Common sense from the Washpost editors...

"... there has been one consistency in the campaign of Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney: a contempt for the electorate. How else to explain his refusal to disclose essential information? Defying recent bipartisan tradition, he failed to release the names of his bundlers — the high rollers who collected hundreds of thousands of dollars in donations. He never provided sufficient tax returns to show voters how he became rich."  Washpost

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It is unusual for me to agree witht the neocon dominated editorial board of the Washington Post but today they "got it right" and the "devils" should be given their due.

In today's leading editorial the Post denounces Romney and his crew for their evident contempt for the American voter.  Romney seems to believe that citizens have no memory at all and that they will not remember his previous utterances even though they are displayed in the media through the magic of digital recording. 

Romney also  seems to believe that the presidency can be gained in the same way that  a stockholder's meeting can be steamrollered and the shareholders "herded" toward results contrary to their own interests.

On the same page the Post cautions against an unwise attempt to tinker with the mechanism of the electoral college. 

Will wonders never cease?  pl 

 

http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/mitt-romneys-election-campaign-insults-voters/2012/11/02/69fcc1fc-2428-11e2-9313-3c7f59038d93_story.html?tid=pm_opinions_pop

Comments

[E L]

If Obama wins, and that now appears to be the case, the right wing will wail and gnash their teeth for a short while and then turn to the important business in the House over Articles of Impeachment based on Benghazi. Drudge/Limbaugh/Fox will rally the crazies into an Impeachment frenzy. Impeachment is a great political strategy. By the way, speaking of Impeachment, whatever happened to that Clinton guy, anyway?

[JohnH]

Doonesbury absolutely nailed it today:
http://assets.amuniversal.com/cb194a50fe19012ff664001dd8b71c47

What's interesting is that Obama seems to have tacitly conspired with Romney to consign the last MBA President--what's his name?--to ancient history, where he moulders unloved. Of course, if you loved Bush, you'll really love Romney!!!

[Al Spafford]

I have read a couple articles that mention Romney and son have stock in a company that makes voting machines. Does anyone have significant info on this? Controlling interest in the company? Other investors in company that possibly have Repub connections?

[Jack Hairston]

Seems odd to me that you would notice Romney's failure to disclose without noticing Obama's failure to disclose too:
Birth certificate
College records
Harvard Law Review records

Fair's fair, don't you think?

[turcopolier]

jack hairston

No. Absolute horse shit. there are no secrets in BHO's past except for people like you. pl

[Redhand]

Yes! I cited this editorial in an earlier post here. Will wonders never cease, indeed?!

A Romney win will signal a development far worse than an return to George W. Bush's neocon agenda. It will herald the death of rational political discourse in this country, and the triumph of lies and calculated dissimulation as a "legitimate" path to power. If Romney wins after the kind of campaign he has run, what really will be left of our democracy? Not much in my opinion. Our national elections will be exposed as a complete joke, the plaything of plutocrats who dominate the political process through money and 1984-like disinformation. I shudder to think what living under a Romney-Ryan government would be like.

[Walrus]

Governments generally achieve the exact reverse of their stated intentions. Obama is no exception. Romney, for all his faults, might be good for the poor and a disaster for Wall Street.

[Redhand]

WADR Walrus, I don't see how you can possibly come to this conclusion with Mr. 47% on record how he regards "ordinary Americans." This is the one statement during the campaign he made where I believe what he said reflects his true feelings.

[FB Ali]

If Nate Silver (at the NYT) is to be relied upon, we will not need to console ourselves with this mantra!

Thank God!

[rjj]

Wonder: what has happened behind the scenes where big things are decided.

[Fred]

Good for the poor in which country?

[agin' cajun]

I second your measured and just response. It is truly sad that many of our fellow citizens now embrace ignorance, dishonesty and hatred as if virtues. As with many movements claiming "Divine blessing"......."the end justifies the means". In the name of_______(fill in the blank)

And if ever necessary, it would be my honor to hold your coat.

[confusedponderer]

The hilarious bit about this is that JH will only see your response as manifest evidence for your obvious liberal bias - how else to explain your endorsement of BHO and your criticism on Mitten?

Right wing media has succeeded in inoculating their flock with distrust, resulting in a paranoid predisposition that checks everything scrupulously for bias (a pity they don't check it for BS). "Fair is fair" only makes some sense when he feels that only picking on poor Mittens is unfair, not balanced - in a word: biased.

The likes of Beck, Hannity, Limbaugh and O'Reilly sell doubt, disinformation and confusion, very successfully so.

A few years back a yellow press reporter once told my brother over a beer, how he got to some of his stories: "Take celebrity X. Say X has cancer. Maybe, maybe not. We'll see ..."

FOX does the same sort of BS: Is Obama a secret Muslim? Maybe, maybe not. We don't know. But he could be. Disturbing, is it not? And was BHO really born in Hawai or was he born in Indonesia or Kenia? He could be ineligible to run for president. Disturbing, is it not? Why is BHO withholding his birth certificate if he has nothing to hide? And can we be sure BHO isn't driving without a license since his 16th birthday? This so-called 'constitutional law professor' could be brazenly flouting the law for decades. Disturbing, is it not? Can be sure without having seen his driving license? Clearly not, and why is BHO cowardly withholding his driver's license if he has nothing to hide? ... rinse, repeat. Oh yes, and fair is fair, is it not?

And while we are at it, JH, just when did you stop beating your wife?

[Al Spafford]

Come on! Put that birth cert mythology to rest! Obama HAS provided the documentation that Hawaii issues. Also, for you conspiracy mongers--how did the Obama, "the Manchurian Candidate", arrange to have the announcement upon his birth published in the Hawaii newspapers? That took some 40 yrs pre planning prior to his political career!

[Al Spafford]

http://www.forbes.com/sites/rickungar/2012/10/20/romney-family-investment-ties-to-voting-machine-company-that-could-decide-the-election-causes-concern/3/

[H.E. Hodgson]

I can only echo a blogpost I read elsewhere wondering why it took the Washington Post so long to get its act together to produce that editorial. Why wasn't it forcefully making the same case against Romney months and months ago?

[Clifford Kiracofe]

"As a result, this election offers American voters an unedifying choice. Many of The Economist’s readers, especially those who run businesses in America, may well conclude that nothing could be worse than another four years of Mr Obama. We beg to differ. For all his businesslike intentions, Mr Romney has an economic plan that works only if you don’t believe most of what he says. That is not a convincing pitch for a chief executive. And for all his shortcomings, Mr Obama has dragged America’s economy back from the brink of disaster, and has made a decent fist of foreign policy. So this newspaper would stick with the devil it knows, and re-elect him."
http://www.economist.com/news/leaders/21565623-america-could-do-better-barack-obama-sadly-mitt-romney-does-not-fit-bill-which-one

And this from the London Economist. What to make of this? A leading international "business" publication and they go for O not R...more wonders...

[turcopolier]

CP

Yep. I'll bet you have a hard time seeing me as a "liberal." pl

[SAC Brat]

Sir,
Nate Silver and his ilk (Sam Wang, etc) are hindered by science and math. This is the USA, belief is what matters. And marketing.

(Just kidding. Please keep up the good work pushing back the darkness/ignorance.)

You may find this interesting, kind of a modern H.L. Mencken: http://www.esquire.com/blogs/politics/nate-silver-critics-14261107

P.S. I voted for Gen. Dempsey.

[Mike Martin, Yorktown, VA]

Frankly, I take it as a good sign that many liberals complain about Obama not behaving as they had "hoped." But on the side of what passes as conservatism these days, I worry more about how and why the likes of Fox News, Limbaugh, talk radio hosts and originators of viral e-mails have gotten traction with a near majority of the electorate. Do that many American voters really have such empty lives and are they so ill-educated that a pandering human PowerPoint like Romney seems like a leader?

[Babak Makkinejad]

Too bad the X-Files is no longer broadcast on US Television; I am sure the answer to this temporal dislocation would have been offered in one of its episodes.

[Babak Makkinejad]

You are right; for that crowd it is if you have 100 million dollars or not. No one else counts for anything.

[FB Ali]

The bottom line in this election is this: with the economy in a swoon and unemployment hovering around 8% for four years, any President seeking re-election should be toast.

It is a tribute to the good sense of the American people that they may well re-elect Obama.

[MRW]

Walrus,

Romney claims we (US Fed Govt) borrow from China. Stop and think about it for a moment: who makes the US dollars? Who has the only legal right in the entire world to create a US dollar as legal tender? The US Federal Government. Why would we borrow from China? Romney doesn't understand reserve accounting. (Larry Summers didn't either--admitted it in front of Tom Daschle--his advice to Obama was disastrous.) China wants US dollars. That why its sells us goods in US currency. When Walmart, KMart and Target pay for the goods, the money goes to China's reserve (checking) account at the Fed (how things are 'settled'). If China wants to take it out of the country and turn in into Yuan, it does what you and I do: it exchanges on the open market. But China wants to maintain US dollars and interest on it, so it buys the Fed's equivalent of a CD. It buys a bond, a US treasury security. That goes into China's securities (savings) account at the NY Fed. At maturity, unless its rolled over, the capital and interest go back into China's checking account. [Interest paid for by the US federal government creating US dollars by keystroke.] Know what that's called? "Paying off the national debt." The action of moving money from a securities account to a reserve account is called paying off the national debt. Romney doesn't know this.

That's just the beginning of his economic ignorance. His attitude about the deficit is frightening, and Paul Ryan is a fool.

[Medicine Man]

Taking your past statements regarding movement liberalism at face value I reckon I am about as much the Queen of England as you are a lefty.