A Line Drive in the Box Score
By David Glenn Cox

He’s been called Mitt the twit and Mitt the unfit and he has successfully made John McCain look like a master politician and even the incompetence of Sarah Palin has faded into a distant memory. Romney made a smile and wave trip to Great Britain earlier this year for the Olympics and within 24 hours had created an international incident by questioning British security. Now wait a minute, sure, it’s hard to run for President, but if George W. Bush can do it twice, without wetting his pants or appearing without shoes, then Romney should be able to manage it.

My father was an amateur boxer and for years used to say, “When the champ trains himself, the champ is going to lose.” Could that be the case? Could Romney be incapable of taking advice or of staying on the script? Something is going on here, for the second time in as many tries the Republicans have chosen a total incompetent as their Presidential nominee.

Okay, the Republican’s aren’t necessarily the brightest bulbs of intellectual thought; they are dogmatic and ideological, Bibles, bullets and tax cuts. Still, this should be easy peasey for them and yet it has turned to disaster, a Republican Dukakis. Things were going so bad for the campaign that Romney announced his running mate Paul Ryan, even before the convention. The choice of Paul Ryan as Romney’s running mate was either a stroke of political genius or political suicide.

Bloomberg – “Unfavorable Views of Romney Cloud His Message on Economy”

“Republican Mitt Romney’s negative ratings are preventing him from capitalizing on President Barack Obama’s vulnerabilities in the race for the White House, according to a new poll that gives the incumbent a lead heading into the first of three presidential debates.”

Fifty percent of Americans hold an unfavorable view of Mitt Romney while the other fifty percent just don’t like him at all. So the idea of choosing Paul Ryan as his running mate was? Ryan has all the appeal of a cold plate of spaghetti and his politics are down right offensive to the mainstream electorate. Paul Ryan’s budget plan was viewed in a negative light by close to 80 percent of Americans, Republicans and Democrats alike, so why choose him? Because Romney was so unpopular he had to choose Paul Ryan just to shore up the base in his own party.

The Republican field of candidates was so weak as to be laughable. Let’s be honest here, I don’t agree with Republican politics, but these folks aren’t so stupid as to pick a nit wit to be their candidate, are they? I mean, true, they ran George W. Bush and got a way with it, but let’s remember Bush’s best campaign tactics went on behind the scenes. Romney’s campaign is a fiasco; if the powers behind the throne tried those election stealing stunts with Romney, there would be blood in the streets!

Now, let’s look at this thing from the other side, looking from the Republican perspective is Obama unbeatable? Hardly, Obama has done his best to alienate the left of his own party. He is the first President to ever keep more of his opponent’s campaign promises than his own. John McCain proposed freezing government spending, Obama, enforced it. John McCain proposed more nuclear power plants and Barack Obama funded them. John McCain and Sarah Palin proposed “Drill baby, drill!” Barack Obama proudly boasts of increased drilling in the Gulf of Mexico. Barack Obama’s policies are center right. If Obama ran for office against Richard Nixon, Nixon would be the Democrat. Obama never saw a corporation, a free trade deal or a tax cut he didn’t like.

In his jobs bill, Obama proposed allowing workers to continue drawing an unemployment check while working for corporations. The corporations would be allowed to hire workers for 90 days before they would be obligated to pay the workers. At the 90 day point, the corporation could either elect to keep the worker and start paying them or choose new workers from the draw pile and start to 90 day clock all over. This is the sad and lamentable state of Democratic politics.

Something’s way wrong here, in a real world, in a real election, wait, let’s go back, in the year 2000, the Presidential election was stolen by a Supreme Court which intervened illegally in an election. The Supreme Court of the United States stopped a vote count, no differently than some strong man in some banana republic. In 2004, the votes of the people of Ohio were stolen. Not maybe, but demonstratably, it was done crudely and without sophistication but with the blessing of Kenneth Blackwell, the Secretary of State and a complicit media who neatly buried the episode like a Tabby would in a cat box.

In 2008, there are rumblings, that the United States needed a clear winner and an unquestioned vote count. From out of the field of candidates, a bright shining star appears on the horizon. He’s young, handsome with a beautiful wife and adorable children. He’s part Jack Kennedy and part FDR, his politics are left leaning, his delivery polished and confident. Okay, I admit it; I bought into this sap sucking bullshit, but who wouldn’t? After eight years of that drunken little weasel and the Machiavelli Cheney I’d have voted for the Mighty Morphin Power Rangers. But not this time, fool me once, shame on you, fool me twice and we go to that dark place.

So we anoint this Bozo messiah and his only serious competition for the throne is Hillary Clinton. There is bad blood between them and yet suddenly, all is forgiven and Hillary throws her support for Obama. Hillary is named to the post of Secretary of State and for the last four years has acted as almost a co-president. She is almost an independent agent. She is never reported as flying back to Washington for consultations with the President. When Gaddafi’s death was reported, Mrs. Clinton smiled gleefully, while rubbing her hands together saying, “We came, we saw and he died.” This is American foreign policy in the twenty first century, coups, assassinations and war?

This isn’t hope and change; this is all just very, very strange, who gains by this? Why did John McCain go to Florida four years ago to tell a room filled with seniors about the need to cut Social Security? It was almost as if he wanted to lose the election and then choosing Sarah Palin, well for me at least, that sewed it up, he did want to lose the election.

Flash forward to now, after the election, what will be the number one issue before Congress? Budget cuts and sequestration are set to take place automatically in January, immediately after the election. The President’s Bowles – Simpson cat food commission couldn’t even get their report passed out of a Congressional committee, but what did Obama call Bowles –Simpson, he called it a good start. There is an old expression in baseball when someone squibs a ball through the infield for a bloop base hit, “it will look like a line drive in the box score.” So as Mitt the unfit prepares for the worst drubbing since walking Wendell Wilkie, we must ask ourselves, just what the hell is going on here?

Could the Republicans be anymore incompetent in the midst of a banker inspired, second Great Depression as to nominate a smarmy investment banker and a black hearted Neo-liberalist? Could Mrs. O’Leary be elected Mayor of Chicago on a platform of more cows and lanterns, or is the public being manipulated yet again?

How can the public be encouraged to vote for a weak sitting President, with no real record of accomplishment, save for passing more tax cuts than Ronald Reagan. Barack Obama is the most right wing President ever to sit on Pennsylvania Avenue and the only way to get a public energized to vote for him is to do just what is being done. To find a candidate, so awful and so hideous as to scare the Bejesus out of the American public.

So here we sit five weeks before the election and… well, it’s gonna look like a line drive in the box score, isn’t it? Then come January you will be introduced to someone you have never met before, the real Barack Obama and the first words out of his mouth are going to be about his electoral mandate.

“…for the game had never been fair, the dice were loaded. They were swindlers and thieves of pennies and dimes, and they had been trapped and put out of the way by the swindlers and thieves of millions of dollars.” – Upton Sinclair

“Democracy must be something more than two wolves and a sheep voting on what to have for dinner.” – James Brovard