culturally and theologically racist.
His father ignored direct pressure from the Mormon leadership to back off his support of civil rights. Willard would have folded like a tent.
Mr Stagger Lee
Maybe Romney/Ryan can hire Resistance Records to do some inspiring Aryan music. Maybe get Skrewdriver or End Apathy(oh wait they can’t do that, their lead singer is dead.
General Stuck
One thing McCain did do that is likely the worst thing a POTUS candidate from either party can do to the country, is choose a lunatic for his running mate.
ThatBeing The Wassila wingnut, half governor, and full right wing whackjob. Maybe it was to placate the nutters, or maybe McCain did it as an act of desperation from being thoroughly outclassed, outsmarted, and out campaigned by the Kenyan Usurper. It was a kick in the nuts while holding a gun to our country’s head possibly putting the keys to the nuclear superpower, as only a heart beat away from leader of the free world.
We dodged that bullet by a few million votes, and now another centrist type GOP hopeful for prez, has foisted another fanatic to the whims of a two man race for president, where anything could happen throwing the race to the GOP. Ryan scares me no less than Palin sitting so close to immense power that a US president wields over the entire planet, though he isn’t quite as dingbatty as Sarah, he is a fanatic just the same. And all fanatics are inherently dangerous with nuclear weapon launch codes at their fingertipis, and the power to monkey wrench the US government in favor of his true believing Randian pathology.
I don’t think Romney is a stupid man, and without the capability to act out of logic in measured ways. But you are right, he is a coward when the beans are counted, and goddamn his for choosing a thoroughly dangerous VP, that we will have to dodge another one of those bullets.
katie5
Agree with @ShadeTail but I don’t think Romney is a coward or weak. He has a destiny supported by the church. He must do anything and everything to achieve his destiny. If that’s to be duplicitous or to cave, it doesn’t matter. He is his own leveraged buyout. If he has to sell all his “assets” then he will to get the big payout at the end.
Dennis G.
@Steeplejack: Thanks. I don’t know what I would do without the collective copy edits. It keeps me humble (and may, over time, improve me as a writer)…
beltane
@Wag: Isn’t Kuru caused by eating human brain tissue? Yes, the right-wing is just like Kuru.
Violet
@Cassidy:
Ryan/Romney 2010: Two white dudes trying to convince all the other white dudes that the black dude stole their money and is coming after their wimmin.
Cacti
@Cassidy:
That’s been the Republican platform for the past 50 years.
“Everything was fine was until the coloreds, wimmins, and queers started demanding rights!”
Vote GOP!
Dennis G.
@Nutella: Well, I did live in Georgia for most of the time between 1979 and 1997…
Valdivia
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
Oh raises hand, I know this. This is totally like Thomas Aquinas. He sounds like a Thomist. Now I need another drink.
Wag
@beltane:
Yes, it is. Perfect for Zombie-eyed VP wannabes.
Violet
@katie5:
Really? His bullying of fellow students when in high school and college, his flip-flopping to say whatever will get him elected, his firing of his gay foreign policy adviser? I could go on and on. He’s a coward and a bully. He may be fulfilling some prophecy, but he’s a weak one to pick to do so.
Keith G
I see that for many it’s very important to find deeper meaning in Romney’s choice. I am curious, though, who were his alternatives? The Venn diagram did not have a large area of overlap.
Romney needed someone who could satisfy the far right as the former gov tries to tippy toe back toward some of the independents he has lost contact with. He also needed to try find someone with insider cred with the institutional branch of his party. And then there are the clearly cosmetic motivations.
I think Ryan meets those needs better that most others. Plus he seems like he would be less likely to go dangerously off script. Very few others over there are that emotionally disciplined.
Cacti
How big a percentage of the white vote will Mittens actually need? Bush needed 58% of whites + 40% of hispanics to win a 286-252 victory.
Willard won’t come within sniffing distance of 40% of the hispanic vote.
So what, 63% of the white vote then?
karen
Would that make Obama Sheriff Bart?
Violet
@Keith G:
Do we know this? Ryan hasn’t had much experience in contested elections, and hasn’t even run for a statewide office, let alone a national one. His district is Republican and he doesn’t have to do much campaigning.
