It's so ironic it makes you want to tickle the cat.
The Supreme Court decision in Citizens United has helped destroy Romney's candidacy. He's done a lot of the heavy lifting himself, to be sure, but Citizens United has really knocked him sideways.
Let's look at how that happened and then laugh until Thursday. By allowing anybody, including corporations, to give unlimited amounts in political donations, the Supreme Court unleashed the two immensely wealthy sugar daddies who kept Newt Gingrich and Rick Santorum going and going like a couple of Energizer Bunnies throughout the GOP primaries. Newt and Rick succeeded in extending the contested nature of the primaries long after Romney should have bagged the game.
They thus harmed him in three ways. First, they cheapened him as a candidate. They were such obvious idiots that people had to wonder what was the matter with Romney in not being able to put these guys away. It began to appear that Romney was just not a very good candidate, which turned out to be quite true.
The bigger blow, however, was financial. The pair of right-wingers forced Romney to spend all his primary money fighting them off. Over the summer he therefore had no funds to paint a portrait of himself for the American people. Obama's campaign saw their chance and took it, gleefully filling in a picture of a fat-cat, tax-dodging Bubble Boy who had little interest in or understanding of his fellow Americans.
Meantime, Romney couldn't spend the money that was coming in for the general election. He had to wait until after the convention. (And what a fun convention that was!) By that time it was too late. As the polls show, by August a sizable majority of American voters had come to believe that Romney did not care about them but only about his fellow rich guys. (Which is, of course, utter truth.)
The third blow was that Romney couldn't get a running start on setting up a ground game. The months he grappled with Newt and Ricky should have been used to build a grassroots campaign. Ask the Obama people because that's exactly what they were doing during that time and ever since. Romney, the quintessential Organization Man, fell way behind on building his organization.
It is altogether fitting and proper that Romney got hoisted on the money petard. That the rich candidate with the rich friends ended up short of money when he needed it most is a lovely piece of justice. All thanks to the misguided machinations of Chief Justice John Roberts, friend of the rich and corporations and architect of Citizens United.
John Kennedy said that life isn't fair. But once in a while it really is. Enjoy the moment!
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No, Mitt, we won't be bought off with just the 2011 returns and "summaries" of other years. We're not the idiots you think we are. We want the details of full returns and all their schedules and attachments because that's where the devil is. Oh, boy, is it!
Romney is so two dimensional that I refuse to consider him as a candidate anymore. From now on in my door to door dealings with voters I will only discuss my president.
ReplyDeleteNow I will talk to the empty chair:
Believe me Mr. President you have not solved all the problems this country has. In some cases you have made them worse. I'm very angry at you for that and you almost lost my vote.
Then I started researching your public appearances on YouTube. Yea, I even researched the ones posted by the tea-bagger's too.
In every case when you were challenged in the receiving line or on the podium, you have stood up to the challenge and given the protester their due say. You are willing to debate with any citizen and explain why your policy is the way it is.
I still don't agree with you on most things but you have that one important trait that the other guy doesn't have: you listen.
You also listen, Charles, much to your credit.
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