Some are convinced that, as goes Loudoun County, so
goes the presidential election – and apparently the contenders themselves agree
– that we Loudounians are a strong indicator of the outcome – given how often
the presidential candidates have appeared here.
What is astonishing, and hardly understandable, is how
any sentient being in the voting nation could possibly still be “undecided.” Of course, some may be “undecided” because
Romney himself appears “undecided” about what he actually “believes.”
In the Republican primaries, and when visiting
Israel, Romney was prepared to war with Iran on Israel’s say-so, but, in the
last debate, Romney favored the crippling economic sanctions that Obama put in
place with our international partners.
Romney and his tyro Vice-Presidential partner, Paul
Ryan, even recently rattled their sabers about Syria, wanting to arm the rebels
to fight President Bashar al-Assad, but then Romney, only a week ago, when
debating Obama, said we can’t really do more than we are doing.
Romney earlier “thought” we should stay in Iraq and Afghanistan,
but, a week ago, he had an epiphany that we’d done enough in both places, and
agreed to end military operations in Afghanistan on the same schedule as President
Obama.
Gathering up an assessment of Romney’s “true”
beliefs, on war or taxes or jobs, is like scooping up a handful of water from a
rushing stream and watching what you’ve gathered slip through your fingers.
Our esteemed Loudoun neighbor, Madeleine Albright,
former Secretary of State, reportedly reviewed Romney’s most recent foreign
policy address on October 7th, because, she said, she wanted “to
figure out what Governor Romney’s [foreign] policies really are,” and concluded,
“I have come out more confused because he has changed his mind on a number of
different issues.”
I’m sure there are conservatives who believe that
Romney’s resorting to a Trojan horse strategy, saying one pacifistic thing to manipulate
moderate voters while harboring a jingoistic mid-East agenda he’ll implement if
elected. Radical conservatives take
heart from Romney’s foreign policy team, resurrected like a bad Halloween
trick, consisting of the terminally bellicose neocons that devised the Iraq war,
including Messrs. Carlucci, and Kagan, as well as other significant members of that
militaristic imperial minded cohort.
Romney’s public policy lane-shifting has followed the
electoral season and public polls prompting Romney to adapt his pitch to his changing
audience as adroitly as a fast-talking street-side three-card Monte dealer.
Equally disconcerting as the easily shifting
tectonic plates of Romney’s “belief system” is what he doesn’t know as, for
example, when he made a foreign policy pronouncement based on a rudimentary
geographic fact he got dead wrong, when he said, “Syria is Iran’s … route to
the sea.”
On the home front, Romney’s promise to reduce taxes may
drive many to support him, but who is he going to help? On the eve of his first debate with Obama, Romney
suggested cutting the home mortgage interest deduction, a serious chunk of
change to millions of home-owning middle class families, amounting to about
26.8% of the average tax return, and $12,221 in hard cash on the average. After a recession created by questionable
mortgage practices, it is distressing that Romney would even consider up-ending
the finances of middle class homeowners by taking away their deduction.
Romney’s “flexibility” on a range of issues give
anyone cause that his shifts are capricious and his electoral success depends on
a public devoid of memory and critical sense.
By contrast, President Obama has been doing the job,
actually fighting the war on terrorism, and achieving victories that are
generally acknowledged while Romney’s participation in our nation’s progress
has been remote and trivial.
President Obama dared to challenge a resistant
establishment including Governor Romney that would deny health care to millions
of Americans.
Obama bailed out failing banks and the car industry,
securing credit and preserving and creating jobs when Romney would have left
them to the vagaries of Darwinian chance.
Obama has permitted and promoted vast amounts of
fossil fuels while working hard to keep safe the air we breathe and the water
we drink and developing wind, solar and geothermal energy alternatives.
President Kennedy was fond of saying, “Bull fight
critics row by row fill the enormous plaza full but there is only one who knows
and that’s the man who fights the bull.”
Romney runs from his own views, so I expect he’d run
from a real fight.
President Obama has proven himself a fighter with
the resolve to make a difference for the better, for now and the future, and
I’m convinced we shouldn’t change horses in mid-stream and certainly not for
Romney.
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