Can Romney Lie His Way to the Presidency?

Version 0.3

Can Romney Lie His Way to the Presidency?

It seems to be time to make my prediction for this coming election. Pretty simple, actually. I think Romney will buy the GOP nomination and the neo-GOP will ride his coattails only because they sincerely hate President Obama, not because they think Romney is sincere about anything. It seems most likely that Romney will pivot SHARPLY to the left the day after he secures the nomination, possibly moving even to the left of Obama on many issues. Perhaps his final campaign slogan should be selected from this list:

1. This time I'm telling you the truth! Really!
2. Don't you just HATE President Obama!
3. Vulture Capitalism Works!
4. So that government of the corporations, by the lawyers, for the richest 0.1% of Americans, shall rule the earth.

You can certainly argue that Romney is a terrible businessman, at least when it comes to politics. While we know nothing about his real beliefs, we do know that Romney is spending a LOT of money to buy the nomination and will presumably spend much more to buy the presidency if he secures the nomination. Actually, if you're a sincere neo-GOP supporter, then you even regard Romney's only prior electoral success as a political liability, since he was a 'liberal' governor of a liberal state, so it certainly appears that he wasted ALL of the money he has spent on his numerous previous campaigns. All of that dough invested and NOTHING to show for it? So much for Romney's reputation as a so-called great businessman, eh?

Unfortunately, I feel that an election between Obama and Romney would be quite meaningless--which turns out to be an anti-freedom thing in my worldview. While I continue to feel that President Obama does stand for some good principles, his stands are mostly pretty weak, so it's hard to care much there.

In contrast, Romney stands for nothing that can be detected with any of my sensors. It seems that almost everything he has said at one time is contradicted by its opposite at another time for another audience. Perhaps it's a secret Mormon conspiracy to take over the afterworld with mass proxy baptisms?

Seriously, I feel there's no real choice there (because Romney is a meaningless choice), and meaningful (and unconstrained) choice is the essence of the important sense of freedom. For that reason, I conclude it would be quite good if Romney lost the nomination and the neo-GOP candidate (presumably the extremist Santorum) offered a REAL choice to the American voters. At least if Santorum or a neo-GOP politician won, then everyone would know for certain that America is finished. (I still love my country, but it's increasingly like the love for a close relative with a terminal disease. While I think Reagan and Dubya were rather minor symptoms, I definitely think Nixon and Cheney were quite serious indicators of malaise...)

Amusingly enough, I even think I know how to destroy Romney, but I don't know the person who could make it happen. What I 'think I know' is the central theme of a series of anti-Romney commercials. I think they will probably appear later on, but after Romney has the nomination it won't really matter even if they prevent him from winning, since the essential problem in America is now the lack of real choice (and thus the loss of freedom)--the so-called deficit of democracy in America. Maybe you know someone who can create some viral YouTube videos to get rid of Romney now? Before he wins the nomination and renders the election meaningless except as a contest in fund raising...

I can see these ads as running at various lengths, basically divided in two parts. The first part is essentially posing the question: Are you confused about what Mitt Romney believes? During this part of the video, the top should show the question, perhaps in the simplified form of "What does Romney believe?" while it shows paired clips of Romney contradicting himself on various issues. I think it might be best to do this part with a vertical split, freezing the first statement on one side as a visual reminder of each contradiction while it is showing Romney's second statement on the other side. Punch it up at the end with a big keyword diagonally displayed on top of each side? There are so many of these self-contradictions by Romney that they could run as long as desired, though of course the best pairs should be as diametrically opposed and as close together in time as possible.

Then it switches to a new theme: What I (the creator of the video) think Romney REALLY believes. In that part, it plays a pastiche video of Romney saying one sentence. I think it should be the Lincoln misquote mentioned in the facetious list above: "So that government of the corporations, by the lawyers, for the richest 0.1% of Americans, shall rule the earth." The punchline sentence is the only difficult part. You want it to show the cuts so that it is obvious it is not a claim of his actual in-context words, but you also want it to be smooth enough to be clearly audible and to get the message across... Perhaps display the words in a smooth scroll across the bottom as he 'says' them in the video snippets at the top?

Death of a Douche

Mostly I just wanted to react to a controversial public comment about the recent death of a prominent conservative agitator.

Reactions to "Death of a Douche" in the Rolling Stone

On one hand, I think it is not good to speak ill of the dead. On the other hand, I strongly believe in the Golden Rule. Not the neo-GOP version about people with gold making whatever rules they like by bribing the cheapest politicians. The old Golden Rule about doing unto others--and AB (Andrew Breitbart) certainly did a lot of things to other people.

Whenever I saw AB, my overwhelming impression was that he felt hate and anger towards his opponents. I can't even say they were political opponents, because he made it much more personal than that. In retrospect, I now wonder if he was just faking it. Knowing how often his statements were lies of various kinds, self-contradictions, counterfactual statements, partial truths, or even manufactured fake evidence, you have to conclude that he was either stupid or deluded. Some people claim he wasn't stupid, and I acknowledge that he showed plenty of cunning cleverness of the lowest sort. Does that mean he was deluded? Or maybe he was just faking the entire thing? Why would he fake it? Short, plausible answer: For the money. It certainly seemed he was doing okay financially, at least on the short term. That's the problem with so much of today's political fraud--the long term doesn't matter as long as you can get past the next election.

Does it matter? I guess that depends if you think there should be some lesson to be learned from his life and death. Oddly enough, the cause of death part is still pending. What's the complication there? Maybe the anger and hatred ate him up from the inside, and it's hard to figure that out from the autopsy results? I'm more inclined to the theory that he knew he was on the edge of death or at least likely to die young, and that motivated his anger and hatred. Perhaps there is evidence of foul play that they don't want to disclose for some reason? If AB was sincere about his public statements, I can actually imagine him trying to stage his own suicide to make it look like a murder committed by his adversaries.

Anyway, AB was just a symptom of the political dysfunction in America. He certainly wasn't the cause, and he certainly wasn't any part of a solution to any problem. I don't want to rejoice in his death, but I'm certainly not going to miss him and I'm glad that he will no longer part of making America's problems worse. Was he significant enough to matter one way or another? Obviously too soon to say, but I rather doubt it.


That was my comment about the article as added in the public comments of the linked article, but I don't know if I should add some additional context here...

I feel like it's just repeating myself to note that the American political system has become dysfunctional, and much of the problem is due to professional fakers like AB. It certainly seems he personally made a lot of money by destroying rationale political discourse, but of course the main financial beneficiaries are the corrupt businessmen who bribe the cheap politicians (referenced in my first paragraph about golden rules). The results are bad laws that remake the rules of the game, not just the game of politics, but even every game of doing business in America. Becoming more evil over time is no longer an option in America, it's the only way for a politician or business to survive beyond the short term.

Perhaps President Obama's greatest strength is that he hasn't been a professional politician on the long term? His entire political career has been relatively brief, and he didn't spend a long tine at any of the levels of politics.