Romney Disqualifies Himself from the Presidency

Daily Kos is right: This smirk at presser about Middle East tragedy is horrible.

In the back and forth of an election season, I have to admit there is some joy in supporting one candidate's position and relishing when his opponent opens mouth and inserts foot. Even if the outcome of elections do have meaning, observers, like myself, can enjoy watching a politician who we oppose self-immolate. As an example, take Sarah Palin interviewed by Katie Couric.

This isn't one of those times. Mitt Romney's craven attempt to condemn Barack Obama and his administration for "apologizing" for American values, long before the key facts were known in the drama unfolding in Cairo and Benghazi, is not merely ill-advised but bizarre, thoughtless and contemptible. Quite simply, Mitt Romney is not ready to be president, it's doubtful he ever will.

Because of this, all Americans should take pause and reflect whether they actually would ever want him to be. I sure don't.

Seasoned hands at the game of government and foreign policy are weighing in, and it doesn't look good for Romney.

BuzzFeed's Ben Smith:

Mitt Romney's sharply-worded attack on President Obama over a pair of deadly riots in Muslim countries last night has backfired badly among foreign policy hands of both parties, who cast it as hasty and off-key, released before the facts were clear at what has become a moment of tragedy.

NBC's First Read:

Yesterday we noted that Mitt Romney, down in the polls after the convention, was throwing the kitchen sink at President Obama. Little did we know the kitchen sink would include -- on the anniversary  of 9/11 -- one of the most over-the-top and (it turns out)  incorrect attacks of the general-election campaign . Last night after 10:00 pm ET, Romney released a statement on the attacks on the U.S. embassies in Egypt and Libya. After saying he was “outraged” by these attacks and the death of an American consulate worker, Romney said, “It's disgraceful that the Obama administration's first response was not to condemn attacks on our diplomatic missions, but to sympathize with those who waged the attacks.” Yet after learning every piece of new information about those attacks, the Romney statement looks worse and worse -- and simply off-key. First, Romney was referring to a statement that the U.S. embassy in Egypt issued condemning the “efforts by misguided individuals to hurt the religious feelings of Muslims.” But that embassy statement, which the White House has distanced itself from, was in reference to an anti-Islam movie and anti-Islam pastor Terry Jones, and it came out BEFORE the embassy attacks began. Then this morning, we learned that the U.S. ambassador to Libya, Chris Stevens, and others died in one of the attacks.

Time's Mark Halperin (via Talking Points Memo):

Unless the Romney campaign has gamed this crisis out in some manner completely invisible to the Gang of 500, his doubling down on criticism of the President for the statement coming out of Cairo is likely to be seen as one of the most craven and ill-advised tactical moves in this entire campaign.

CNN's Peter Hamby:

Facing criticism for its aggressive and politically-charged response to Tuesday's violent attacks on the American embassies in Egypt and Libya, Mitt Romney's presidential campaign is quietly advising Republicans how to respond to questions about the campaign's handling of the episode.

In talking points currently being pushed to Republican leaders and top surrogates, the Romney campaign recommends attacking President's Obama "foreign policy of weakness" and dismissing questions about how the campaign responded to the crisis last night.

 Wall St. Journal's Peggy Noonan (via Politico):

The Wall Street Journal’s Peggy Noonan is criticizing Mitt Romney’s response to the death of a U.S. diplomat in Libya, telling Fox News today she doesn’t feel that the Republican presidential nominee “has been doing himself any favors” in the past few hours.

“I was thinking as he spoke, I think I belong to the old school of thinking that in times of great drama and heightened crisis, and in times when something violent has happened to your people, I always think discretion is the better way to go,” Noonan said. “When you step forward in the midst of a political environment and start giving statements on something dramatic and violent that has happened, you're always leaving yourself open to accusations that you are trying to exploit things politically.”

