PoliticusUSA (Politics)

Trinkets From Romney’s Doomed Candidacy End Up in a Bargain Bin Near You (November 27, 2012)

Becky SarwateLeave a comment

Last week, the day after Thanksgiving ushered in the annual holiday shopping season. Many Americans partook of that bruising and borderline pathological retail ritual known as Black Friday, whereby millions of people invade chain stores at ungodly hours to grab discount stuff they probably don’t need. This was followed by the more civic-minded and measured Small Business Saturday, where consumers are encouraged to support local artisans, shops and outlets in order to buttress entrepreneurship in their local communities. And just yesterday, web surfers in offices all across America gave up their regular work tasks in search of the perfect Cyber Monday deal.

Even if you chose to sit out these cultural rites, there are 26 shopping days left before Christmas Eve. Perhaps you are thoughtfully biding your time, trying to envision that perfect, special gift for the loved one in your life.

And suddenly that consummate gift idea materializes! What do you get for the favorite liberal in your world? Whether they simply seek to commemorate President Barack Obama’s November 2012 thrashing of his Republican opponent, or if they are (like me) always up for a little GOP schadenfreude, the answer has arrived: Mitt Romney collectibles!

According to a report this morning from ABC News, retailers ranging from airport gift shops to online operations to Black Friday stalwart Wal-Mart are offering steep discounts on remnants of Mitt Romney’s doomed candidacy. Great bargains abound, per writer Sarah Parnass, such as “Romney magnets and buttons below a dollar and a ‘Repeal & Replace’ t-shirt, referencing the Republican plan to oust President Obama’s health care law, for less than five bucks.”

As for the official Romney website, reminiscent of the denials of Election Night, the former candidate’s handlers are not yet ready to relegate their man to the white elephant dustbin. In a display of misplaced confidence in the purchasing public, Romney t-shirts remain full priced – but those dying to plunk down $45 for the right to wear an electoral punchline on their torso may take advantage of free shipping!

It’s the little things during the holiday season that bring such simple joy. But alright. Maybe you’re not the mean spirited type. Perhaps you’re a gracious Democrat with a number of right-leaning friends who is too respectful to kick a team while it’s down, no matter how tempting. Fine. You can still take advantage of the Romney super sale! Just pop into the Reagan National Airport “America!” store for a Mittens bobblehead. Give it to your closest GOP buddy along with a musical greeting card that plays 1960 Brenda Lee smash “I’m Sorry.” Try to appear genuine and contrite in the giving. These misguided souls need our support as standard bearers try to discern how to make the Republican Party relevant in the 21st century.

No matter how naughty or nice we’ve been, this year’s holiday shoppers are bound to be more budget-conscious than ever, what with the looming fiscal cliff and the right wing’s continued standoff with President Obama on the issue of revenue increases. Show John Boehner and his ilk your concern by stockpiling bargain Romney stocking stuffers, maybe even put a couple of them in the mail to your favorite Republican officeholders. Obama has yet to begin his official second term and their arguments against supporting the middle class while rectifying our growing budget deficit problem are as trite and tired as the first go round. Remind them them of the electoral embarrassments yet to come from their failed, divisive strategies – with a momento of the election that was supposedly theirs for the taking.

 

Welcome to the Jungle: The GOP Dysfunction Infused 112th Congress Reports for Duty (November 13, 2012)

Becky SarwateLeave a comment

They’re here. They of the 64 percent “Poor” performance rating, according to a late-August publication from Rasmussen Reports, while only eight percent of the voting public was confused enough at the time of the poll to pronounce the group’s accomplishments “Good.” Exactly no one judged the body “Excellent” when it comes to getting things done. You know who I’m talking about.

It’s Congress!

The greatest example of petty taunting and counter-productivity since the 7th grade lunch table returns to Capitol Hill today, fresh off President Obama’s re-election and just in time to do battle over measures that must be implemented to avoid the looming “fiscal cliff.” There are just seven weeks left to reach some form of agreement that would take the place of mandatory budget cuts and tax hikes that may very well deepen the already painful Great Recession.

