GOP

Latino Voters Self-Deport Mitt Romney (June 2, 2012)

Becky SarwateLeave a comment

According to the latest round of NBC-Marist polls, President Obama and presumed GOP nominee Mitt Romney are locked in a virtual tie among registered voters in Iowa, Colorado and Nevada. This Midwest and Western states are considered by those in the know to be key battleground venues in the November elections.

In Iowa, Obama and Mittens polled at an even 44 percent favored rate, with 10 percent declaring themselves undecided. In Colorado, the President currently edges Romney by a mere percent while his lead stretches to two points in the home of Las Vegas. While the election season remains in its early stages (I know that may be difficult to believe given the oversaturation many of us already feel), the numbers are cause for concern to the President’s re-election team.

Meanwhile the results of a new Washington Post-ABC News sample ran with the headline, “Poll shows Romney becoming more likeable.” The challenger’s favorability rating registered at 41 percent, up six points from a month ago. This statistic may be less of a concern for the Obama camp, not simply because the Commander-in-Chief’s own likability index is 11 points higher at 52 percent. If there’s one thing that most members of our dysfunctional two-party political system can agree upon, it’s that Mitt Romney is a crushing bore.

So yeah ok, the race is becoming more competitive as we approach convention season and Mittens is doing courageous work trying to overcome liabilities that include anger from animal lovers (the whole driving to Canada with the family dog strapped to the roof bit – thank you Gail Collins), women (this year’s tone-deaf assault on female reproductive rights), the gay community, people who prefer their politicians to have genuine, stable positions on the issues and last but not least, Latinos. It makes me wonder who exactly these pollsters are speaking with when they collect their data.

This question could be posed relative to any of the groups mentioned above, but the results of an NBC News/Wall Street Journal/Telemundo poll published last week indicate that Obama enjoys a staggering 34-point lead over Mitt Romney amongst Latino voters. How does the Romney Team think they can bridge that crater? Perhaps of even greater concern: only 26 percent of Spanish-heritage voters view the GOP candidate positively, while 35 percent reported a negative opinion. There are 50 million Latinos in this country with a 3.1 percent population growth between July 2008 and July 2009 alone. This is not likely to change and in the midst of many challenges faced by the Romney campaign, the lopsided nature of the candidiates’ perception within the Hispanic citizenry should be a five-alarm panic.

The aversion to Romney amongst Latinos is not entirely the Dull One’s doing. For this state of affairs, Mitten can thank members of his own party like Arizona Governor Jan Brewer who has helmed a crusade against her state’s prominent Spanish contingent, or former Republican Presidential candidate Herman Cain who offered an electrified barbed-wire fence on the US-Mexico border as the answer to out nation’s outdated immigration policies. Forward thinking like this from the new crop of GOP standard bearers almost makes one pine for the comparatively progressive views of Dubya.

Despite what general election polls suggest, the numbers don’t add up and history teaches us that statistics are themselves only another statistic when it comes to predicting U.S. Presidential contests. The insights are useful and needless with almost equal frequency. The doom spelled for the future of the GOP’s appeal in its alienation of women and minorities has yet to be experienced at its height. This gives us something to anticipate in future election cycles. But any Republican strategists who think that rich white men can carry Mittens to victory in November are kidding themselves. There’s only so much disenfranchising you can do, though I expect GOP lackeys to continue giving it the old college try.

Mitt Romney Shakes His Etch-A-Sketch, But Women Don’t Forget (April 16, 2012)

Becky SarwateLeave a comment

Frankly, I was surprised that Rick Santorum threw in the towel last week. The numbers made clear that a path to winning the 2012 Republican Presidential nomination was all but impossible for our favorite radical Christian, but the current slate of candidates have never gone in much for reality. I think it’s the practicality of the move that stunned me.

With Santorum disposed, Mitt Romney’s remaining competition includes King of Hubris Newt Gingrich and Ron Paul, who indicated throughout the entire primary that he understood his campaign’s futility. Quite an inspiring duo aren’t they?

So the candidate nobody in the GOP really wanted, and for whom they still can’t get an erection, is on his way to accepting the nomination in scenic Tampa, Florida this August. Tampa, land of strip clubs and men in trucker hats, seems a fitting locale for a bunch of wealthy, mostly white, patriarchal ideology producers to anoint their sacrificial lamb.

Because now Romney has to shake that Etch-A-Sketch. Game on. (I bet Eric Ferhnstrom, Romney’s adviser and utterer of the ubiquitous sound bite that keeps on giving, wished for a time machine in his Easter basket.) President Obama long enjoyed the luxury of not having to address the freak show exhibits that comprised the Republican primary slate. But now that we’ve got something approximating a general election campaign, he occasionally has to tear his attention away from running a nation facing so many challenges to swat away jabs from Mittens.