He may be good on TV interviews with friendly pundits, but he whined like a baby when President Obama took him apart. He handled today’s hecklers rather poorly, and that was in rather polite Iowa. Based on all that, I don’t have a lot of confidence that he’ll be a great campaigner.
Both Sides Do It
That graphic is a little shrill
Elizabelle
That 65% of white voters Romney-Ryan needs to capture presumably includes women? A lot of whom believe in contraception, mammograms and preventative care, and good Medicare for their aged parents?
Yeah, right.
Wag
FWIW, The Trailer for the new version of Red Dawn is out. I’m skipping turkey on Thanksgiving and going to the movies (snark)
Dennis G.
@Violet: I think Biden will take him apart…
Brachiator
So, does this mean that Herman Cain won’t be giving a speech at the GOP convention?
Both Sides Do It
@Violet:
What is this “rather polite Iowa” stuff. Iowa is pretty tough. If you piss us off we might only nod to you at the bar instead of exchanging a pleasantry or two about the weather.
Cacti
@Keith G:
The one potential running mate who made me nervous was Susana Martinez of New Mexico.
Fairly popular governor of a purple state, with crossover appeal for women and hispanic voters. And not a nitwit like Palin.
El Cid
__
If someone acts racist it shouldn’t automatically require some existential angst about whether that person really, really, really “is” racist.
If you think black people are cool and just as good as you but you choose to stir up race hatred to get ahead, you’re still a racist.
Because, you know, you’re doing something really racist.
Violet
@Both Sides Do It:
Whew. Tough stuff. Don’t tell me you might not smile as well.
@Dennis G.:
I hope so!
Suffern ACE
@Elizabelle: Its possible. But not really. Seriously. They’ve run out everything they have. They could have Obama on video taking a campaign donation from Mugabe promising to run the white people out of the country to set up a new hispanics/asian/afrian only homeland and he’s not falling below 40% of the white vote.
General Stuck
@Elizabelle:
Plus, there is likely few on the right wing side of things that are more deeply fanatical on the abortion issue than his running mate. He cosponsored a bill to criminalize destruction of any fertilized egg as a person with full legal protections of a person. He is against abortion in ALL cases, rape, incest, health of mother, etc…,
I don’t think most VP choices make a lot of difference for votes in a prez election, except maybe a little benefit regarding the VP picks home state. But I think there is a line past extreme positions on issues could over take that general rule. In any case, one thing about fanatics, they pique the curiosity of the press that crave conflict and drama. And Ryan seems to fit such a bill for the biggest spotlight falling on him, rather than Romney. I don’t know how that benefits a prez candidate, other than maybe affording some relief from getting his ass kicked all over the place.
katie5
@Violet: I know the psychological read of bullies but the guy lacks empathy. That’s neither weakness nor strength but an absence of feeling.
Cacti
@Elizabelle:
Going back again to 2004, Dubya carried 48% of the women’s vote.
I’ve seen nothing indicating that Romney is approaching that number.
MikeBoyScout
Creepier than Nixon is what Rmoney is. Didn’t think that was possible.
gnomedad
@ShadeTail:
Seconded. It may be cowardice and cluelessness as well, but amoral opportunism is most salient.
Lyrebird
Yes. Also too it is up to us (as appropriate) to stand up for our values… I got some Anglo-Saxon heritage, and in reading through the genealogy book, I find NUTHIN that says “please cut off social and monetary support to your elders in their declining years”, or “other people’s sexuality and health should be limited by YOU if and only if you fit such and such…”, or that lying is honorable.
(If my attempt to be sardonic is not working but you want the message, re-read Kay’s great explanation of who receives Medicaid benefits…)
HEAR, HEAR ! ! !
Vulture/Granny Starver 20-never ! ! !
piratedan
so what do we have, a rich kid who’s been handed everything his life, easy access to cash and power. Probably doesn’t even see most of us as people. he picked a guy who has been so beholden to the system that he’s ready to rig the game so that no one else can follow in his footsteps.
They see an America where those on top, stay on top, they don’t give a shit about you or your kids or your parents, just consume, add to their pocketbooks and keep allowing them to make sure that no one finds common cause. Screw the environment, screw our national pride or the american dream. Those are just abstract things to them, after all, they own some pristine lands where they don’t have to worry about any of that, the rest of it are the hopes and dreams they’ll attempt to twist and corrupt to keep people from seeing the truth or setting one bunch against the other.