Here we go again.

Removing the annoying shackles of campaign promises of bipartisanship, the GOP is back to its old tricks. While calling upon President Obama to work with House Republicans, Speaker John Boehner has reiterated the Republican Party’s opposition to raising any taxes to deal with the country’s debt and deficit. Because it’s always so much easier to roll up one’s sleeves and work together on a balanced approach with a group that demands full and total capitulation.

For years now it has been stupefying to watch Republican lawmakers wax philosophical about the “immorality” of our nation’s deficit while remaining quite willing to risk our collective future in order to save millionaires a few bucks. And in keeping with the party’s high moral standards, it is apparently acceptable to savage the social safety net and burden the poor and already-struggling middle class in order to save the “temporary” Bush tax cuts. Is anyone buying this?

The new faces showing up for work in Washington today offer an American public that wants to see something done a tiny sliver of hope. Democrats picked up two extra Senate seats that they didn’t have in October, for a total of 53 spots. Five of the newly elected Senators, across both parties, are strong women like consumer advocate and male-model crusher Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts. It is also true that Dems collected three extra seats in the House than they had before, and may have found themselves at an even lesser disadvantage, were it not for the eminently questionable redistricting resulting from the 2010 U.S. Census.

How does a party retain power while losing the popular vote? Ask former President George W. Bush.

Regardless of its partisan makeup, this Congressional class may find it a lot harder to kick down the road. If the record turnouts and general rebuke of incumbents is any indication, the struggling electorate simply won’t tolerate further stagnation. A positive result of Capitol Hill’s growing paralysis since Obama took office in 2009 is a growing sense that Republican lawmakers care a lot more about winning and protecting their wealthy donors then they do about their constituents. They have a real opportunity to here to demonstrate otherwise. It will no longer do to play the blame game.

 

Obama and Romney Campaigns Play the Waiting Game (November 6, 2012)

Becky SarwateLeave a comment

For those of us who haven’t yet completed our ballots, there’s nothing left to do but vote. Residents of the hotly contested and closely watched swing states must be ready to breathe a sigh of relief, welcoming a return to fast forwarding through conventional television commercials promoting toothpaste, cars and tampons. I wrote these lines last evening on my blog:

T’was the night before the election, and all through Ohio
Margaritas were flowing like Cinco De Mayo.
Because Buckeye State residents were confident no matter who won,
Their days in the swing state spotlight were temporarily done.

After an extremely long and intense campaign, there is something to be said for the collective exhaust of the voting public. On a certain level, before the returns are counted and cable news channels morph into trigger-finger caffeine freaks, ready to call the election at a second’s notice, and before the long-winded pundits begin their Wednesday morning quarterbacking, it’s nice to take a moment and exhale.

We the people have worked hard during this interminable electoral season. While the Wall Street Journal reported that 41 percent fewer television viewers tuned in to see Paul Ryan accept the Republican Party’s nomination for vice-president (versus the near-record numbers of disbelievers who couldn’t stay away from the spectacle of Sarah Palin), and less folks checked out the Democratic presentation as well, it was a banner cycle for the the presidential and vice-presidential debates.

According to the Los Angeles Times, “A total of 67.2 million people watched the [first] debate between President Obama and Republican challenger Mitt Romney, according to figures released late Thursday by the Nielsen Co. – a 28% increase over the 52.4 million who tuned in to the first debate in 2008.” It is meaningful that the public remained this engaged heading into the home stretch, suggesting that years of prolonged unemployment, decreased home value, rising fuel and food prices and skyrocketing college tuition led to a certain thirst for voter information.

And despite the endless flip-flopping and shape shifting of Candidate Romney, it was entirely clear that the electorate was left with two very distinct choices: Obama the incumbent, the idealist come pragmatist who displayed fortitude, character and leadership in bringing the U.S. economy back from the brink, ended the war in Iraq, took steps to stem the rising tide of healthcare spending and clarified the rights of gays and lesbians to serve their country without retribution. On the other hand, voters were presented with Romney, the shameless panderer who positions were often impossible to quantify, but in instances of clarity, a return to Bush-era failings was the clear takeaway. Let’s call this agenda the Survival of the Mittest.