WaPo's Chris Cillizza:

Viewed broadly, Romney is clearly taking a major risk in his decision to double-down on his denunciation of the Obama Administration for its role (or lack thereof) in the Libya attack and its aftermath. It’s an approach that will play well to the party’s base but it’s hard to imagine they need to be any more enthusiastic than they already are about the November election.

Romney’s approach hands the Obama team an opening to cast the challenger as not ready for the job, someone who jumps to conclusions before all the facts are known. And, at least at the moment, that appears to be the stronger (political) argument.

And I'd maintain it's the strong human argument. Mitt Romney, already suspect in most areas of the political arena, now has failed in one of its most important ones. We can't elect this man, period.

Another Romney smirk via Daily Kos. Disgusting.

Final thought: As we move through the day, and possibly the week, Mitt Romney will receive more criticism for last night's and this morning's "foreign policy" antics, some from the media, some from Democrats, and some from his own party. It may be the wrong time to take grim satisfaction from this, but it's the right time to evaluate what bullet we may be dodging.

I'm Down with Snoop Dogg

I totally found this at Andrew Sullivan's The Dish:

Now that's what I call messaging.

Romney's Scattershot Campaign

Ann: Mitt, don't screw this up by saying something

No, I'm not saying that Mitt Romney and his running mate Paul Ryan have decided to emulate Dick Cheney and shoot voters in the face, but they may have embarked on a virtual version of Cheney's famous face-shot heard 'round the world.

If Mitt and Paul were authoring a script for a movie, it might be aptly titled, "Hunt for Red October Voters."

If it's true, as many polls suggest, that there aren't many undecided voters left, then, yes, each campaign has to scrape and shimmy for the few remaining unconvinced. So let me put forth an explanation for the Republican ticket's apparent scattershot approach to convincing the unconvincible.

Shooting the nation in the face as a campaign strategy?

Since Romney and Ryan are suffering from a really big disadvantage, i.e. people don't like their policies, they first decided that it was best that people not be able to figure them out. This has not, repeat, not, worked out. People either think they're great because they're, well, conservatives, or they think they're shifty and untrustworthy.

But the number of diehards plus the number of hoodwinked rarely add up to 50.1 percent. So how to get to that magic number? Tomfoolery! Presto, winning margin.

What is this tomfoolery? Romney and Ryan will come out, temporarily, on both sides of every issue. In fact, if they can figure out how to be on four sides of an issue, so much the better. If they can so confuse voters which side is on which side, some people might stumble into election day not knowing who's who.

Romney's secret plan? I've got it here in my hand.

Barack Obama has to be careful here. He is, by all accounts, not simply pushing his own policy positions but also pushing back against Romney's and Ryan's as well, and also pointing out that his opponents don't actually have positions. If, however, while condemning his rivals, Obama doesn't clarify his positions well enough, then voters, especially the undecided, won't really know who took what position.

In that case, the deciders might just flip a coin or go for the candidates with the best jaws. Clearly Mitt and Paul have the best jaws.

Undecided focus group: C'mon people, focus.

It's long been demonstrably true -- and please forgive me, undecided voters, for what I'm about to say -- that undecided voters pretty much can't decide because they're the last to figure out what the fuck is going on, what the fuck they believe, and what the fuck the candidates believe. If they were quick-witted or well-informed, let's face it, they would have already made up their fucking minds.

There, I said it.

So, pundits who think that Romney and Ryan are running the weakest, least organized, messaging campaign in history may not fully understand that they just might be doing this on purpose. I offer a different theory: They're doing it on purpose.

Answer me any of the following questions:

• What's Romney's position on tax cuts? (hint: we don't know anymore)
• What's Romney's position on closing tax loopholes? (hint: we've never known)
• What's Romney's position on healthcare reform? (hint: we don't know anymore)
• What's Ryan's position on Medicare reform (hint: we don't really know)
• What's Romney's position on Ryan's budget? (hint: Ryan has a budget?)
• What's Ryan's position on his own budget? (hint: What budget? I like Romney's budget)
• What's Romney's budget? (hint: Ryan's, except maybe no)
• What are Romney and Ryan's positions on Social Security? (hint: don't ask)
• What's Romney's position on the economy? (hint: he's in favor of it)
• What's Romney's position on jobs? (hint: he's in favor of them, too)
• What's Ryan's position on the deficit? (hint: he's a hawk except for during the whole Bush administration)
• What do Romney and Ryan actually believe? (hint: about what?)

