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Tuesday, May 15, 2012

Romney Even Worse Than McCain

Washington Examiner:
At his New York City fundraiser last night, President Obama reminded his supporters that the choice in 2012 was "in some ways, more important than 2008," referring to contrast between himself and Mitt Romney. "John McCain believed in climate change and believed in immigration reform. On some issues, there was a sense of independence," he said. Referring to Mitt Romney, the president added, "What we’ve got this time out is a candidate who said he’d basically rubber-stamp a Republican Congress who wants us to go backwards and not forwards on a whole range of issues."
I disagree with the President. I think Romney and McCain are equally awful and equally craven, but of course given that the Congressional Republicans are comparatively worse that does suggest that Romney's equally unprincipled caving would now facilitate generally worse outcomes than McCain's (though the let's-tear-the-lid-off-of-hell-and-see-what-that-gets-us choice of Sarah Palin for VP suggests even that accidental difference may be overstated).

2 comments:

jollyspaniard said...

George Bush supposedly believed in climate change and promised to bring in carbon taxes. So I think it's safe to take McCains past statements with a fistful of salt.

Dale Carrico said...

The point isn't to try to divine Romney's "true beliefs" from the tea leaves of his endlessly shifting statements. Apart from his mean streak and infinite sense of entitlement there might not even be much of what passes for a "self" there at all, in the sense that non-lifelong-bazillionaires use such terms.

What matters is that Romney's actions always express the convictions of those he is working with: And so, he seemed a bit more reasonable when he was Governor and the Republicans he was working with were all triangulating with Massachusetts liberals of conviction, he now lives in the age of the patriarchal theocratic corporate-militarist plutocratic GOP death cult and he has become that.

Look at the extremity of his advisers and the extremity of the caucus he will be working with, they are who he will be... he is always other people and what he thinks other people are expected to be according to some pretty cramped norms the violation of which fills him either with supreme discomfort or, as we have seen, rage. Sheer away the put-upon privilege and the cruelty of his so-called "pranks" and you will find a schmoo not a you, a creature of appetites and scripts and calculations.