The Romney Voters: A Little Information is a Terrible Thing
This article took place after having a discussion with people I respect in other venues and having to listen to the lack of political concrete ideas. America needs to know more about what it votes for but increasingly it settles for half formed ideas that wouldn't pass the smell test if people took the time to really consider what they were saying.
Obama is divisive. Yes he is black. People voting for Romney want people to all get along so in order to do so they need to turn the government over to the people who have literally shut the government down so Obama can't be credited with a victory. Thus rewarding the people, who first wrecked the economy, with jobs running the economy so they'll have another crack at it. It's a little like saying that the US fleet at Pearl Harbor really needed to try to be a lot less divisive when it came to the Japanese air force.
They also tend to believe that Romney grew up in a log cabin or something. By contrast Obama looks like an elite because he went to Harvard. It doesn't matter that he was raised by a single mother and his grandparents and worked as a "community organizer." Community organizer is correlated to mean poor people and any job that deals with poor people can't be a real job because poor people aren't even real Americans.
I guess they believe that Romney started out with nothing because he is a businessman and everyone knows they all grow from rags to riches in the US. When you tell them that Romney's father was a US senator and CEO of a major American auto company their eyes glaze over. And that Mitt protested the anti-war movement, for a war that he had no intention of going to, and that while doing missionary work in Europe he lived in a really nice place and he had his own cook. And that he went to his own exclusive prep school that had one teacher to every nine to fifteen students.
No matter what Obama does he cannot escape the fact that his is a Muslim Kenyan Socialist: thus capturing religious bigotry, racial bigotry, and anti-immigrant bigotry all in one breath. If you bring up the fact that he went to a christian church you get of "Yeah I've seen what kind of church he goes to." What the Romney voters are referring to is the whole Reverend Jeremiah Wright controversy that Fox spliced one tape, out of context and ran it continuously on a film loop. It's always funny to hear people complain he's not christian, who are christian but still don't go to church.
Many of the Romney voters are upset at the tax rate because that means they have to work twice as hard to make up for the taxes Romney doesn't bother pay. There is no talk as to the Cayman Islands and his Swiss bank accounts. We need a flat tax because people are skipping out on their taxes (i.e. Mitt Romney) but somehow it isn't his fault. It's just the government who put these asinine rules into place. That's why they are supporting Romney who is on tape in 2008 opposing raising all taxes (i.e. his) and whose company (Bain Capital:which cuts him a check for sitting on his ass) actively lobbied to make sure Mitt's tax rate didn't jump from 15% to 30%. That's why they're supporting Romney to change the tax rate.
They're also against fracking because of the pollution it creates. Yet they don't realize these laws were loosened under Bush and putting the same people who once loosened the regulation might not be the best ones to tighten them.
They understand the government failures the EPA, the SEC, the DOE... and they are able to follow the story that far. They simply do not read or investigate enough to follow the money that moves behind the system.
They blame the poor for taking out mortgages that they can't afford. They're more likely to look the other way as the business move behind the scenes. They seem less concerned that some companies have stolen millions and nobody has gone to jail for the crime. When you point this out, the most you'll hear is that "this a complex issue and there is plenty of blame to go around." The only difference is that one group loses their houses for their role in the mess; and the other keeps their job and gets a bonus. They don't realize that if somebody already stole millions from their 401ks and got away with it. Then what's to stop them from doing it again and that they might just have to eat another loss but it's all those damn poor people's fault.
In the end following all this logic just makes my head hurt.
Full presentation with pictures here: http://laborspains.blogspot.com/2012/02/romney-voters-little-information-is.html
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