Okay, swamp oil is close enough.

 Anybody who has ever tried to sell snake oil (Was there ever any actual snake oil?) or pull off a neat magic trick or get the defense to go that way when you're running this way knows that the secret to the art of bamboozlement is misdirection. If they ain't looking or ain't listening or ain't thinking, you can convince anyone -- for a time -- that you're here when you're actually there.

Are Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan geniuses or idiots? We'll know eventually. The trouble is, what if they change their minds on this strategy, say, tomorrow? I mean, what are the odds of that?

Romney: I Was for Paul Ryan before I Was Against Him

Sometimes campaigns go off the rails. It just happens. John McCain picks Sarah Palin, or John McCain suspends his campaign because of the financial meltdown, and then sits at the table with Obama and sulks. This stuff just happens. Hell, Democratic VP pick Thomas Eagleton in 1972 had shock therapy, so the Republicans aren't the only ones vulnerable to the campaign misstep that ends it for them.

And this latest, weird twist isn't the worst thing I've seen, but it cries out to be recognized, at least in the category of "Couldn't you people have seen this coming and avoided it? I mean, really?"

Of course I'm talking about Mitt Romney going on "Meet the Press," something he doesn't really like doing because he has trouble controlling the message when somebody gets to ask "questions," and then condemning people for wanting to cut defense spending.

Wasn't there somebody in the Romney campaign whose job it is to be sure that Mitt Romney doesn't condemn his own running mate, Paul Ryan?

And what makes matters worse, wasn't there someone on the team that is supposed to warn Paul Ryan that he can't just say "It wasn't me" on national television and get away with it?

Let's look at the video:

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Romney's main comments on the defense cuts come at about the :50 mark.

Now let's watch Paul Ryan being interviewed about this by CBS's Norah O'Donnell:

I don't see how they spin their way out of this. Mitt Romney was for his running mate before he was against him. And Paul, Paul, how long do you think you can hide behind word salad to avoid criticisms for past missteps?

This is no way to run a campaign, assuming someone's running it at all.

Jonathan Chait Rips Mitt Romney to Shreads on His Health-Care Plan

Oh boy. Some days it doesn't pay to get out of bed. In that case, Mitt Romney should be hiding under the covers. At the very least, he should avoid Jonathan Chait's article about him in New York Magazine. It's entitled, "Mitt Temporarily Forgets Plan to Screw the Sick." Ouch.

Chait quotes Mittens on Meet the Press:

I'm not getting rid of all of healthcare reform. Of course there are a number of things that I like in healthcare reform that I'm going to put in place. One is to make sure that those with pre-existing conditions can get coverage.

Then Chait points out the obvious:

This would be big news, if true. Finding a way for people with preexisting conditions to get coverage requires some pretty major reforms. Obama’s approach (which was also, of course, Mitt Romney’s approach in Massachusetts) was to ban insurance companies from discriminating against people with preexisting conditions, which in turn required an individual mandate to make sure people didn’t only start buying insurance when they were sick, which in turn required subsidies to people who couldn’t afford insurance. You could find another way to do it, like create special insurance pools for sick people, but that would require spending a lot of money (because sick people are expensive to insure), and Romney and Ryan’s budgets are premised on massive cuts to domestic spending.

In other words, it’s not true. Romney doesn’t have a plan, or even a vague outline of a plan, to cover people with preexisting conditions. To preempt a conservative freak-out, Romney’s campaign clarified to National Review that its actual position remains, “Governor Romney will ensure that discrimination against individuals with pre-existing conditions who maintain continuous coverage is prohibited.”

