Well, if ever I owed you folks a proper OP, I'm definitely running out of time.
The funny thing is, I'd almost kicked my politics habit. Ironically enough, having a full time job with a boss who thinks Rush Limbaugh walks on water and a coworker who does the Spineless Liberal stereotype proud kinda ruined any time and taste I had for the old game. In a way, I'd kinda backed out of my own thread partly because I stopped giving much of a shit, and partly because I honestly echo-chambers more annoying (looking at you, last few pages), because I'm frankly not nearly as opinionated as I might look when I'm on something. Then I flipped on the TV out of pure boredom yesterday, and I got a face full of this.
I'm talking about the Romney thing here.
In a way, I almost feel sorry for the guy, not least because big chunks of that speech were some of the most politically astute observations I can remember hearing from a candidate directly. I always knew that Romney actually is a really intelligent guy. He certainly had a mountain of advantages handed to him in his life, but he still didn't get where he is without being pretty damn shrewd. Therein lay the reason, he thinks he can think his way through what is ultimately both a contest of strategy and a contest of ideas, more of one than we cynics usually give it credit for. When you don't really believe what you're saying from the podium, people do catch on.
Especially when you have no qualms about dropping the act when you think in you have an airtight audience.
There's two things I feel like saying about Romney's assessment of his political position, and the first is the obvious one. He recognizes that about 47% of the country does not pay Federal
income taxes, that about 47% of the country consider themselves in approval of Barack Obama's tenure as President, that about 47% of the electorate say they will never for Romney, and that those three groups of people are exactly one and the same. It's really nothing short of a cosmic coincidence that these numbers all line up, and I'm honestly whether it was some political strategist who decided those three numbers are identical for a reason or if Romney just had that epiphany on his own.
The obvious criticism of this assessment of American demographics is that it's wildly fucking wrong. There are plenty of people in that margin who either don't make enough money to qualify for income taxes or qualify for enough exemptions that they wind up owing nothing who are ardent Republican voters. And of course the elderly who by and large pay no income tax, who are a rather conservative lot and are the only slice of the American population to significantly favor Romney's election (along with wealthy white men, but quite a few of them are "elderly" anyway). Reams can and have been said about the striking hypocrisy of this view, and I'll throw in my own sure. At this point, it almost doesn't even need mention that Romney himself pays a smaller portion of his income to Federal taxes in total than almost anybody with a wage less than a hundred thousand thanks to payroll taxes,
which the Heritage Foundation itself will tell you makes up a record high proportion of the Federal income.
But Romney being blitheringly wrong about any correlation between economic status and support for his candidacy is almost meaningless, compared to his assertion that there is a one for one correlation between economic status and support for his candidacy. The politics he described are that 47% of the country pay no income tax, who must therefore have no income. And of course, this being America, if you have no income it is because you do not desire an income, at least not strongly enough to overcome little hurdles like the economy or destitution. Therefore those 47% must survive entirely through Federal largess, and so it is clearly no wonder why exactly 47%-ish of the country approves of Barack Obama and does not support Mitt Romney.
Then the conclusion. If that 47% drain on the country is never going to support Romney, then why should he concern himself with them? In what way would he, running to be leader of the nation, be well served to listen to the opinions of the half-ish of the nation that immovably does not want him to be President? And that is the crux of the issue.
I think there's a few ways that Romney could come to be at a podium giving this assessment. One is that he is completely unaware of the significant portion of non-income-payers who make up is firm supporters. Which would be baffling. Romney is not a stupid man, and whatever the ideological leanings of the people surrounding him, he does have quite a few advisers who know a thing or two about demographics. You might be able to afford completely insular political visions when you're already in office, but you don't get anywhere near where Romney is if you're completely walled off from political reality (unless you're astoundingly lucky anyway). And the fact that he and his running mate took to the deflection march within a day of the video surfacing says he's perfectly aware of how wrong his correlation is. So if it were the case that he was just plain mistaken, that would be a pretty astounding level of myopia.
On the other hand, it's possible that he's fully aware of the existence of large numbers of low- and no-income people who will vote for any Republican until the day they die, and he just doesn't really care to mention them when they're not in earshot. Such an attitude has been pretty common among movers and shakers of the Republican party for quite a few years, and the title "aristocratic conservative" is the people's usual takeaway from Romney and certainly the impression most of his life story suggests. Ask any professional Republican strategist about their relationship to low-income conservatives, and you're hard-pressed not to get an answer that would do Jay Gould proud.
It seems like any time I want to say something hyperbolic I couch it with, "I don't really want to say something this hyperbolic," but this time, yeah I do fucking want to say it. Because I heard a man seeking to be President of my country, with a damn good chance of doing so, say to a room of genuine honest to God plutocrats in a gilded resort, that the real problem with America is that too many people just don't feel like succeeding in life, and that he has no particular interest in or reason to be interested in the concerns of half the country who don't have enough income to pay the same taxes that he goes to such trouble to avoid.
That is as clear a statement of class warfare as I've heard from an American politician in my lifetime, in that it is a declaration of war by the rich against everyone else. And he Mitt Romney is proud to be their champion, as an empty suit who will do as he's told by the highest bidders, the way politics should be.
But, I would be remiss if I didn't give Romney some credit, and mention the distinct possibility that I'm wrong about that speech of his. As I've said, I don't think Romney is stupid enough to actually believe the economic correlation at the heart of his argument. What I do know about him, as even his supporters will ready say about him after watching him this long, is that Romney has a pathological need to play the room at any event. Most of the time, this comes off as uncomfortably smarmy, because a need to act doesn't make him a good actor. In a room full of fabulously wealthy conservatives, he fits in pretty damn well. But who's to say he wouldn't work the room even then? What do say to a room full of fabulously wealthy conservatives if you want their support and they know who you are? You tell them half the country are feckless layabouts possessed of only enough motivation to demand gifts and maybe rise up in a wave of thievery, and either way bring the nation and its most worthy citizens to economic ruin. It's entirely possible that he was speaking to a crowd just as much as he does anywhere, it just came off as a lot more candid because it was a crowd he's more naturally a part of than any other.
Whatever the case, I really hope some honest conservatives take a good long look at the guy and the crowd they put in charge of their political movement, and think about how much they actually represent how the average conservative really wants their country to be run.
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Topic: American Election Megathread - It's Over (Read 771387 times)