I never thought I’d see Mitt Romney get so ugly so early in the race, but tonight in his Nevada victory speech he showed that he is willing to sell what’s left of his genteel veneer to court the conservative hate mongers. In a speech where the inaccuracies and the lies outweighed any message of reform he might be hiding in the Caymans, Mitt went Palin as he said Obama was not the “American president”.
The one thing Mitt had going for him was that he was not a hate monger. Sure, he’s stiff except when he’s flip-flopping, he’s the 1% of the 1%, and he’s so entitled and ensconced in privilege that he can’t imagine the life of an average American, but he was not a negative person. You didn’t dislike the guy; he just made you nervous. He’s smarmy and untrustworthy, but you didn’t dislike him.
Until tonight.
Boy did Mitt bring the ugly tonight! This proves that he has what it takes to be a conservative hero in words (deed do not matter; he will make up reality and Fox will sell it). Mitt Romney can be a hate-monger and therefor, he can be the Republican nominee.
If we took the lies out of Mitt’s speech tonight, we’d be left with nothing but hello and god bless America. Mitt claimed he would make our military the best in the world unlike Obama, who is a wimp (Osama? Somali pirates?).
Our military is already the strongest in the world, but Mitt promised that no one would ever challenge us again when he was President. This didn’t ease my mind, as I recall Bush promising the same thing before he invaded a sovereign nation on a lie and got us mired in a ten year war that we couldn’t win.
To wild cheers, Mitt announced that he would not give voters the most, so if this is a bidding war, he is not your President. Of course, this may be true, but it depends on who “you” are. If you are a 1%er, this is most certainly a bidding war, as the corporate dollars flowing into Republican coffers prove quite well.
Mitt meant that he wouldn’t be buying our votes by promising to care about Medicare and Medicaid or Social Security. Of course, technically, he wouldn’t be “buying” votes, since people pay into Social Security with hard work. But his point is duly noted. Do not vote for Mitt if you want a President who thinks you are as entitled as he thinks he and his friends are.
Mitt said he could fix the economy that Obama ruined. He said the improved unemployment numbers are not real because they just reflect that people stopped looking for work. Pay attention to this one because it’s viral. The truth is that private sector job growth has grown under Obama more than it has since Reagan, and those numbers can’t be gotten around no matter how many times they utter “but no one is looking for work anymore.”
At any rate, Mitt has no solution for fixing the economy other than assuring us that as businessman (who dismantled companies and shuttled his profits offshore), he knows how to do it. A pause while Americans wonder if they want to be one of Bain’s mom and pops that get taken apart and sold off in bits so that Romney can add another 100 million to his Swiss account.
Romney went on about Nevada’s troubles and never mentioned that they were a direct result and perfect example of lawless vulture capitalism. He blamed Obama for their unemployment rates and never said a word about why their homes were in foreclosure or who got rich off of their misery. He avoided mentioning the fact that the recession started in 2007 and the housing market collapsed soon after. It’s hard to see how Obama can be blamed for that or how it’s Obama’s fault that Romney stands for the same exact deregulation that created the housing bubble that led to the bubble burst.
Mitt lied about Solyndra, lied about healthcare reform, promised to repeal “Obama Care”, lied about the economy (was caught earlier saying it was great but now it sucks), lied about the private sector….Mitt lied.
There’s no gentle way to put it, this was a speech of specious lies and inaccuracies and deliberate distortions. It was a speech meant for the base. And they believe these things to be true.
It’s one thing to stretch the truth, but it’s another to construct a whole new reality, and that’s what Mitt did tonight.
Mitt went ugly tonight, and as much as I have never been a fan of his politics du jour, I’m deeply disappointed to see him go Palin. I honestly thought he was better than that and I said so just this past Wednesday on Politicus Radio.
I was wrong. Romney wants to be President so badly that he is willing to sell out to the lowest common denominator. A man who could have at the very least stood for manners and decorum – a measure of civility – now stands for absolutely nothing.
And to boot, Mitt blew his hate wad way too early. We can see from his speech tonight that he plans on running against Barack X, the fictional Barack Obama, as Bill Maher so brilliantly put it last week. Mitt Romney plans on running against the economic failure and weak on defense Obama. You know, the guy who only exists on Fox News.
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Sarah has been credentialed to cover President Barack Obama, then VP Joe Biden, 2016 Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton, and exclusively interviewed Speaker Nancy Pelosi multiple times and exclusively covered her first home appearance after the first impeachment of then President Donald Trump.
Sarah is two-time Telly award winning video producer and a member of the Society of Professional Journalists.
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