 Chait further points out that the key phrase is "continuous coverage." All Romney had to do is include that clarifier when he spoke to David Gregory. Romney did not, probably because he wanted to look compassionate, at least until the press caught on, which was death-defyingly quick.

At the bottom of the article you'll find links to two related articles that point out other blatant deceptions Mitt Romney has offered on Obama's health-care law and Romney's own in Massachusetts.

Here's one -- How Romney Advocated Obamacare and Lied About It

 Here's an excerpt:

His [Romney's] solution was simple. He seized upon the one major difference between his plan and Obama’s, which was that Obama favored a public health insurance option. The public plan had commanded enormous public attention, and Romney used to it frame Masscare as a conservative reform relying on private health insurance, and against Obama’s proposal to create a government plan that, Romney claimed, would balloon into a massive entitlement. Andrew Kaczynski collects several televised appearances and one op-ed in which Romney holds up Masscare as a national model.

This tactic backfired when Obama had to jettison the public plan, and Republicans came to focus on the individual mandate as the locus of evil in Obamacare. What was once a Republican idea in good standing was now, suddenly, unconstitutional and the greatest threat to freedom in American history.

This left Romney in an awkward spot.

 I'd say it did. Here's Romney on CBS in 2009:

And on ABC the same year:

And on NBC also the same year:

Mitt is in a world of hurt now because he can't explain this stuff away, and it appears that journalists are finally growing a spine when it comes to challenging these evasions.

It didn't help that Romney penned an op-ed (also linked in the Chait piece) advising Obama to use Massachusetts as a template for his health-care reform. Here's an excerpt:

Republicans are not the party of "no" when it comes to health care reform. This Republican is proud to be the first governor to insure all his state's citizens. Other Republicans such as Rep. Paul Ryan and Sens. Bob Bennett and John McCain, among others, have proposed their own plans. Republicans will join with the Democrats if the president abandons his government insurance plan, if he endeavors to craft a plan that does not burden the nation with greater debt, if he broadens his scope to reduce health costs for all Americans, and if he is willing to devote the rigorous effort, requisite time and bipartisan process that health care reform deserves.

Really. The president did abandon his government insurance plan (the public option), and, oh boy, did those Republicans jump on board! Not.


Here's the other Chait article on Mitt's evasions -- Romney's Health Care Evasions: A History

Here's an excerpt:

Romney’s current description of his 2008 health care position is simple and concise: “I said, not national program, state by state program.” He did say that. But it does not actually mean very much. During the last election cycle, Romney didn’t have a very concrete health care plan. He had a collection of goals and buzzwords, proposing a series of goals, like universal coverage and cost control, without any specific means to achieve them.

In his quest to make himself the conservative’s conservative four years ago, Romney frequently touted the “federalist” and “state-by-state” character of his “plan,” which he used to distinguish it from Democratic schemes. But this is more of a framing device than a fundamental cleavage. After all, the Affordable Care Act can also be described as a “state-by-state” plan – it sets up a series of state-level exchanges where people can shop for private insurance.

 Finally, here's Mittens explaining how he's going to "repeal" Obamacare (and change Medicare):

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Hat tips to Jonathan Chait, BuzzFeed, Huffington Post, Talking Points Memo and Daily Kos.

Here's a bonus video of Romney Senior Adviser Tara Wall trying to not talk about tax loopholes on MSNBC today:

Holy smokes, Mitt's in trouble if Tara Wall is on his debate prep team. Oh, wait. She is.

Why Barack Obama Is Winning

Nate Silver

Nate Silver, a man very, very good at interpreting both political polling and economic facts and figures that also influence elections, wrote a blog post at his FiveThirtyEight perch at the New York Times yesterday. It was entitled, "Conventions May Put Obama in Front-Runner’s Position." And so they have. Barack Obama, by my estimate, has gotten something near a six-point bounce. Since Mitt Romney appears to have had a net negative bounce, having lost a point after his own convention performance, the Republican candidate is what you might call behind the eight ball.

