The Catskill Chronicle

By Mort Malkin

The election is over. Romney lost badly. He ran a funny campaign for someone who wanted to be elected — creating adversaries (enemies) instead of friends. He went about the strange campaign relentlessly.

First, Romney said he liked to fire people. As CEO of Bain Capital, he was experienced at reducing the expenses of corporations [by reducing payrolls]. That meant firing workers or sending their jobs overseas. So, numero uno on the adversaries list was workers, especially anyone who has ever been fired or laid off.

Next were animal lovers. In a conversation about pets, Romney opined that his dog, Seamus, liked to ride in a cage on the roof of the car. During a 12-hour trip to Canada, Seamus said he didn’t agree with that opinion — by vomiting. The family stopped briefly to hose down the dog and the car, and it was back on the roof for the rest of the trip. After all, it wasn’t as if the dog were in an open truck, the roof cage protected him from the wind.

Then, Romney added Latinos to the list, particularly those who were undocumented. He judged that they would self deport as the economy continued to go South.

There followed poor people without health insurance. Romney was not concerned with them because “they can always go to an emergency room for treatment.” That would be good practice for them when election day came and they would have to wait in line for hours to vote.

Without losing a pinched step, Romney advised the White House to let the Detroit automakers go bankrupt. He warned that a bailout would destroy the auto industry in the US forever and the government would be out all that money. A year later when the auto companies came back to life and repaid the loans, he said “I’ll take some credit for that.” Well, of course.

To round up the environmental community he announced, “I like coal — (mythical) clean coal. Coal provides jobs. Speaking of clean energy, he also promised to open the Keystone tar sands pipeline to pump the thick black ooze down to Texas refineries where it would be made lighter and shipped abroad to the highest bidder. The pipeline would pass right above the Ogallala aquifer on which all the Midwest wheat and cornfields depend for irrigation. If the aquifer gets polluted by a serious oil spill, the farmers could always plant switchgrass which can grow in arid climates. Global heating? The free market will surely be creative enough to come up with creative geo-technology … like giant beach umbrellas in space to shade the planet from the sun.

Romney was just warming up. To show he was a regular guy, an ordinary sports fan, he noted “I have some great friends who own NASCAR teams.” Why would Americans think he limited his friends to the rich just because he never invited the guys in the pits who changed the tires to his home for dinner?

At the first presidential debate he said he would defund PBS and Sesame Street. Didn’t he know that many of today’s voters grew up with Big Bird and the Cookie Monster? All that government financial support for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting — almost $450 million — money that should be returned to taxpayers.

As for women, Romney left it to a couple of (lunatic) fringe Senate candidates — Todd Aiken and Richard Mourdock. One of them said that in cases of “legitimate rape the female body has ways to shut the whole thing down.” The second candidate said that if a woman becomes pregnant from rape, it was “something God intended to happen.” Paul Ryan, the storm trooper in the war on women, maintained that an embryo had rights as a person, no matter how it came about. Romney still backed both candidates, and proposed defunding Planned Parenthood. That’s Planned Parenthood that provides the means of birth control for poor women to prevent unintended pregnancies.

Then, in one swell foop, Romney belittled the 47% of all Americans who would not vote for him anyway — those on food stamps, those whose homes are being foreclosed, those who cannot afford health insurance, and the seniors who are dependent on Social Security to barely keep their their heads above the poverty line — all those who don’t pay income taxes. Did he also include the 4,000 millionaires who avoided all income taxes?

Mitt Romney was not just out of touch with the people, he was also out of touch with reality. He was so sure that he would win that even when the Las Vegas odds makers gave Obama an 86% chance of winning and Romney only an 8% chance of winning, Romney still didn’t prepare a concession speech. For him it was a November surprise. Karl Rove was even more certain that all the money he raised at Crossroads would turn the tide against the Democrats. When Romney got trounced he (Rove) had some explaining to do to all the millionaire donors who had gotten a poor return on their investment. Ever the opportunist, Karl decided to try out an explanation as an audition for a new career. His explication was that the reason for Romney’s loss was that Obama suppressed the vote. You see, Obama told undecided voters that even if they don’t vote Democratic, rather than vote for that “rich guy who only cares about himself,” they should not bother to vote at all. Classic satire worthy of Stephen Colbert.

Now we have to find some real work for Mitt Romney.