Romney or Obama: Another Time for.. (A Chew Toy For the Kitties)

As the merry-go-round of the GOP primary continues, the present darling of fickle voters is Newt Gingrich, Like a phoenix he’s risen from the ashes to claim, with typical humility, “I’m going to be the nominee,” dismissing all other candidates as a trifling irrelevancy. Unfortunately the belated choice of Gingrich is no choice at all, for there can be little doubt how the questionably conservative and enormously polarizing Gingrich would fare against a personally popular Obama in the General Election.

There is, at present only one real choice to make regarding the next president. It’s either Romney or Obama.

A vote for any other Republican candidate is, to varying degrees, a decision to keep Obama in the White House for four more years. Deep down inside, Republican voters must know that Gingrich, 68, despite his many attributes, simply cannot beat Obama in the General Election. Neither can any of the other Republican contenders, most of whom don’t even excite Republicans beyond single digits. Only Romney has what it takes to go the distance.

Mitt Romney burst onto the political stage in 1994 with a Senate run against liberal lion Ted Kennedy. He did so in the most hostile political atmosphere possible – Massachusetts – a Kennedy in Massachusetts! It’s perhaps true that Romney worked hard to appear as a social moderate in order to short-circuit the hot button social issues that normally prevent any Republican from garnering a second look from notoriously liberal Bay State voters. His moderate appearance allowed him to attack Kennedy on policy grounds, and he gave Kennedy – all tolled a 46 year incumbent – perhaps the biggest scare of his career. Some would simply call this an intelligent election strategy. For others, it’s proof positive that he’s a perpetual “RINO;” a Nelson Rockefeller in conservative clothing.

In reality, businessman Romney was simply a pragmatist. Romney’s pragmatism was a hallmark of his stint as Massachusetts governor, but his biggest failing, according to conservatives was his state health care plan. The plan contained a mandate that all citizens purchase private health insurance. In retrospect, it is a thoroughly un-Republican viewpoint, but at the time, the plan, which was conceived by the Heritage Foundation (the nation’s foremost conservative policy institute), seemed like a practical answer to the state’s health care problem. The plan was supported by Heritage and endorsed by conservative leaders including Newt Gingrich. Romney’s true intention was to force the roughly 8% of individuals who refused to purchase health insurance, and who were freeloading off the system by utilizing public (often emergency) services at taxpayer expense as their primary health care, to take responsibility for themselves. The results-oriented Romney probably never conceived that his über-conservative-endorsed plan, would come back to haunt him, or that it differed in some material way from the other mandates that states impose on their citizens all the time, like, for instance, mandatory auto insurance. But that’s just what happened.

But Romney is no secret liberal. In looking at the Mitt Romney of 2011, it’s hard to find a position he supports that is in any way outside the conservative mainstream. Indeed, Romney differs little from even Santorum or Bachmann on the major issues, but unlike the others, he has both executive experience, as well as exactly the right kind of private sector leadership skill. But voters, particularly tea party voters, are simply reluctant to trust Romney because of his past campaign messaging and his conservative evolution. But isn’t that evolution a good thing? Indeed, when someone moves your way politically, like Reagan did, it’s typically seen as progress, not a perpetual source of inconsistency and mistrust. Still, some conservatives are completely foreclosed to the idea of Romney. They would much prefer to go down fighting with a ‘true conservative;’ they would rather knowingly elect Obama again than ‘compromise’ in any way on the GOP nominee. This philosophy, while exceedingly foolish, certainly flies in the face of the advice put forth by President Reagan, who said, “I would much prefer to get 80 percent of what I want than to go off the cliff with the flag flying.” Of course, again, it’s hard to see how conservatives are getting any less than 95% or more of what they want from Romney, based on his platform.

As of late, these same voters, so reluctant to trust Romney, have landed on Gingrich to be their man. It’s a curious choice. If being a reliable, unimpeachable conservative is the standard for securing the nomination (or at least garnering heavy primary support), it is nearly impossible to see how Gingrich measures up. It was Gingrich that worked for Nelson Rockefeller, and voted as a Congressman in 1979, to establish the hated Department of Education. He supported the individual mandate that makes Romney anathema to so many conservatives. He did television spots with Pelosi to raise awareness about global warming. He ripped into rising GOP star Paul Ryan’s budget plan as “right wing social engineering,” he supported TARP, the very bailout legislation that gave rise to the tea party movement, and Gingrich even co-sponsored a bill to reinstate the Fairness Doctrine; a clear threat to the First Amendment. Gingrich has supported cap-n-trade, believes in ethanol subsidies, and is a proponent of a form of amnesty for illegal immigrants. Newt Gingrich isn’t a bad person, indeed there’s much about him to like and admire, but if an unblemished conservative record is required to be the GOP nominee, Gingrich doesn’t make the cut, not by a long shot.