Pundits of all stripes continue to wonder how it is that Barack Obama could be leading when the economy is so weak, especially in light of the fact that incumbents rarely if ever win when the nation is in such a condition.

This is one appealing family, you got to admit.

Now, I'm such an optimist that I feel strongly Barack Obama will win a second term, but I'm not so reckless as to assume it's a lock. There are still ways and conditions -- and even "October Surprises" -- that can sway the election in Mitt Romney's direction, especially considering the crazy money available to his cause in light of the Citizens United decision. Still, given all that, Romney is currently losing, and that's a cause of consternation to a whole lot of people, journalists and political operatives alike.

Why? It's not so hard to figure. Let us count the whys.

1. Barack Obama, regardless of the state of the economy, remains an appealing person. He has an engaging smile, he's really intelligent, and he talks real well. Not only that, he's got a genuinely appealing family. It doesn't matter what Michelle Malkin or Ann Coulter call her, Michelle Obama quite simply rocks, as a mom, as a speaker, as a style setter. She's as engaging as Barack is, and her kids are just plain cute -- and genuine, too.
2. Mitt Romney is, well, I have to say it, a phony. That doesn't mean he's not blue-blooded, well-educated, successful in business, or well-healed and handsome. He's all those things. But maybe because of the business he chose, private equity, which has a dirty little secret in its very conceit, being that it doesn't really care that every venture it backs succeeds as long as the company milks the situation for serious profit, Mitt Romney ended up looking good without being good. And that's just not that appealing. As for his family, they're a fine crew, but they're just as cookie-cutter as he is, and poor Ann Romney, lovely though she is, is just not made out to show Mitt's best side, probably because his best side is not much better than his worst side. He is what he is, and Ann can't change that. And then they send poor Ann out to explain why Mitt's not releasing his tax returns? Man, she drew the short straw on that one.
3. American citizens like Obama's policy positions better than Romney's. This is an especially frustrating thing for the rump Republican Party (and they are a rump party, let's face it) in that it shows them for what they are: a group declining in both numbers and sellable ideas, not to mention their squeezed demographic nature. The 1% may have a lot of money, but they are, after all, just 1% of the population, and blue-collar Christian males and the women they get to dominate just aren't as widespread as they used to be. So Mitt Romney can fire up his itty-bitty base with his phony-baloney "I'm not removing God from my coins" or "Obama wants to remove work from the welfare requirements so shiftless blacks can drink malt liquor on the corner all day again" or "how dare Obama gut Medicare with those dastardly cuts to providers!!" Mitt's base may scream and holler and bobble their signs up and down, but I've got a sneaky feeling that in the back of their minds even they are thinking, "Is this all he's got?"
4. I've been fond of saying that George W. Bush was so bad a president that the United States of America elected a black man as president! Think about that for a minute. Then I think that we can only conclude that Mitt Romney is so bad a candidate that we're about to give a black man a second term! Sorry, Mitt, I can't help but think it's true.
5. The conventions told an important tale and laid down some very serious markers. Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan made a stirring case, but it was based on shifting sand. You can build pretty castles based on nonsense and unsubstantiated word constructions, but if they wash away at the first high tide, you got nothing. It doesn't matter that Ann Romney gave a pretty speech. The net loss of one point in the polls sums up what America thought of the combined effort. With Obama and his team, highlighted by stunning performances of Michelle, Bill Clinton, Joe Biden, and yes, Obama himself, giving such a lift to his campaign and the Democratic cause as a whole, there's no way not to admit they crushed their Republican rivals in the political convention game. The six-point bounce says it all.
6. Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan can't just make shit up, say it with a whole bunch of conviction and expect to win with it. I just don't see it happening. What's more, they seem to be trying a new, or at least refined or redesigned or repackaged, set of messages almost every day. "No, I didn't mean I'd vote for personhood, who told you that?" "Romney's running the campaign, not me, his ideas and policies decide this, not mine!" "Rape is rape!" "I'm totally pro-life, but let's face it, Roe v. Wade is settled law." "I will repeal Obamacare on Day One!!" "Oh, maybe not all of it..." "Oh, I didn't mention Afghanistan or our troops, but I did say the word military once, and I'm sure they get that." No, Mitt, they don't. And Paul, you do have a voting record, and people do look at it and draw conclusions. You're decidedly not a deficit hawk, you only play one on TV.
7. People trust Obama even if they're unsure they're totally behind his policies. But with Romney, they have a little trouble trusting the man, not simply because you get a sneaky feeling that he only just saying those things, which is not hard to believe, but also because his rope-a-dope "I'll tell you what I really think right after I win the fight" strategy offers such thin gruel, if you don't mind my mixed metaphors. After all, that what Romney and Ryan actually are: a series of mixed metaphors that you can't quite be sure of their meaning. But they're good-looking!

