Saturday, June 09, 2012

CAN THE GOP WIN THE PRESIDENCY WITH TWO VICE PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATES ON THE TICKET?

Yesterday, when I was pondering the whole "private sector is doing fine" business, I watched a clip of Mitt Romney's response -- not just the fifteen seconds in which he says the problem in this country is that we have too damn many firefighters and teachers, but an extended clip in which, about two minutes in, he mocks President Obama's assertion at a recent fund-raiser that he's accomplished a lot of things on his personal to-do list:





The first part of the clip (the bit about firefighters and teachers) is fist-shaking Randian self-righteousness. The bit about the to-do list is out-and-out mockery -- it's practically Palinesque. You half-expect Romney to say, "How's that to-do list workin' out for ya?" And though he can't crank up the relish of mockery that's mean-girl Palin's stock in trade, he clearly enjoys being the insult comic.

You think Romney never shows his human side? This is his human side. It ain't pretty.

I say this all the time, but it looks to me as if he's going to run an entire presidential campaign without ever attempting to be uplifting. In this speech, he sounds like a VP candidate -- he's his own attack dog.

If he keep[s this up, that means the GOP ticket will have two vice presidential candidates on it. Will that work? It's possible that one VP candidate (Romney) will be the attack dog while the other VP candidate (Portman? Pawlenty?) will be the safe, dull nonentity. Or maybe it'll be two Palins -- Romney/Christie.

The third possibility is that he'll reverse the ticket -- he'll pick, say, Marco Rubio, and hope Rubio will be the guy with the uplifting backstory and the Kennedyesque pretty-boy presidential appeal.

But if not, he's going to run a dispiriting, snarling, cackling campaign. Has America ever voted for that in a presidential election? For a Nixon who doesn't even offer "Bring Us Together"?
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4 comments:

  1. Victor11:23 AM

    Fewer cops and firefighters, Mitt?
    Really?

    You ARE aware, I assume, and maybe that's a stupid assumption, that the vast majority of American need police because, unlike you and your rich pals, WE can't afford to hire our own former Xe commando's as private security forces.

    And that we need firefighters, because, unlike you and your rich pals, if our home burns down, we can't just move to our OTHER house.
    Or, our other other one.
    Or, another other other one.
    Or, another other other other one.
    Or, another other another other other one.
    Etc...

    What an elitist ass!
    Mitt Romney = Little Lord Flaunt-it-alot!

    And what a vicious little greedy man Mitt is - with nary a new idea.

    If Mitt had won in 2008, we'd already be a shit-hole.

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  2. : smintheus ::3:56 PM

    Bob Dole without the charisma.

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  3. Victor4:59 PM

    smintheus,
    I strongly DISAGREE!

    Bob Dole, for all of his myriad faults, had a feckin' semi-likeable sense of humor.

    Watch Mitt deliver his "joke" - he "Ha-ha's," and looks like the guy who put the poisonous snake in his team-mate's shorts.
    He's enjoying the pain of making fun of, and ridiculing, his victim(s)!

    There's a lot of "Baby Doc" Bush getting his rocks off by stuffing fire-crackers up frog's asses an' blowin' 'em up in this Mitt boy!

    FSM help the rest of us if he and his pals ever get power.

    Our future will be so "bright," we'll have to wear telescopes and anti-aircraft search-lights.
    And PRAY a lot.
    A WHOLE LOT!!!

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  4. BH8:37 PM

    Offhand I can't myself recall a full-on-nasty, uplift-free ticket that's won. Nixon/Agnew in '68 was close but did, as you mentioned, have that "bring-us-together" BS - and Wallace/LeMay, who by comparison made Nixon/Agnew look almost human.

    But these may be different times. We're post-Citizens United, and in an atmosphere created by over 3 years of nonstop, massive doses of poison to the body politic administered via every imaginable means. Might be the time has come for Nasty/Nasty.

    ReplyDelete