No matter who emerges victor (Obama) today is a day for celebrating ourselves and our participation in the democratic process. We survived a tough four years: reducing our household debt, looking for work or clinging desperately to the jobs we have and finally, finally under the leadership of our President, things are looking up. Despite the concerted efforts to disenfranchise voters at the polls, unaffected by the struggles of daily survival, we are the winners today. Our voices will be heard.

 

Chris Christie Ignores the GOP Mandate to Condemn the President at Every Turn (October 30, 2012)

Becky SarwateLeave a comment

Upon reflection, it’s actually tragic that this is newsworthy. But such is the state of the Republican’s Party’s rancorous war on the sitting President that when an elected official stops to commend the POTUS on handling a situation with deft compassion and solid policy, it’s enough to garner major headlines.

It’s been no secret since October 23, 2010 that above getting Americans back to work, shoring up the nation’s fiscal situation and making the other tough decisions required to reverse the country’s Bush-era slide, the GOP has focused on ensuring that Obama is relegated to a one-term also-ran. It was on that date that Senate Minority leader, Mitch McConnell of Kentucky said in a print interview with the National Journal, “The single most important thing we want to achieve is for President Obama to be a one-term president.”

It is a singular feature of the modern Republican Party that despite the President’s success with a variety of hot button issues from foreign policy engagement, to the return of manufacturing jobs and crucial healthcare reform, and despite the Congressional thwarting of many other key initiatives designed to uplift the struggling middle class, he has been painted by the right as a do-nothing leader. Ah the disingenuousness of trying to have it both ways. We will stymie all efforts to move the country forward, resulting in the lowest approval numbers for Congress of all time, while claiming (somewhat successfully) that the Commander-in-Chief has no ideas.

But every now and again, in certain dire situations, it’s possible to come across a Republican leader who breaks with party dogma and steps outside the insulated world of partisan politics into reality. In this case I am referring to New Jersey Governor Chris Christie, who is confronting problems in his state today that GOP talking points cannot solve. As the Governor seeks to lead his residents in the early phases of Hurricane Sandy recovery, according to ABC News, Christie has “nothing but praise for President Barack Obama.”

Christie did not mince his words of gratitude in stating, “I want to thank the president personally for his personal attention to this.” At the same time, he delivered a preemptive strike at members of his party, on Fox News no less, who might seek to politicize or condemn his bipartisan cooperation with President Obama. Firmly putting would-be critics in place, Christie declared: “I have a job in New Jersey that is much bigger than presidential politics. I couldn’t care less about that.”

Nothing is more important than beginning to repair the damage wrought by Sandy, to commence rebuilding ravaged homes and assisting displaced families in getting back on their feet. It is commendable that Governor Christie has his priorities straight. It would be wonderful if his Republican colleagues in Congress had been able to set aside a mercenary, win-at-all-costs approach to governance in developing solutions for crises like 2011’s self-inflicted debt ceiling debacle.

It is also comforting to witness a President acting like a leader, recognizing that his job is not to serve the half of voting populace that supported his Oval Office bid in 2008, but ALL Americans in dire straights, whether or not they approve of his overall job performance. It’s times like these where it’s tough to forget that Mitt Romney said of FEMA’s disaster-relief budget in 2011: “We cannot afford to do those things without jeopardizing the future for our kids. It is simply immoral, in my view, for us to continue to rack up larger and larger debts and pass them on to our kids, knowing full well that we’ll all be dead and gone before it’s paid off. It makes no sense at all.” Cue the Etch-a-Sketch shake.

Thus it appears that the much-discussed “October Surprise” of this electoral cycle is not a Donald Trump vanity-tainted “bombshell” announcement, nor the appearance of weather-related trauma. Instead the surprise is that a member of the GOP could skip the schadenfreude and work with the President to get something accomplished.

