Presidential Campaign: 2012

[melliedee]

Multiple offshore accounts + garage elevator = ruthless, cold, unrelatable, mustache-twirling, monocle-wearing fat cat making ten G bets like they're nothing.*

*Kinda like Obama having a weird name, a sordid past as a snobby community organizer, and, you know, being The Manchurian Candidate in 08.

The legality of Romney's finances is not the issue, and everyone knows it. I'm sure he is squeeky clean. Let's be honest about what's going on here; this is an election year. Optics, baby. Optics.

[ryberg]

I don't know what you think is going on. I also don't see much of a comparison between the two cases you refer to. People were busily judging candidate Obama on his character and patriotism and religion and race and so forth, based on a lot of stuff that was made up. People are judging whether Romney can relate to them and their economic concerns, based on facts of his economic background and current status that are not being debated (except for the legality point, which I agree is not the issue).

[gingele]

This is for my buddy Robinhood. By the way, is this guy still running?

[horizon200]

Originally Posted by ryberg

I have not argued that he's doing something illegal, or that he should be punished or criticized for being financially successful. I have argued that there is a significant difference between you and the rest of us if you're worth maybe a quarter of a billion dollars and earn about $20 million a year from investments and your friends own NASCAR teams and a $3 million account might slip your mind or you might toss off the advice that new grads should just borrow $20K from their parents to start new businesses or say that $387K earned one year from speaking engagements "wasn't much" and so on.

I don't know if you are trying to spin this as normal or typical or if you're just upset that other people might recognize it as not normal or typical or something they can relate to in a candidate. But there it is, just the same.

Typical is probably a good way to put it...you know like Joe Biden talking about how the GOP can't relate to the middle class while attending a $10,000 a plate dinner......yeah typical works for me.

[ryberg]

Originally Posted by horizon200

Typical is probably a good way to put it...you know like Joe Biden talking about how the GOP can't relate to the middle class while attending a $10,000 a plate dinner......yeah typical works for me.

But you are still not responding to my point, at least. There is no rational argument that what I described about Romney is typical.

Your argument instead seems to be that both sides make hay out of whatever will serve their purposes. This I take to be a given and to be understood.

My point instead is that it is nevertheless perfectly valid and logical for voters to question whether a candidate who fits Romney's financial situation can in fact understand their position. An abundance of evidence (both in terms of hard data about his wealth and from what he repeatedly says about it) makes it hard to see how he can.

I cannot conceive of how someone could deny that underlying validity and logic, but again I think you are instead talking about the way politics involves making hay out of various issues (a very different point).

[ryberg]

Originally Posted by gingele

This is for my buddy Robinhood. By the way, is this guy still running?

That's a good one.

The only problem is that that is hardly just Ron Paul's position, but is rather the consistent position of the GOP, right the way up to their candidate for the Oval Office (re the ACA, for example).

[horizon200]

Originally Posted by ryberg

But you are still not responding to my point, at least. There is no rational argument that what I described about Romney is typical.

Your argument instead seems to be that both sides make hay out of whatever will serve their purposes. This I take to be a given and to be understood.

My point instead is that it is nevertheless perfectly valid and logical for voters to question whether a candidate who fits Romney's financial situation can in fact understand their position. An abundance of evidence (both in terms of hard data about his wealth and from what he repeatedly says about it) makes it hard to see how he can.

I cannot conceive of how someone could deny that underlying validity and logic, but again I think you are instead talking about the way politics involves making hay out of various issues (a very different point).

I do indeed think that both sides are guilty of that and it is what started my whole conversation on this topic. I said that the Obama administration might want to rethink the tag line in that ad in that it misrepresents...ie spins it to be much worse than it is.

On the topic of can he understand the average voter? I think he can understand as much as the next guy. Do you think that Kerry or Kennedy could understand? They were certainly wealthy! What gave them the ability to understand any more than Romney?

Personally, I WANT someone that understands LARGE sums of money in there handling the economy!

[roni]

Originally Posted by horizon200

Personally, I WANT someone that understands LARGE sums of money in there handling the economy!

People like George W Bush (entrepreneur and Governor of a a large state), and Dick Cheney (Sec'y of Defense and CEO of Halliburton), for example

[melliedee]

Now Mitt Romney, this year’s presumptive GOP nominee, is waving off Obama’s role in the killing of Osama Bin Laden—the president’s signal national-security achievement—by chortling that “any thinking American would have ordered the exact same thing,” even Jimmy Carter.



Two new investigative reports—a book by Peter Bergen, Manhunt: The Ten-Year Search for Bin Laden from 9/11 to Abbottabad, and an article by Graham Allison in the May 7 issue of Time—thoroughly rebut that notion.



Far from the no-brainer that Romney depicts, the secret, high-level discussions leading up to the raid were fraught with intense debate and uncertainty—and Obama’s final decisions, on both whether and how to attack, went against some of his top advisers’ recommendations.