Similarly, Romney isn’t a bad person. Indeed, by all accounts he’s an exceedingly decent person, a family man with a strong marriage of 42 years, and has been a success at both business and governance. At present, given Gingrich’s stance on amnesty, subsidies and others, Romney is arguably more conservative than Gingrich. Given his reputation as a dynamite businessman and a respected ‘fixer’ of failing companies and bankrupt organizations (like the 2002 Winter Olympics), Romney seems like exactly the right man at exactly the right time.

If electability, rather than an unbroken chain of conservative purity is your standard, there is no Republican even remotely as electable as Romney. It is an inescapable reality, and the sooner that Republican primary voters wake up from the delusion that there is a perfect conservative to run against Obama, or that trying to shove the round peg of a Gingrich into the conservative square hole won’t work, the sooner we can all prepare for the titanic billion+ dollar fight ahead with Obama.

There is every expectation that as the Gingrich balloon grows, it will also eventually burst; brought down by a salivating mainstream media and a trainload of personal and political adversaries spanning decades of public life. Gingrich, if given enough room, will self-destruct or be destroyed as he always does. For their part, team Romney should avoid panicking (as the media suggests they’re doing), regain their steady General Election-oriented footing, and work on the critical organization that will deliver Romney votes.

For team Romney, easy does it. Or that’s what they should remember. Having watched challenger after challenger rise and fall this primary season, while Romney has remained consistent, the Romney team should be careful not to overreact. Yes, Gingrich unexpectedly poses the most serious threat to Romney, and time is running out before Iowa, and more importantly New Hampshire, but the decision to go on the attack is not entirely a wise one – and certainly not for the candidate himself. Romney’s team should work through surrogates to help differentiate the two and cast doubt on Gingrich’s leadership quality, temperment, conservative bona fides and electability (all fair game), but Romney himself must remain the happy warrior. Romney must focus narrowly on turning around the economy and building a better America, while keeping his fire trained on Obama. A nasty Romney is a loser (that goes for debates as well).

For Romney himself, it’s time to speak to the American people. The real bar to Romney’s rise isn’t so much a problem with his record, but the perception of it, and him. It’s an emotional response by voters, and it requires an emotional remedy. It is time to accelerate the roll-out of Romney that is undoubtedly planned for the General Election, and which has been wisely contained for fears of over-exposure. Romney can and must begin speaking to our gut; to appear to be a reliable agent of prudent conservative reform, displaying a Reaganesque optimism and a positive, pro-growth vision for the country. This is even more true given what we know about his rivals. Gingrich is constitutionally incapable of being the sunny optimist – his will be a wonkish, scoffing campaign characterized by impatient outbursts of ‘father knows best’ rhetoric. It may play to the fire in conservative bellies at present, but it won’t go over in the general. Similarly, Obama cannot now run as the sanguine agent of change. We know his only chance, given his paltry record, is to keep on doing exactly what he’s been doing – sow class discord and hyperbolic fear about his GOP opposition. His will be a negative campaign, despite the veneer of ‘hope and change’ they attempt to cover it with. This leaves the door wide open for the kind of candidate the American people like – the ‘get-er-done’ optimist. Romney is capable of fulfilling that role, and doing so in a way that takes advantage of the glaring character flaw possessed by both his opponents – vanity. A humble, optimistic Romney committed to achieving a bright new future based on conservative principles, and operating above the fray, can be a potent weapon.

Now is the time for Romney to begin communicating at greater length and depth to people’s values, their hopes, and the future they face, absent reform. Now is the time when Romney must connect with people, help them feel good about supporting him, and build a level of trust that can translate into GOP votes. Romney must stand for real reform and convince voters that he’ll deliver it. He must paint for voters a vision of a renewed America versus the ceaseless road to decline under Obama, and all along voters must be reminded that he’s the only guy that can win.

Dear Ass Clown,

You swine. You vulgar little maggot. Don’t you know that you are pathetic? You worthless bag of filth. As we say in Texas, I’ll bet you couldn’t pour piss out of a boot with instructions on the heel. You are a canker. A sore that won’t go away. I would rather kiss a lawyer than be seen with you.

You are a fiend and a coward, and you have bad breath. You are degenerate, noxious and depraved. I feel debased just for knowing you exist. I despise everything about you. You are a bloody nardless newbie twit protohominid chromosomally aberrant caricature of a coprophagic cloacal parasitic pond scum and I wish you would go away.

You’re a putrescence mass, a walking vomit. You are a spineless little worm deserving nothing but the profoundest contempt. You are a jerk, a cad, a weasel. Your life is a monument to stupidity. You are a stench, a revulsion, a big suck on a sour lemon.

