Romney, The Coward

The Washington Post reports: “ Richard Grenell, the openly gay spokesman recently hired to sharpen the foreign policy message of Mitt Romney’s presidential campaign, has resigned in the wake of a full-court press by anti-gay conservatives.”

Romney is a Coward. This is no doubt that this is the kind of President he would be-- Running scared from the right wing gay bashing base of the Republican Party. In response to the resignation of Richard Grenell, an openly gay Republican and former aide to John Bolton (no friend of the left), hired to advise the campaign and be a spokesman on foreign policy issues the campaign's manager Matt Rhoades said: “We are disappointed that Ric decided to resign from the campaign for his own personal reasons. We wanted him to stay because he had superior qualifications for the position he was hired to fill.”

"His own personal reasons" apparently revolved around attacks from the right having everything to do with Grenell being gay and nothing to do with foreign policy, his area of expertise. The controversy resulted in the campaign keeping Grenell out of circulation during the recent partisan dustup over the Bin Laden raid.

Anyone that believes that Grenell left of “his own” free will-- Especially those interested in purchasing a fine bridge I know about in Brooklyn-- may contact me through my FB page.

Time and again Romney has passed opportunities to stand up to the most extreme elements of this party. Time and again when given the opportunity to show that he intended to be the President of the entire country—Not just the 40% which votes Republican-- Romney has chosen to represent the narrow interests of a provincial, hateful, xenophobic, homophobic, male-centric horde.

When the rabble booed the gay soldier in the debates, Romney was silent. When Cain suggested those Americans that were angry about the excesses on Wall Street and the calamity that ensued as a result of their stunning greed and unprincipled malfeasance were just “jealous”, Romney was silent. When they cheered 200-plus executions in Texas at the debates, Romney was silent. I guess in Republicans circles it is not even possible to take a principled stand in support of the death penalty. We must also love the act of murder by the state while also hating the executed. Oh sure, some of those executions were questionable, but on the right that is a small price to pay for the unfettered justice of the mob.

When Rush ran off on his women hating diatribe Romney spoke. He “bravely” said those weren’t “the words I would have chosen”. When a Ron Paul supporter shouted out at another debate that a person without health insurance should be “allowed to die”, Romney didn’t really hear what was said. Apparently he has not heard since then. On that subject he has also been silent. For reasons that are yet to be clear Paul and Romney have had some sort of armistice going.

Romney seems resolved to run an unprincipled campaign pandering to every right wing fantasy and every perceived bundle of hate that political leaders of the GOP have cultivated going back to Nixon’s Southern Strategy and Bush’s Willie Horton campaign. While the left complains bitterly of a country gone to big finance the right nurses it’s wounds. Government is big and excessive when it helps the lazy shiftless poor. When Lobbyists ply their trade in the name of moneyed interests that is democracy in action, whole other ball game. The real problem, actually the real enemies are minorities, immigrants, the poor, and of course gays. Grand Old party no more, now the GOP is just the aggrieved party.

Ok, so be it.

But then don’t ask me to believe that bullshit about how you really care about the poor and the middle class because once these massive tax cuts kick in “all boats will be lifted”. Two problems: 1) It didn’t work under Bush whose record of job growth even with massive government spending and unprecedented tax breaks flowing grandly to the 1% had historically low job growth. 2) It’s pretty clear that you don’t give a shit about anyone except your narrow and frightened electorate and the huge money donors who fund your campaigns allowing you to propagandize to your poor, uneducated, and largely Southern electorate that their enemies are not centralized capital which lives so well off them, but those Others who live in their midst, poor and hungry just like them. As we know when that fails you can always kick a gay man out the door.