 

This Week in Alienating Female Voters Starring Mitt Romney (October 19, 2012)

Becky SarwateLeave a comment

At the close of 2011, according to the United States Census Bureau, women comprised no less than 50.8 of the nation’s population, or slightly more than half. I will not go through the exercise of breaking down this statistic into socioeconomic groups, ethnic heritage or religious affiliation. Because I firmly believe, for the purposes of this column, that those distinctions don’t matter.

So why bring up the data at all? Well quite frankly, a sizable proportion of my fellow female citizens and I aren’t sure the Republican Party in general, and Mitt Romney more specifically, yet understand the implications of pissing us off less than three weeks before the election. American women are not a special interest group but a diverse MAJORITY of residents who can nonetheless usually come together on one issue: we hate being marginalized whether that discrimination comes in the form of public policy, religious dogma or the blustering of a Presidential candidate who fails to recognize that this is no longer the early 1960s, and he is not guest starring on an episode of Mad Men.

Heading into Tuesday night’s second Presidential election debate, Obama supporters had good reason for concern. Whether the week 1 Romney “victory” was real or imagined, the court of public opinion had somehow ruled in Romney’s favor. What would round two portend? Would we see a more contentious, vivacious President, ready to deflect the charming deceptions of his smarmy opponent? Would Mittens be able to maintain his current pretensions toward moderation or would the pendulum swing hard right again?

On the question of Obama’s performance, the answer, fortunately, is that television viewing audiences once more saw a candidate fired up and ready to go, a man who successfully called his challenger to the carpet on issues such Romney’s flip flop on the construction of coal factories (“Does anybody ever actually look at that guy and think, man, he’s really into coal?”). However the answer to the second question is a bit more complicated. While Romney did his best to sustain his latest persona, Fall 2012’s Mitt the Moderate, several noticeable cracks appeared in the facade. And nowhere were these schisms more apparent than in Romney’s responses to town hall questions related to women’s issues.

I won’t revisit Romney’s rhetorical blunder regarding “binders full of women,” except to remind people that the larger point of the candidate’s meandering answer is that a man with decades of private sector business experience blithely reported that he knew of exactly zero qualified female candidates for his gubernatorial cabinet – before the appearance of the much-discussed Trapper Keepers. While certainly less attractive comedic chum than the binder remark, it is epically disappointing that journalists and pundits failed to stone the candidate for this disingenuous claim.

But things went from bad to worse when, in the course of breaking his arm patting himself on the back, Romney went on to detail the tremendous working environment his Massachusetts administration created for female employees. This nurturing setting was constructed not in the form of challenging leadership roles or demanding policy work. No, Team Romney deemed themselves pro-women….because they permitted flex time which allowed working moms to get home in time to put dinner on the table.

Say what?

It is incredibly disheartening that amongst all the social network memes circulating about the “binders” sidetrack, there were not equal numbers of interrogations regarding the real takeaway: working women are nice and all but their real place remains in the home. And once again, just like that, the Republican party standard bearer attempted to roll back 50 years of social and workplace gains so hard won by female Americans.

Blogger Brenda Peterson, writing for the Huffington Post this week, said it best: “Women were the real winners in this presidential debate. We clearly recognized the real Mitt Romney — and he’s just like every domineering and sexist boss we’ve worked with. While Romney boasted about considering his infamous ‘binders of women’, for a job, it was clear he and his policies are the true binders of women.”

So to return to my original argument: we are the 50.8 percent. Romney can stand there and smile, blandly reporting that he wouldn’t fight to repeal the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act (gee thanks), and asserting that women would never have to question their access to contraception under his tenure. But the candidate has spent years undermining his own credibility with female voters and there’s no reason, particularly after Monday night’s showing, to trust him now. Across party, socioeconomic and spiritual lines, I have a feeling women will ensure that the already-unemployed Romney is left with plenty of flexible hours after Election Day.