You are a bleating fool, a curdled staggering mutant dwarf smeared richly with the effluvia and offal accompanying your alleged birth into this world. An insensate, blinking calf, meaningful to nobody, abandoned by the puke-drooling, giggling beasts who sired you and then killed themselves in recognition of what they had done.

I will never get over the embarrassment of belonging to the same species as you. You are a monster, an ogre, a malformity. I barf at the very thought of you. You have all the appeal of a paper cut. Lepers avoid you. You are vile, worthless, less than nothing. You are a weed, a fungus, the dregs of this earth. And did I mention you smell?

If you aren’t an idiot, you made a world-class effort at simulating one. Try to edit your writing of unnecessary material before attempting to impress us with your insight. The evidence that you are a nincompoop will still be available to readers, but they will be able to access it more rapidly.

You snail-skulled little rabbit. Would that a hawk pick you up, drive its beak into your brain, and upon finding it rancid set you loose to fly briefly before spattering the ocean rocks with the frothy pink shame of your ignoble blood. May you choke on the queasy, convulsing nausea of your own trite, foolish beliefs.

You are weary, stale, flat and unprofitable. You are grimy, squalid, nasty and profane. You are foul and disgusting. You’re a fool, an ignoramus. Monkeys look down on you. Even sheep won’t have sex with you. You are unreservedly pathetic, starved for attention, and lost in a land that reality forgot.

And what meaning do you expect your delusionally self-important statements of unknowing, inexperienced opinion to have with us? What fantasy do you hold that you would believe that your tiny-fisted tantrums would have more weight than that of a leprous desert rat, spinning rabidly in a circle, waiting for the bite of the snake?

You are a waste of flesh. You have no rhythm. You are ridiculous and obnoxious. You are the moral equivalent of a leech. You are a living emptiness, a meaningless void. You are sour and senile. You are a disease, you puerile one-handed slack-jawed drooling meatslapper.

On a good day you’re a half-wit. You remind me of drool. You are deficient in all that lends character. You have the personality of wallpaper. You are dank and filthy. You are asinine and benighted. You are the source of all unpleasantness. You spread misery and sorrow wherever you go.

I cannot believe how incredibly stupid you are. I mean rock-hard stupid. Dehydrated-rock-hard stupid. Stupid so stupid that it goes way beyond the stupid we know into a whole different dimension of stupid. You are trans-stupid stupid. Meta-stupid. Stupid collapsed on itself so far that even the neutrons have collapsed. Stupid gotten so dense that no intellect can escape. Singularity stupid. Blazing hot mid-day sun on Mercury stupid. You emit more stupid in one second than our entire galaxy emits in a year. Quasar stupid. Your writing has to be a troll. Nothing in our universe can really be this stupid. Perhaps this is some primordial fragment from the original big bang of stupid. Some pure essence of a stupid so uncontaminated by anything else as to be beyond the laws of physics that we know. I’m sorry. I can’t go on. This is an epiphany of stupid for me. After this, you may not hear from me again for a while. I don’t have enough strength left to deride your ignorant questions and half baked comments about unimportant trivia, or any of the rest of this drivel. Duh.

The only thing worse than your logic is your manners. I have snipped away most of what you wrote, because, well... it didn’t really say anything. Your attempt at constructing a creative flame was pitiful. I mean, really, stringing together a bunch of insults among a load of babbling was hardly effective... Maybe later in life, after you have learned to read, write, spell, and count, you will have more success. True, these are rudimentary skills that many of us “normal” people take for granted that everyone has an easy time of mastering. But we sometimes forget that there are “challenged” persons in this world who find these things more difficult. If I had known, that this was your case then I would have never read your post. It just wouldn’t have been “right”. Sort of like parking in a handicap space. I wish you the best of luck in the emotional, and social struggles that seem to be placing such a demand on you.

P.S.: You are hypocritical, greedy, violent, malevolent, vengeful, cowardly, deadly, mendacious, meretricious, loathsome, despicable, belligerent, opportunistic, barratrous, contemptible, criminal, fascistic, bigoted, racist, sexist, avaricious, tasteless, idiotic, brain-damaged, imbecilic, insane, arrogant, deceitful, demented, lame, self-righteous, byzantine, conspiratorial, satanic, fraudulent, libelous, bilious, splenetic, spastic, ignorant, clueless, illegitimate, harmful, destructive, dumb, evasive, double-talking, devious, revisionist, narrow, manipulative, paternalistic, fundamentalist, dogmatic, idolatrous, unethical, cultic, diseased, suppressive, controlling, restrictive, malignant, deceptive, dim, crazy, weird, dystopic, stifling, uncaring, plantigrade, grim, unsympathetic, jargon-spouting, censorious, secretive, aggressive, mind-numbing, arassive, poisonous, flagrant, self-destructive, abusive, socially-retarded, puerile, clueless, and generally Not Good.

I Hope This Helps...

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