I hate these fuckers and everyday that I watch them operate makes me understand the French and Russian and even Chinese revolutions just a bit better…..
Violet
@katie5: Like I said above, Romney’s main feeling is fear. He runs on it. You can see it in his deer-in-the-headlights look when asked a question he can’t answer or when he has to speak off the cuff or talk to a regular person. He’s terrified. He may lack empathy toward others, but he’s motivated by his fear, which means he lashes out at others to protect himself.
Both Sides Do It
@Violet:
Well we’re not like those uncouth m-fers on the coasts
Anya
@Both Sides Do It: Explain Chuck Grassley to me?
Mike in NC
Willard couldn’t land 65% of the white vote if he went cross country handing out $100 bills at every bus stop.
patrick II
George Bush was driven to correct his father’s mistake of not “finishing the job” in Iraq. So the one thing GWB would not do is leave Iraq in Sadam Hussein’s hands. Mitt Romney’s political ambitions are largely driven by what Mitt sees as his father’s mistake — the embarrassment caused by his father’s repudiation of and by the republican party. George Romney’s mistake was to stand on principle in the face of the far right — and like like Bush, Mitt will not repeat the “mistake” of his father so the one thing Mitt will not do is to stand on principle in the face of the far right.
Villago Delenda Est
Aside from his hiding in Paris while his generation’s war was being fought, Rmoney’s “selection” of Ryan, and the timing of it, is evidence of his cowardice. The wingtards went bonkers when that spokeswoman talked about how great Romneycare was, and that precipitated the Ryan choice, and the timing of it.
Rmoney is still frightened of a wingtard revolt in Tampa. This is a way to forestall anything like that.
He’s got to keep his base in line. The etch-a-sketch will continue to gather dust. He can’t tack to the center.
Dennis G.
@Both Sides Do It: Do you think so? I imagine that many variations of it will be sold in Tampa as objects of support instead of snark. A Romney/Ryan image with the battle flag of traitors seems like a predictable graphic for their campaign–especially as they triple down on the race baiting…
The Other Chuck
@Violet: Not to mention it’s now widely known that it’s just yet *another* thing he cavalierly and casually lied about.
Cacti
To sum up, the last time a Republican won an election legitimately (2004), he won with:
58% of the white vote
48% of the women’s vote
40% of the hispanic vote
11% of the african american vote
White voters were 77% of the total electorate in 2004, had decreased to 74% in 2008, and will likely decrease another 2-3 percentage points in 2012.
Mitt is polling below Bush’s numbers with women, hispanics, and african americans.
Now you understand why the GOP is working so hard on vote suppression.
Caz
Do you even hear yourself?? Obama is the most shallow, dishonest, politically expedient hack ever. Didn’t he say he would cut the debt in half in his first term? He’s just as much full of shit as Romney, and the fact that you don’t see it is why both parties are able to conspire to take control of the population. Start thinking for yourself and standing up for freedom, not a massive centralized dystopian big brother that tells you it has the solution to all problems: pass more laws and curb more freedoms. Wake up!
Both Sides Do It
@Lyrebird:
There’s a reason you’re not finding that stuff in historical genealogies of made-up ethnic heritage. It’s because it’s in the Bible, right after when Noah took two of every conservative think tank into the ark to survive the storm of liberalism which lasted forty years.
@Violet:
Nah, we’re not made of stone like those uncouth m-fers on the coasts, or uncultured barbarians like the dirty hordes of Missoura.
El Cid
YOU PEOPLE STILL KEEP SAYIN STUF I TOLD YOU WASN’T TRUE AND I HAVE TO COME HERE AND SAY IT AGAIN FOR A STUPID 15 CENT BUT I NEED THE MONEY
Calouste
The guy was a missionary for a church that didn’t allow black people to join. AFAIK, he has never commented on that. It’s not an indication that he has massive problems with racism, to say it mildly.
trollhattan
@Cacti:
Willard would have then offered to buy them a better tent!
trollhattan
@Caz:
May I subscribe to your newsletter?
amk
@Caz: Idjit.Talking.Points.