To a point I sympathize with the Romney camp. Not only is their man dull as a butter knife (no insult to butter intended), which will only become more glaringly obvious when he enters the debate arena with the President, but he’s also saddled with a comical load of flip flops and rhetorical left turns. I don’t know how his staff will find time to prepare an offense when there’s so much to combat defensively: family dogs on the car roof, Romneycare and the good old Etch-A-Sketch comment just to pick a few easy cherries.

Romney has spent months and years pandering to the GOP power base, social conservatives who treat a belief in global warming or women’s reproductive rights as a “liberal” litmus test. There have been moments when I’ve pitied the open degradation of Romney’s integrity, his unwillingness to stand by his moderate record, but it doesn’t seem to bother him.

That type of radical right kowtowing may have seemed necessary until last week. But Romney has to face the rest of us now, the mainstream whose votes he needs just as badly. And given his limp track record for uniting his own party, Mitt has a tough slog ahead. How do you hit the reset button and arrive at anything approaching credibility?

President Obama excels at campaigning, to put it mildly. He is a wunderkind, an interview subject and debater able to convey intelligence and gravity as well as charm and humor. To watch him make mincemeat of John McCain on the regular during the 2008 campaign tempted invocation of the slaughter rule.

Mitt Romney is in for it. If nothing else, McCain has a personality and the deserved respect of his country as a decorated war veteran. Romney is a corporate viper, a smarmy, colorless ladder climber who approaches the Presidency like an item to check off his career bucket list. He will say anything to win the election, hitching his wagon to the notion that his fellow Americans are a bunch of ADD-afflicted sheep who will forget everything he has said and done in the past to accept his position of the moment.

I don’t think it’s possible to shake the Etch-A-Sketch hard enough to make the nation’s women forget the attacks on their rights this year. That’s slightly over half the electorate right there. Like I said, game on.

The Latest Schadenfreude: Big Oil Republicans Blame Obama for Gas Prices (March 27, 2012)

Becky SarwateLeave a comment

I live in the city of Chicago, a locale that currently claims the dubious distinction of  the highest priced gasoline in the United States. CBS reported this morning that citizens of the Windy City are paying an average of $4.56 for a gallon of regular unleaded. Over the weekend, I saw a humorous post making the rounds on Facebook. It read, “Wine now cheaper than gas. Drink. Don’t drive.”

The Republican Party, particularly its tepid field of Presidential candidates, is having a field day laying blame for rising prices at the pump at the President’s door. ABC News quoted presumed front-runner Mitt Romney, who offered the following assessment of the situation: “Now I have some suggestions for [Obama]. Maybe it’s related to the fact that you stopped drilling in the Gulf. Maybe it’s related to the fact, Mr. President, that you weren’t out drilling in ANWR. Maybe it’s related to the fact that you said we couldn’t get a pipeline in from Canada known as Keystone. Those things affect gasoline prices, long-term.”

Ah yes, a failure to drill. This response from GOP standard bearers isn’t predictable at all, is it? The gouging of Americans at the gas station has nothing to do with OPEC policy, the exponentially rising demand for fuel in China and India, or the vague threat of war constantly looming over the Middle East. The jarring jump in the cost of gasoline is owing to nothing more (surprise!) than the POTUS’s unwillingness to turn over all available lands and water to the gleeful plundering of the nation’s oil companies. Makes perfect sense, doesn’t it?

And as usual, the right is attempting to have it both ways. While astronomical charges line the pockets of Big Oil executives, they use the situation to foster the illusion that Obama is sandbagging the American people in their quest to drive to work without filing for bankruptcy. I have never been happier to be off the car ownership grid.

As Jerry McGuire said, “We live in a cynical world,” but the present-day Republican party has no boundaries at all. There is no longer an issue left which they will not deceitfully manipulate in order to reap maximum benefits for themselves and their cronies. The number of hot button issues on which the GOP willfully smirks at being on the wrong side of is staggering. Do they really think this is funny? Battles that have already been fought over health care reform and women’s reproductive rights must be argued anew within the justice system and the court of public opinion. The tragic case of Trayvon Martin has cast a much-needed spotlight on the extreme application of the Second Amendment. These are just a couple of examples.

The part that sets a liberal’s teeth on edge is the conviction, difficult to prove, that none of these arguments, including the latest about the genesis of rising gas prices, stem from genuine ideological disagreement. The GOP knows climate change is real, rather than the hokum of conspiracy theorists. They are more than aware that playing Russian roulette with women’s health is a not a facet of the right-to-life debate but instead a concerted effort to marginalize and control the masses. And they damn well know that nothing short of an energy revolution, a movement away from dependency on oil, can affect the long-term pricing of gasoline. It’s basic supply and demand economics.

But it’s not in Republican interests to debate these structural problems in a real way. There’s too much money to be made, too much power to be co-opted. But what happens when the proverbial turnip runs out of blood?