Good-looking but cookie-cutter, n'est pas?

There, I reached seven, so they must be highly effective points, and so I'll stop.

In political campaigns, things change right up to the last minute. Hell, in 2000, they kept changing right up to the last Supreme Court decision weeks after. But my guess is Barack Obama will likely win this thing, and there's not much Mitt Romney can do about it, even with all that Karl Rove, Koch Brothers, and Sheldon Adelson money. The Beatles said it best: Money can't buy you love.

Update. Kos says Romney had an actually net positive bounce from his convention:

They had a 1.9 point bounce. President Barack Obama has a 5.5 point bounce. And counting.

 And I have no reason to doubt him. Read his whole post, called "Romney campaign claims again that it is not losing, when it is." It's fun and informative.

Mitt Romney's Predator Nation

Mitt's World, starring Clint Eastwood.

It hasn't so far worked out that Mitt Romney's years in the private sector make a strong case that he'd be a good fit as president of the United States. On the contrary, his Bain Capital years have brought into strong relief the differences between the current Republican view of free enterprise and the Democratic view as espoused by Barack Obama.

Mitt Romney desperately wants Americans to believe that he "builds" businesses -- or used to, anyway -- and President Obama does not. This need for a job-creator focus is the whole rationale for the "you didn't build that" misappropriation. Of course, Obama was making the point that entrepreneurs need the education and infrastructure advantage of an advanced nation in order to succeed in the American or world marketplace, and most media observers have long since debunked Mitt Romney's misuse of the president's misspoken language. Any English teacher knows that Obama placed the entrepreneur's business project between the real antecedent -- infrastructure, business climate, trained workers -- and the pronoun needing that antecedent, being the "that" in "you didn't build that." Romney is cruising on the misunderstanding that "that" is the entrepreneur's business instead of the generally agreed "that" as infrastructure he didn't build.

Obama wished he hadn't "built" that sentence.

Whew. But true. So why does Romney cling to this sliver of a syntactical misstep for the basis of his campaign? It's because he wants to frame it as an us-versus-them debate. Us Republicans believe in fierce individualism, a world in which Americans are self-reliant and successful in isolation, winning by personal grit and determination. Them Democrats want to succeed on the backs of everybody else. Democrats succeed only by appropriating the sweat of others. In other words, Democrats are the slacker party while Republicans succeed the old-fashioned way, they "build" it.

This is pure fantasy, but it's the stuff of dreams. For Romney it's the dream of becoming president. For his conservative supporters, it's the dream that they control their lives. Dreaming, however, doesn't make it true.

That's because this is a dichotomy without a shred of evidence, but this is the frame Mitt Romney needs, wants to use. It fits in beautifully with the narrow scope of the shrinking conservative Republican Party of 2012.

Lincoln freed the slaves and preserved the Union.

This Republican Party, now the party of Romney and no longer the party of Lincoln because Romney wants to exclude the slackers -- read blacks on welfare -- while Lincoln was the first president to include African-Americans in the family of all Americans, simply by penning and signing the Emancipation Proclamation.

Mitt Romney's base is undereducated, working-class, Christian white men and the Christian working-class women who hang with them. His base does also include a lot of the 1% because of his tax and deregulation policy positions. It's a weird coalition, the ridiculously rich who have it all allied with the disenfranchised that have practically nothing.

