Wednesday, June 18, 2014

Romney 2016: Is the GOP Daft, Demented, or Desperate?

by Sunnyjane


Romney 2012:  I was more liberal than Ted Kennedy!  But later, I was severely conservative!

In a desperate attempt to regain a modicum of political relevancy, Mitt Romney has begun to insert himself into the 2016 Republican mess as its official Elder Statesman.  Since there is, to be sure, a decided leadership void in that party, he may as well give it a go.  At least he won't lose that contest to a black guy, eh?

Officially announced as Mitt Romney's Third Annual Policy Summit and Leadership Retreat, a few of the wannabe-the-candidate crowd went to Utah last weekend to be pimped out to more than three hundred of Mitt's monied pals.  Frankly, I don't understand why the Republican Donor Class is willing to throw their money at this pathetic group of losers -- Paul Ryan, Rand Paul, Rob Portman, Chris Christie, Mike Huckabee, and Susana Martinez -- but maybe they just liked the idea of a three-day picnic paid for by Mitt Romney.  Conspicuously absent was Ted Cruz; perhaps he'll make next year's retreat.  I dunno.

Mitt kicked off the conference with a rousing speech about the lack of leadership in Washington, blah, blah, blah.  So rousing was his speech, in fact, that it immediately prompted Joe Blowhard Scarborough to declare a Draft Romney 2016 movement.  It is particularly odd that MSNBC's Tea Party mouthpiece was even there, given the damning-slamming editorial he wrote for Politico on Romney's, ahem, inadequacies just seven weeks before the 2012 election: Who told Mr. Romney to issue a political broadside against the commander-in-chief the day after a U.S. ambassador was murdered? And who decided that Romney would use his general election campaign to stand for absolutely nothing?  The Wall Street Journal described this ideological listlessness as a “pre-existing decision.”  Scarborough went even further, writing: Laura Ingraham slammed his campaign for its fecklessness. Ingraham argued that if Republicans couldn’t win this year, they should shut the party down.  She's right.  Ouch!  That should have left an indelible mark.

Their host, of course, denied that he had any interest in running for president a third time, but it sounded a bit like Dick Cheney in the Republican 2000 campaign who was put in charge of finding the best running mate for George W.  Of course, he ended up deciding that he was the best man for the vice presidential job.  Let that be a warning, GOP.

Of course, Scarborough was not the only one at the Summit who thought Mitt should run again.  George Schultz, Reagan's secretary of state, said of Romney, I wish we could call him Mr. President!  Jesus.

Other than scoring A+ on his Obama Bashing for Idiots 101 course in the nineteen months since November 2012, Mitt has had no political accomplishments whatsoever.  We are left to assume, therefore, that he obviously did wondrous things during that pathetic campaign that makes Republicans believe he could win in 2016.

The Affordable Care Act, aka, Obamacare

I will repeal and replace Obamacare on Day One of my presidency!
Fortunately for fourteen million Americans, Day One for Mitt Romney never came to pass.  The number of people enrolling in the ACA grows every day.

In addition, insurance companies who initially declined to participate are clamoring to jump in for their piece of the pie.  This is great news, as it enlarges the free-market thingy that conservatives are always running on about, and it will continue to bring down the cost of premiums.  Uninsured rates are falling in many states, and at California State University campuses, the uninsured students rate dropped by over sixty percent.  Remember, the GOP meme was that young people would not sign up for the President's signature healthcare act.  Heh.

Obamacare has also finished Mitt's work for him in Massachusetts, where the uninsured rate in that state is nearly at zero.

Wrong on Obamacare, Mitt.  Ya gonna repeal it on Day One, 2017?  Good luck with that.

Romney's Complete Geopolitical Failure



Everyone in the GOP seems to have a remarkably negative sense of geopolitics.  In 2008, John McCain made reference to the Iraq-Pakistan border.  Well, no, John; there's 750 miles between Iraq and Pakistan.  Then he responded to a question on whether he would meet with Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero, I have a clear record of working with leaders in the hemisphere that are friends with us, and standing up to those who are not.  And that's judged on the basis of the importance of our relationship with Latin America and the entire region.  Um, Zapatero was the prime minister of Spain at the time. 

So along comes 2012, and Mitt warned that Syria is Iran's route to the sea, as if Iran were a landlocked country.  Actually, they have over a thousand miles of coastline, and there's that little blob called Iraq between the two countries.  And militarily speaking, when Mitt whined in the last debate that our Navy was smaller than it was in 1917, President Obama had to school him on the fact that we no longer had to use bayonets and horses, that today we had aircraft carriers and submarines.

And we all know how disastrous Mitt's A Fool's Trip Abroad was; he came back not upbeat, but beat up.  And everybody knew it.

McCain and Romney sound almost as goofy as Sarah Palin, who thought we should bomb the country of Islam for being so, you know, Islamic.  (OK, I made that up, but it could have happened.)     

Reducing the Deficit, Romney Style


The only thing you have to know about this subject is that Romney actually thought he could reduce the deficit by killing Big Bird cutting funding for PBS.  

Derp.

END NOTE

November 29, 2012: No, Mitt, you may NOT sit at my desk.  Good-bye, now.

No comments:

Post a Comment