Romney: the Republicans' Folly

Conservative pundits are befuddled.  With the terrible state of the economy—and things not trending well—why is Obama on track to win a second term? Why can’t Romney make any headway—after all, he’s a successful businessman, right?  He should be tailor-made to wrest the office from an incumbent who has not been able to turn the economy around. Well, here’s a clue: I’m a conservative, and I’m not going to fill in a ballot for Romney in November.

The reason why the election isn’t close is because the Romney/Ryan ticket has—incredibly!—lost the working middle-class vote!  Yes, you heard me.  The Democrats have actually made a better case for the middle-class vote. Those people care about Medicare and Social Security; much more than they care about the tax rate for people earning more than $250,000. The only segment of the electorate that Romney will win handily is those very same $250,000+ income folks.  The Dems are obviously going to win the entitlement class and the diversity crowd. But without a solid majority of the working middle class, the Republicans have no chance.

But even if that was not the case, the candidate that ‘sensible’ Republican pundits pimped for, Romney—how was that again, because he was the candidate most likely to beat Obama?—is manifestly unfit for the office and this is abundantly clear to a large swathe of voters cutting across all demographics.

I’m not talking about simple disagreement with the man’s positions—I’m saying that he is manifestly unfit, and shame on the party intelligentsia for not realizing this when the campaign began and we had a chance to have one of the other candidates—several of whom would have ultimately proved to fare better against Obama.

Here is why Romney is unfit for the office:

1. A person who throughout his entire career has reversed positions on serious, profound issues—not to mention ephemeral things like healthcare mandates—simply because it appeared to be expeditious at the time, cannot and should not be trusted with the highest office in the land. This cynical strategy of Romney betrays an actual disdain for the voter, if not for democracy itself. This is the reason why I would never vote for him.

2. Romney’s wealth from the latter part of his career at Bain Capital is not the kind of capitalist success that the millions of unemployed Americans want to see in the Oval Office. ‘Equity capitalism’ is not about job creation, it’s about the financial ‘instrument’ paper wealth creation more akin to the excesses of Wall Street that were responsible for the financial crash. Romney obviously refuses to release his tax returns because what is in them is something that would be even more injurious to his Fat Cat reputation than the condemnation he gets now for refusing to release them.

3. The president of the United States is not just a metaphorical CEO of state; he has to have a knowledge of, and presumably an interest in, international relations. Romney is a BEAN COUNTER. He may be a very good bean counter, but that’s all he is. His positions on foreign policy, such as they are, were clearly crafted by the same cynical political calculus that led him to flip-flop time and time again throughout his career: Set up a task force to analyze public opinion on Obama’s various foreign policy positions. Identify those for which there exists a sizeable opposition. Adopt those contrary positions as your own.

So, I blame Republicans who pushed for the unelectable Romney during the primaries, wrongly believing that among a field of weak candidates he had the best chance of beating Obama. He didn’t. The other candidates may have had whole constituencies that had to be written off—but none of which were large enough to guarantee a victory for the Democrats.

We all know the Latin for "buyer beware"—caveat emptor. But what’s the Latin for “buyer’s remorse”? It’s what Republicans nationwide are going to have come November 7.

My advice to the party? Concentrate on the Congressional elections, and try to prevent a negative coat-tails effect from the disastrous top of the ticket.

Woo Hoo! Let’s Hear it for Women’s Choices at the DNC!

Here is the message delivered by a parade of people of all sexes at the DNC (Democratic National Convention) last night:

Only women are deserving of choices.

Implicit in the steady drone of calls for “choices” for women is the unspoken notion that men are not worthy of choices.  If this was not the case, the calls would be for choices for all.

The full message, simply reduced, is:

Women have choices, men have obligations and responsibilities, carved out of the choices made for them by women.

“Choice,” of course, is the code word for birth control, which for these folks includes abortion.  Under this choice-for-women, responsibilities-for-men paradigm, consider the following scenarios:

1. Husband and wife in intact marriage. Wife gets pregnant. For whatever reason, she decides to abort. She is under no legal (or moral, according to the Democrats) obligation to even inform her husband of her “choice,” let alone ask for his approval to kill his child, whether or not he is the father of the child.

Woman: choice. Man: none.

2. Man and woman have sex. Woman intentionally fools man, telling him she was taking birth control. Woman brings baby to term. Man must pay woman child support and additional costs such as health insurance and eventually college. Child support can be sizeable fraction of man’s income – up to a third – and payable up to age 23 in some states.

Woman: choice. Man: none; responsibility and financial obligation for up to 23 years.

3. Man and woman in relationship have sex. Despite best intentions, woman gets pregnant. Woman wants to abort pregnancy; man does not, and offers to raise the child. Tough luck, bud. Not your choice.

Woman: choice. Man: none.

4. Man and woman in relationship have sex. Despite best intentions, woman gets pregnant. Woman wants to have the baby; man does not. Tough luck, bud. Not your choice. If you don’t decide to marry, you are responsible for child support, refer to (2) above.

Woman: choice. Man: none; responsibility and financial obligation for up to 23 years.

Last night there were repeated shout-outs to feminist heroine Sandra Fluke and her brave stand for another “choice” denied women by (presumably) men: the “right” to mandate that her employer-provided health insurance include free coverage for her birth control meds.

How is it that this “choice” – a matter of a monthly expense that I’m told costs about $30 a month at a pharmacy – is a rallying cry whereas the infinitely more profound and expensive “choices” denied men exampled above are ... nowhere mentioned?

Why? I just told you, stupid! Women have choices—men don’t.


So, the question, as always, remains. When do I get my choices?


And last but not least on this list of outrages that should be sufficient to dissuade any self-respecting man from ever casting a vote for a candidate from this party: the infamous redefinition of “rape” courtesy of the Republican senatorial candidate from Missouri Todd Akin. He infamously asserted that pregnancy from rape was “really rare” because “if it’s a legitimate rape, the female body has ways to try to shut that whole thing down.”

Aside from the questionable biology, what incensed feminists was the word “legitimate.” From coast to coast came the calls of outrage: Akin and the Republicans are “redefining” rape.

But the real redefinition of rape happened a long time ago. The time-worn and universally accepted meaning of rape used to be a forceful act of sex committed by a man on a woman. It could be broadened to account for male-on-male rape such as happens in prisons. The notion of female-on-male rape is largely a physical impossibility. So, the universal features of rape, as evidenced throughout history’s literature used to be:

• Male perpetrated
• Using force

Additionally, a man forcing sex on a child does not rest on the question of force as children are by definition biologically not sexually mature and should never under any circumstances be subject to a sexual act from an adult.

It was feminists who redefined rape to what it is today: a malleable definition that a woman can use after consensual sex, even at a later date, to identify herself as a victim of rape. If she is intoxicated or under the influence of drugs, she does not have possession of her reasoning faculties and hence can claim to have been raped. Some college campuses have adopted a list of sequential behaviors that must all be verbally assented to before an act of consensual sex can be safe ... i.e., not rape. Also, we have the muddy area of “statutorial rape,” whereby an 18-year-old boy can have his life destroyed for having consensual (and loving) sex with his 16-year-old girlfriend, should circumstances arise where this is desirable to the girl and/or her family.

This redefinition of rape is the outrage, as countless men from all walks of life have had their lives destroyed by spurious illegitimate rape allegations.

Any self-respecting heterosexual man with some measure of life experience and a modicum of intelligence who votes for this party deserves the scorn, condemnation and mockery of his fellow men.