Brachiator
@patrick II:
I like your take on this.
Problem is, when Romney puts himself out there as a say anything, do anything political rent boy, nobody will trust him. Even the wingnuts are hoping that Romney will be as compliant and weak as he appears to be, but clearly believe that Ryan will be able to lay on extra discipline if Mittens shows any hint of independence.
And I am not sure how Romney is coming across to the voters, even the wingnuts. There have been times in the past when Americans have decidedly rejected servile, inauthentic ass kissers. Romney is trying to sell himself as a confident, aristocratic ass kisser. Will voters really buy into this contradictory BS?
Violet
@trollhattan: Willard would have told them to pull themselves up by their bootstraps so they could afford to buy a better tent made by a company he owns that used to manufacture its tents in America until Bain shut down the plant and shipped its job to China. Why aren’t you working hard enough to afford a better tent!
Dennis G.
@amk: It never is a real post until your pet trolls come out and play…
Keith G
@Violet: Remember Obama’s early reviews as a campaigner? It took him a bit to ease out of some unevenness. I do not know if Ryan is any less a natural politician that Obama is, and that was not my point.
@Cacti: I never thought that would happen as I cannot not remember the last time a Dem or GOP ticket did not have federal executive or Congressional experience in at least one position. As it is this, GOP ticket is lighter than most – a shoe that has yet to drop.
trollhattan
@Dennis G.:
I suspect it will hinge on the format. After two whole days of paying attention, Ryan sounds like a polished high school debater–he can toss out the lines easily and he has that rat-a-tat diction Willard wholly lacks. I suspect he can speak for hours and not say anything of substance, but has enough RW bromides stored that he’ll never lack for something to regurgitate.
There won’t be any “In what sense?” gaffes, so Biden will need to trap him in his lies, but only if the format permits.
Dennis SGMM
The dangerous part of Romney’s cowardice is that, if elected, he’ll be compelled to do something stupid like attacking Iran to prove that he’s really tough. He and his cohort aren’t the ones who will do the dying and they aren’t the ones who will have to choose between buying food and buying gasoline so it’s all good for Mitt.
Hill Dweller
@Caz: When the global economy collapses a month before your election, and the CBO projects the fiscal year deficit to be well over a trillion dollars a couple of weeks before you’re sworn in, it tends to put a kink in your economic plans.
trollhattan
@Violet:
Heh! :-)
Both Sides Do It
@Dennis G.:
Nah I guess I was being a little too dry. (Another Iowa trait). The graphic is completely accurate and adequately sums up what’s going on *right now*, let alone the heights of crazy that’ll be reached between now and Mitt’s acceptance speech.
I was trying to make a joke riffing on the Villager trope Krugman complains about regularly: “that’s an accurate statement, but I will not agree with the tone with which it is made, even though it is entirely appropriate because we are talking about heinous and unacceptable behavior, so I will dismiss you entirely.”
Violet
@Keith G: Obama worked his way up, first as a local state candidate, then a state-wide candidate (Senator), then primaries, then finally the general election. Ryan’s got to jump into the big game right away. I don’t know how well he’ll do. Time will tell, I guess.
Uriel
@Wag:
Not that it matters, but the pedant in me has to point out that kuru isn’t viral- it’s caused by an infectious protein called a prion.
scav
So they’re down to Sex and the Confederacy? Hoist that old Flag! Bars and Starbursts!!!
Steeplejack
@Caz:
Fix’d for style points.
angelfoot
“Code-talking” my ass, this is the most blatantly racist attack I’.
Unsympathetic
I’ll say it: I think Romney is a racist. There’s nothing closet about it, he didn’t need his campaign to tell him to do this: Nope, this is who he is as a person. Forget the niclang, he says the entire word — and then wonders why we don’t fall in line like everyone in his world does.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Unsympathetic: Yup. Race-baiting is racism. Romney and Gingrich are a different kind of racist than Rick Santorum, but herefords and black angus are both types of cattle.
angelfoot
Ahem. “Code-talking” my ass, this is the most blatantly racist attack I can remember in my 49 years. It’s a bald-faced lie and there isn’t even a whiff of “plausible deniability” about it. Anyone and everyone working for the Romney campaign should be deeply, deeply ashamed.
