Walter Rhett: The Cultural Case Against Mitt Romney [View all]

[DemocratsForProgress]

Athletes have it, but writers and everyday people get it too: self doubt. For athletes, it’s driven by a prolonged drop in performance. For a writer, its loss is tied to an audience that suddenly doesn’t get what once was a shared point of view and doubt leaps forward.

I’m having mega doubts. The national audience is ignoring an issue I thought was clear cut. I thought it was a clean kill. I seen three clean kills in politics: Michael Dukakis (the tank ad, not Willie Horton), Tom Turnipseed’s South Carolina governor’s race (Turnipseed having been treated for depression with electric shock, Lee Atwater declared the state “didn’t need a governor hooked up to jumper cables”), and Strom Thurmond’s takedown of Abe Fortis’ Supreme Court nomination (Thurmond set up 24-hour private Senatorial screenings of the results of Fortis’ ruling supporting community standards for decency in a case over pornography). No, four: Barack’s takedown of Donald Trump at the White House Correspondents Dinner last year.

But Romney has a bigger bulls-eye. It rivals Benedict Arnold in its nasty, anti-American duplicity. It has everything in common with sleazy, morally bankrupt, self-aggrandizing, power-mad dictators of lesser developed countries. This one, I thought, was in the pocket.

But no. The rapidly spreading news of Mitt Romney’s 12 or more offshore accounts, in dummy corporations he legally established, turned into a loud inquisition about his bypassing the tax code. That’s the main reason for opening accounts in the Bahamas and the Cayman Islands! Or Switzerland. Mitt has accounts in all three. But these arguments miss the mark, and for three reasons I’m left with self doubt about America’s common sense...

More at: http://www.democratsforprogress.com/2012/07/11/digging-deeper-the-cultural-case-against-mitt-romney/