Governor Etch-a-Sketch

The guy is truly shameless. I’m talking about Mitt Romney and his willingness to use any ploy, tell any lie, exploit any person, event, situation to pander to whatever the reigning opinion seems to be. When he was trying to court the Tea Party dopes now hyping the Republican right, he vowed that he was a conservative, always had been, and would cut taxes, end abortions, and pay no attention to 47% of the voters who were freeloaders anyway. Now, though, that he’s in the general election and trying desperately to curry the favor of the “undecided” middlers (how anyone could still be undecided about this race is beyond me), he’s saying he never intended to cut taxes for the rich and won’t, how he loves all the poor—including that 47%--and that limiting abortion “would not be part of his agenda.”

            You pandering, ass-licking creep!

            This latest flip-flop came in an interview with the Des Moines Register that was just published hours ago. The article—“Did Mitt Romney flip his stance on abortion—Again?”—points out that Romney actually started out as a pro-abortion-rights Republican (you can hear him saying this in a Buzzflash video), and then switched to “a firmly anti-abortion position shortly before his first presidential run in 2008.” He has referred to this as his “evolution” on abortion. As recently as September, he promised to de-fund Planned Parenthood—that bastion, in Republican eyes, of dastardly baby killers. But now, in the Register interview, he says “there’s no legislation with regards to abortion that I’m familiar with that would become part of my agenda.” Another etch-a-sketch moment. And then, just as quickly, his campaign “clarified” this by asserting that Romney “would of course support legislation aimed at providing greater protections for life.”

            Fortunately, he’s not getting away with all of it. Some Americans are actually paying attention to the etch before the current sketch. Like the mother of the Navy Seal Romney invoked in a recent speech. He had met this brave Seal, Romney recalled almost tearfully, and because he sort of knew him, he was doubly troubled by his death in the attack on the American Embassy in Libya recently. And he implied that were he the President, he, Romney, would have made sure no American would be killed in that type of ‘preventable’ attack—suggesting, with little subtlety, that the whole thing was Obama’s fault for not beefing up the protection for those poor heroes. What a craven asshole. Which is what Barbara Doherty, the mother of the slain Glenn Doherty said: that Mitt the Twit shouldn’t be using her son’s death to advance his own political campaign. 

“I don't trust Romney,” she said. “He shouldn't make my son's death part of his political agenda. It's wrong to use these brave young men, who wanted freedom for all, to degrade Obama.” 

Amen. But Mitt has a tin ear when it comes to this stuff. Hell, he seems to think, why shouldn’t I use a hero’s death to advance my political career? Why not use abortion? Why not use everything available, including the suffering of half the people in the United States, if it will get me into the White House?

            What can one say to such a plastic man? In an age when it seemed impossible for any politician to lower the standing of the 'smiling, damned villains' supposedly representing us, Governor Etch-a-Sketch is actually succeeding in sinking to new lows every time he opens his dreck-filled mouth. What I can’t understand is how anyone could be taken in by Governor Etch-a-Sketch. Or which one they can be taken in by.  

Lawrence DiStasi