The nation that Mitt Romney has inhabited and succeeded in is for him and his followers very much a predator nation. The whole rationale for Bain Capital has been that they win whether or not the people they help, with their capital infusions, win or not. That's because, one way or another, Bain got its fees, dividends, and capital infusion back in return. It's win-win. Because Bain took its bite whether the companies it preyed on survived or not.

Walden Pond: Thoreau went to mom's for dinner most nights.

That's just fine with Mitt Romney, and counter-intuitively, it's just fine with his white male Christian base. The idea that, as fierce individuals, packing heat and ready to kick ass, they'll succeed on their own terms works perfectly for them. That they have almost a daily diminishing opportunity to actually pull off such a success isn't something they can or want to be aware of. That's because they're deep in their dreams of being the high-plains drifter, the one that rides the Wild West, the cowboy samurai, armed to the teeth and ready to win at all costs, as long as they alone perpetrate their victories.

And that's why an aging actor, beloved, yes, by his fans who are happy to inhabit his fantasy world of Dirty Harrys and Josie Wales outlaws, belonged in the spotlight on Mitt's Big Night. Yes, that's why getting Clint Eastwood out on that conservative Republican stage seemed like nothing less than an epic political coup. Too bad the swooning fans in the seats -- and the political operatives and advisers in the wings -- hadn't taken into account that an 82-year-old actor was taking the stage and most certainly not the Dirty Harry they had hoped for, had crazily expected.

Listen, I'm a big Mick Jagger fan, but there's a point when I no longer wish to watch him strut the rock-and-roll stage. And that point has long since passed.

I digress, but only slightly. There's a world Mitt Romney still wants to inhabit. He calls it the land of opportunity. I'd rather view it as the Predator Nation. Bain Capital, by its business model, eats some businesses and lets others live, even thrive. As long as they get their taste, the men of Bain don't really care which happens.

That approach to life and business is, let's face it, essentially amoral. It's odd that the rump Republican Party is largely made up of white Christian males who mostly appreciate the Romney approach to success, with its singular lack of a moral compass. Not very Christian in my estimation.

A man without a compass?

Mitt Romney, with his story of success based on the predator-prey, amoral business model, has no standing to become the leader, the moral compass for the nation. For that's what a president must be. To lead one needs to know where they're going and why. And that takes a strong moral compass. Romney seems to lack one.

In this contest, in this election, then, I have to reject Mitt Romney and accept Barack Obama. It's not a hard choice. But in choosing, we're also choosing the unspoken and the symbolic. So much is unspoken, like guns and religion. Let's face it, Barack Obama rejects the armed-to-the-teeth paradigm, whether it's fiercely independent American with guns coming out of every orifice or the Department of Defense so well-armed that every nation on Earth must fear us.

Mitt Romney silently approves of his white Christian male base. His position on abortion and birth control has to match his base's: women do not own their bodies, their men, whether their fathers or their husbands, own them. Men make laws, make money, build "that." Women build babies.

We could go through every point of public policy, every tenet of the free enterprise system, every canon of every Christian sect, and find a duality, a dichotomy worth tussling about. But, in the end, I want to build it together with the hopes that all of us succeed together. Mitt Romney and his ilk want to build it alone as fierce high-plains driftin' samurai. Fine. Don't invite me. I'm not coming.

Unforgiven: what winning looks like.

There's a reason one of Clint Eastwood's most memorable roles was the iconoclast in the western "Unforgiven," for which he won an Oscar. Eastwood played an aging gunslinger who wanted to give up gunslinging for a more civilized life. In the end he couldn't, and though he may have triumphed, he remained, like the title of the film, unforgiven for his moral lapses. To win is not necessarily to be saved, in the Christian sense. Would that Mitt Romney and the Republicans could appreciate such wisdom.


Update. I forgot this fabulous Robert Reich video explain how Bain Capital works. Priceless: