Well its not so much the lack of reading as it is the comment on my ineptitude without reading. But its water under the bridge at this point, so let me begin.
I think both candidates are fine options. I don’t think either are as dangerous as the McCain/Palin ticket were, so I’m thankful for that. My main problems with Romney are, in order:
1. His tax policy is nightmarish, and his position on financial matters is so business centric that it almost makes him look like the second coming of Warren G. Harding. I expect Ron Paul to comment on Sarsbane-Oxley (and by comment, I mean repeal) but for a reasonable person to say makes me question their motives. If for no other reason, this should broadcast Romneys position as Business-first, Business-only. This is the same man who told Rupert Murdock that he’s likely hire McKinsey to help select his cabinet, and Murdock was (rightfully) aghast.
2. I don’t know who is going to show up. I have a unique perspective on this as I’m one of the few here who has lived under the governance of both men. Obama as President, and Romney as governor. While Romney spent his final year in office bashing us for being “too liberal” in Massachusetts, he was otherwise a decent, albeit boring, governor. My main issue with the “who will show up” issue is best written in the Salt Lake Tribune (
Tribune endorsement: Too Many Mitts | The Salt Lake Tribune). He was great, he can be great, but will he?
3. I have every reason to believe he can handle himself on foreign policy, but he seems to be too hungry to be liked by the Tea Party, and the Tea Party doesn’t know anything about Foreign Policy. When your closest advisor on how to deal with Iran is “your gut” you aren’t fit for office.
4. Immigration is a non-starter. A fence is the dumbest thing I’ve heard of in a long time. As one commentator put it – “we don’t listen to France on policy matters for anything. Why start now, by down grading our own system, with immigration.” This is one area where I am decidedly anti-French.
5. He doesn’t have a solution for the insurance scam in this country. Medical help is a sham. And if anyone attempts to do something about it, you have my support, but Romney sounds like Nixon did on Vietnam when it comes to healthcare. I am not interested in “Secret plans,” I want actual plans. And Romney hasn’t given me one.
Now – There are a lot of people around here who want to vote for Jill Stein. They want to do this for the same reason some clueless cave-dwellers wanted to vote for Denis Kucinich in 2008. Its got to do largely in part with the war. They don’t like drone strikes, they don’t like Afghanistan, they don’t like that we have 50,000 troops in Iraq (which is the same number we have in Germany, Iraq is actually bigger than Germany). Now if you’re naïve enough to ask them what we should do, you’re going to get a great deal of rambling on about untenable solutions. Really? Just pull out tomorrow? What then of the people who stepped up to help us there? What of the women who are treated as second class citizens if not beaten, raped, or murdered?
If you trusted Obama’s judgement on multiple issues, and liked how Libya was handled (as I do), then why get your boxers in a twist over this? They do it because they don’t have a thought on the matter other than “Killing is bad.” And to this end, the far left starts to look a lot like the Tea Party in that they don’t have a solution, they just don’t like the way things are going. Well, I don’t like it with the far right, and I won’t tolerate it with the far left.
Perhaps they have issues elsewhere with the man (I do), but its hard to say where he has failed the far left on policy other than war. He passed healthcare reform, he attempted to pass the dream act, he got Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell repealed, and he has attempted to pass Equal Pay measures.
But in the end, the left only cares about War because most of the far left either is the Woodstock generation or would like to be. And to that end, this isn’t so different from President Johnson who literally gave the left everything they could have asked for and more, but he held up Vietnam. The far left to me is never satisfied which is brazen for a group that has no real solutions to problems. If they are ballsy enough to offer up a solution, its often a carbon-copy of Euro-Policy which, if you studied history, economics, business, or American Culture would be instantly recognizable as a non-starter. Those on the left against Barack Obama are more impressed with their own ideological purity than actual leadership. They pride themselves on being more intelligent than everyone else because they believe they have the moral-upright stance and the rest of us are knuckle-draggers who, if we only could see the truth, would side with them.
I’ve seen the truth and it’s this – you can’t live in a fantasy world. Things in life suck, and the government should help, not do. But if you’re going to create policy that helps people who will lift themselves up with some help, create policy that will last beyond your Administration, and create policy that will change things for the better, you need to put forward something that stops when it can’t reasonably go beyond – when the policy will do more damage than help even if that stopping point ends before you’d like it to.
Some folks want Single-Payer healthcare, but that system doesn’t last and Medicare is a massive improvement from where we were. And this, in a nutshell is what I mean. Programs need to have a way to pay for themselves, and policies need to do more than react, they need to help. Pulling out of the war tomorrow is going to cause prolonged and irreparable damage to more people than staying in if you count the full costs (not just the US costs), and going to war with Iran tomorrow is so unforeseeably bad than to suggest it is to lack any understanding of the politics in the middle east. Good diplomacy is slow, careful, and indirect. For the betterment of the world, this Administrations slow pullout is celebrated by me, and someday by history as well.
Please let me know if there is anything else I can enlighten you on.
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