Both Sides Do It
Anyone who knows who Lee Atwater was and listens to Romney make up lies about “Obama stealing Medicare money” and won’t acknowledge the obvious racial dimension should be googlebombed into oblivion.
Keith G
@Violet: I donno. Me thinks its usually a bit easier to to start running for the state legislature as a first step. Ryan got elected to a federal office two years after Obama won his first state legislative post and five years before the President made it to the Senate (defeating two very weak opponents).
All this goes to say that though I know Ryan’s ideas are wrong, I would not write him off as a weak link. Some of the caricaturing I see going on seems, at best, premature,
dead existentialist
@Caz: God damnit, you are adorable!
PS @Dennis G: What have you done to the site tonight? My cursor is completely outta whack.
karen
@Caz:
How much is Romney/Crossroads/Koch paying you?
karen
@Unsympathetic:
I think that Romney is more of a classist than a racist. Not that he isn’t racist at all, I just think it’s at such an unconscious level that he just takes it for granted.
People use the N word an slurs because they’re hostile and resent them.
Romney has nothing to gain or fear from them except for the “Curse of Ham” stuff. He’d have no reason to use the N word, in fact I’m sure there’s some other Mormon or classist slur he uses.
That doesn’t mean that he doesn’t know how to use race to demonize.
NonyNony
@Steeplejack:
Wait – when did Caz move from “Republican troll taunting the lieberals” to “Wake up sheeple, both sides do it, Obama is just as bad as Romney” trolling?
Wow – picking Ryan must be a REALLY bad choice if it’s gotten Caz to move away from Romney victory dances to trying to wake up the sheeple.
Yutsano
@Steeplejack: Duuuuude…
jl
Romney is a classic kiss up kick down cheesy chickenshit scumbag.
dead existentialist
Romney a racist? Jeepers! His church didn’t ordain black men until 1978. That’s about 130 years o’ dey ol’ racism by my count, and it sort-kinda ended in 1978 when Mitt was well past draft age by a few years.
You grow up in a culture like that, and you’re
boundobligated to have racist views.scav
Random thought: we haven’t been called cudlips in ever so long.
dead existentialist
@scav: Cudlips.
Done.
(I know. She was almost as interesting as she was annoying. Maybe she was the victim of one of those Colorado wildfires. Say her name three times . . . see what happens.)
scav
@dead existentialist: Let’s not and pretend we did. I remember that critical “almost” gap acutely. I’m willing to see how far I can run on second-hand cudlips. Oh, and for the record, VICTORY!
chuck butcher
@scav:
ENDLESS MONEY and VICTORY
mechwarrior online
I’m going to say it, but this article is a jerk to McCain. For all his faults, and there are many, he did the right thing, and has continued to when it came to Huma.
When you phrase it as “even he” you make him out to be one of the bad ones on this sort of issue, he is not. For all his faults the man worked his ass off to repair relations with Vietnam (granted to late), and took into his home a brown kid, was savaged for it, and stuck by his adopted daughter.
We can at least give him that. He’s a war monger, and the dangerous type at that, the Navy type at that (and yes my brothers are far to arrogant about somethings), and he (in his own words) doesn’t know crap about economics.
Yet he did stand up for Obama, and he hasn’t demonstrated a racist bone for our time, and has even fought to help stop this sort of crap.
There is plenty to disagree with McCain on and more than enough to hesitate making him supreme commander. But there is also a side we once liked, and a level of basic humanity that is not present in most of our opponents.
Micheline
@Keith G: That took years for Obama to improve his game. Ryan only has months to do so. And plus, when Obama’s campaigning skills were shaky he wasn’t under the spotlight the way Ryan is now. But your point is well taken. Sometimes the left gets overconfident and complacent. This is the last thing we need.
David Koch
yuck
bjacques
@Caz:
So Ron Paul can count on your vote then? Good for you for not being one of those “summer Libertarians.” The RLOVEution is on! (Not to be confused with the Lovolution, but it doesn’t appear that Doctress Neutopia is running this time.)
huckster
@mechwarrior online:
True, but it’s pretty pathetic when you have to give out gold stars to people for essentially doing what they’re supposed to do.
uptown
How can I say this politely…
I’ve never seen an Anglo/Saxon with hair like these two.