On Iran, Romney calls for a different policy without specifying what that might be. Given Obama’s multiple rounds of sanctions and likely cybersabotage, which may be having an effect, it is hard to imagine what Romney might do differently, except go to war, a step that few Americans would welcome.



In an attempt to trash the New START arms-reduction treaty, which Obama signed with Russia, Romney wrote (or at least signed) the most misleading and ignorant article on the subject that I’ve read in more than 35 years of following the nuclear debate.



On North Korea, Romney appears not even to want to try negotiating a solution. On China, he seems to be pushing for a trade war. On Russia, which he has called America’s No. 1 geopolitical foe, he appears to think the Cold War is still raging.



Romney’s position—or, more accurate, his pose—on these issues is so preposterous, one can only surmise that he can’t be serious. More likely, he and his proxies in the right-wing press are adopting Karl Rove’s strategy of attacking the opponent’s strengths. In the 2004 election, Sen. John Kerry’s war-hero status posed a threat against George W. Bush, so Rove and the Swift Boaters painted Kerry as a war coward; Kerry and his team were so flummoxed, they didn’t know how to respond. Now Mitt Romney, who has no foreign-policy experience whatever, is painting Obama as the dangerous naif.



There are two big differences this time out. First, Obama’s political operators seem more adept at dousing these sparklers than were Kerry’s. Second, like Bush in 2004, Obama is the incumbent in this election; he can demonstrate experience and competence in foreign affairs as a matter of course, on a daily basis; hence his trip to Kabul.



Republicans are no doubt pining for a second dip in the economy, because going after Obama on foreign and military affairs is a dead-end route.

Barack Obama’s decision to go after Osama Bin Laden: how the president overruled his advisers in ordering the assassination - Slate Magazine

[ryberg]

Originally Posted by horizon200

I do indeed think that both sides are guilty of that and it is what started my whole conversation on this topic. I said that the Obama administration might want to rethink the tag line in that ad in that it misrepresents...ie spins it to be much worse than it is.

Well that's Fair enough, but then that is in fact a different point. You quoted me along with Roni in one seemingly key response but I think you were really responding to his point more than mine, in that case.

Originally Posted by horizon200

On the topic of can he understand the average voter? I think he can understand as much as the next guy. Do you think that Kerry or Kennedy could understand? They were certainly wealthy! What gave them the ability to understand any more than Romney?

What gave them the ability? I dunno. But again that they did may be seen in their words and actions rather more than it is evident in tin-ear Romney's. Even I would probably not be wondering about it if he hadn't repeatedly highlighted the issue with his stupid and insensitive comments.

I didn't worry about whether the kid at my university could relate to me, either, until he said that I shouldn't even be at that school if I couldn't pay extra just not to have a roommate. Probably Melliedee also didn't have concerns about the friend she referred to until that friend asked, not ironically, why Melliedee had a job. For that matter, I didn't worry much about McCain's wealth and his ability to relate to me or other more common folk until he remarked that he couldn't remember how many homes he had.

These things matter, and rightly so. Romney continues to make his bed on this issue and now he has to lie in it. Tough for him — learn to be more sensitive and thoughtful about the situation of others rather than blunder around making such stupid comments to/about them, if he doesn't want to be questioned on the issue. After all, that's the whole point I, at least, am referring to: being able to think about and understand the position of others. Important point for someone who wants to be the leader of a nation, no?

[roni]

Okay all you lefties out there

I am going to be the recipient of a Social Justice Comrade Award by the Multicultural Center at one of our campuses - by virtue of being on the Research & Assessment Committee of the Diversity Council

[Robinhood]

Originally Posted by roni

Okay all you lefties out there

I am going to be the recipient of a Social Justice Comrade Award by the Multicultural Center at one of our campuses - by virtue of being on the Research & Assessment Committee of the Diversity Council

FORWARD and congrats Comrade New Obama slogan has long ties to Marxism, socialism - Washington Times

[ryberg]

Originally Posted by Robinhood

FORWARD and congrats Comrade New Obama slogan has long ties to Marxism, socialism - Washington Times

OK, so now we're attacking a regular old English word, forward...

In the immortal words of Dr Thompson, "It's finally gotten weird enough for me."

[equinenut]

Originally Posted by roni

Okay all you lefties out there

I am going to be the recipient of a Social Justice Comrade Award by the Multicultural Center at one of our campuses - by virtue of being on the Research & Assessment Committee of the Diversity Council

LIKE,LIKE,LIKE!!

Congratulations!! This world needs more committed people like you Ron!

[Mikey]

Originally Posted by roni

Okay all you lefties out there

I am going to be the recipient of a Social Justice Comrade Award by the Multicultural Center at one of our campuses - by virtue of being on the Research & Assessment Committee of the Diversity Council

Thanks for being a champion of social justice comrade! Congrats on the award Roni .