Will the American electorate prove to have Etch A Sketch brains when it comes to elections as many cynical politicians and policy wonks seem to believe?
Republican presidential contender Mitt Romney has done his sudden makeover as friendly caring moderate now that November 4th is near. But he is still the candidate who has wholeheartedly endorsed the Ryan Budget and plans to enact it if elected. This is a budget that is actually designed to give to the top 1%, or the “Makers” in Mr. Romney’s vocabulary, and take from the rest of us.
The Ryan Budget is in fact a budget which some “…90 Catholic theologians and staffers at the Jesuit institution [Georgetown University] wrote to Ryan saying that his budget “appears to reflect the values of your favorite philosopher, Ayn Rand, rather than the Gospel of Jesus Christ…” according to an article that appeared in the San Francisco Chronicle back in August? (link below)
Mr. Romney is also the candidate with campaign staffers who’ve unashamedly said things like “We’re not going to let our campaign be dictated by fact-checkers” and “Well, I think you hit a reset button for the fall campaign. Everything changes. It’s almost like an Etch A Sketch. You can kind of shake it up and restart all over again.”
Will we voters shake our Etch A Sketch brains and forget that Mr. Romney is the standard bearer for a party that has been engaging in voter suppression by enacting so called ‘Voter I.D.’ laws in several key states – laws based on what have been proven to be bogus claims of mass voter impersonation fraud? Laws that are just somehow designed to lower the turnout only for the folks who would likely vote for Democrats?
Will we voters shake our Etch A Sketch brains and forget that while Romney’s fellow Republicans loudly and repeatedly proclaimed that they must enact the Voter I.D. laws to protect the sanctity of the vote, they were at the very same time paying millions to Nathan Sproul, to do voter registration – this after public complaints about Sproul’s dirty tricks surfaced in 2004? His dirty tricks have been so bad the Justice department is investigating Sproul and his various companies. Guess Republicans liked Sproul’s methods as they continued to use his services paying him $3,000,000 just this year to do voter ‘registration’ – until they finally got too embarrassed by the news about the investigation that is.
Will we, as they hope and believe, shake our Etch A Sketch brains as we enter the election booths, and think only of the cuddly friendly pantomimes being presented to the voters right now instead of remembering things like the Republicans’ war on women?
Will we shake our Etch A Sketch brains and forget that the very economic policies and attitudes toward sane regulation of banks and businesses that they are proposing already got us into the worst economic disaster since the Depression four years ago?
I certainly hope we’re better than that.