VOTERS REJECT ROMNEY'S BRAND OF CONSERVATISM

Last night (Nov 6, 2012) I watched the election returns in Florida on CNN as that station’s ever-present Wolf Blitzer (or, "Wolfie", as my wife and I now affectionately and familiarly call him) excitedly colored-in the states as the polls slowly closed in succession across the nation. We watched the azure tint accumulate on the continental rim, as the election results progressed, squeezing the GOP-dominated red states into a small isolated central “island”. The resultant map presaged the outcome of the evening. For just as the red color receded on the map into a smaller and smaller core area, the data developing from the election revealed a similar constriction of Republican voter strength and America's changing demographics. Romney carried the white, male, elderly and wealthy, the President got all the rest. That map and the statistics from voter exit polls casts a pall over the future of the Republican party. It is apparent, progressivism is slowly seeping into the interior of this large isolated land seemingly from its Oceanic, more-diverse, periphery. The final result was an Obama tidal wave of 332 electoral college votes (including Florida's 29 EC votes) vs 206 for Romney. Obama took a full 62% of the total electoral college votes and bested the Republican in the popular vote too. He did it under the most trying of economic conditions, with an unemployment rate now for the first time dipping below 8% in more than 40 months. Yet he won handily. Republican pundits were heard the day prior to the election, wrongly predicting a Romney "landslide" with 330 electoral votes. Thankfully, that did not happen....but I hear few of them now admitting that Obama's 332 would be considered an Obama landslide.

Early in the morning, Romney finally conceded. He gave a subdued, generally gracious speech, offering up his prayers for the newly elected President, and stating that the voters had "rejected him in favor of another candidate”. That is the part I disagree with. I do not believe this was personal, at least not on the part of the left. (There was and remains a great many Obama haters out there. ) The voters did NOT reject Romney, who (except for a powerful lot of "stretchers", and full-throated lies spouted during the campaign, which, by my mom's standards were fully deserving of a good soapy mouthwash) seems like a decent, likable sort. I imagine him as a fine father and husband. The voters did not reject him! They rejected the far right-wing policies he presented as his own and those very well-documented positions of his radical Tea Party "tea server" Paul Ryan, whom he chose as his VP.

Thus, whatever the Fox News TV talking heads say about this brutally long, unbelievably expensive, bitter election, the fact is that the electorate for once truly had a real choice. This was not a “tweedle dee” versus “tweedle dum” contest of the mid-to-late 20th century, where both parties offered up the same pablum under two different banners. Not so this time, in the Romney-Obama contest, the voters had distinct options between two very different governing philosophies and economic plans. (Well, perhaps the choice was clear up to the first debate, late in the campaign, when Romney, realizing he was slipping in the polls made a down-field sharp feint, a stiff arm, and a 90 degree turn to the left, landing up in Obama's lap and upsetting the President's normal equanimity to the point that he flubbed the rest of that debate.)

But as the results poured in last night, it was clear, the voters gave President Obama a resounding landslide victory (with today, November 8, 2012 Florida falling into his column) of 332 Electoral College votes to 206 for Romney, soundly rejecting the Republican Platform and Romney's plans to turn back the clock, giving a thumbs down on his proposals, his Neocon associates, and his antiquated vision of America.

The election also permitted the electorate to decide on that persistent and pernicious policy known as “Reaganism” and the Reagan dictum that “government is the problem, not the solution.” The voters soundly rejected that idea which was central to Romney's candidacy.

The voters also rejected the corollary Reagan concept of “trickle down economics” which claims that fire-hosing tax breaks to the super-wealthy would somehow magically create jobs, and "raise all boats on a rising tide". Over the decades of Republican ascendency (and during the Clinton years too) this nostrum (termed "voodoo economics by Repulican George H. W. Bush) was tried and simply never worked. The tide did rise, and a few of the boats grew into great big yachts and were buoyed on the flood, but the majority of row boats and skiffs were left stuck in the mud, the rising tide simply washing over the gunnels. These small boats needed rapid bailing just to stay dry. After thirty or more years of these "tidal" effects everyone knew that all it did was concentrate wealth in the hands of the top "one-percenters"---the captains of the big yachts. These mislabeled “job creators” generated wealth for themselves, sent jobs overseas, and stuffed the dough into their ship's lavish great cabins and motored their gas guzzling vessels south to squirrel their money away in the Caymans. They never did create jobs here in the USA. The voters wisely rejected that myth by voting for Obama.

The voters also rejected ideas espoused by Romney "advisors", sidekicks and " money bags", like Vegas and Qatar gambling tycoon, Sheldon Adelson, who gained access to power by donating millions of dollars to the Romney campaign, and who would have the US become the “tail” wagging to the dangerous foreign policy positions of the Likud mastiff. Other Romney advisors were also rejected by voters such as George Bush-cast-off neocons like Dan Senor and John Bolton, who would have advised the pursued catastrophic, bloody, and ineffective foreign adventurism reminiscent of failed-President George W Bush.

The voters rejected the Romney plan to INCREASE spending on our bloated military budget. They rejected the Romney's foreign policy of unending wars and ballooning “Defense” Department budgets. (They rejected the Federal funding for an increased military which is largely "welfare" for the oligarchs, corporatists and military industrial complex.) Instead, they voted FOR the President to bring our long-suffering troops home and trim expenditures on the military establishment so as to lower that figure back to realistic levels in accordance with the actual threats we face in the wider world.

The voters rejected the idea of reducing the number of teachers in the classroom and of cutting back on Pell Grants which give opportunities to untold numbers of our college bound youth.

The voters rejected Romney's promise to shut down and "replace" the Affordable Care Act, also known as "Obama Care".

The voters rejected the radical-right policies and nostrums of the the Paul Ryan faction of the Republican Party. They rejected the idea of radical cuts to Medicare, Social Security and Medicaid, and the idea of converting these popular and effective programs (the backbone of our minimalist US social safety net) into voucher plans that would be controlled and funded by the individual States.

The voters rejected the Romney plan to defund the Dream Act and his plan to favor “self deportation”. The voters rejected treating Latinos as second-rate citizens.

The voters rejected the idea of solving the US deficit and debt problem on the backs of the middle class. They rejected the idea of retaining the Bush tax cuts for high wage earners.

The voters rejected the idea of indiscriminately slashing the minimalist funds we expend on worthy cultural programs, and the unbiased news offered by PBS (and of course Big Bird!), expenditures which enrich the lives of multitudes.

The voters rejected the GOP’s plank concerned with women’s health care. The Grand Old Party claims to espouse “freedom” but with the glaring exception of the freedom of women of child-bearing age in the US for whom the white male Republicans would like to peek into their bedrooms, and under their skirts, to formulate legislation to control this group’s most private and sensitive decisions regarding their health, and reproductive choices.

The voters rejected Romney's plan to defund Planned Parenthood, which provides health care for all women.

The voters rejected the Romney idea that our deficit and national debt (which WILL eventually need corrective measures) are of paramount importance and need corrective action "right now” during the worst recession since the Great Depression of 1929. The Republican strategy of "austerity now" is simply another variation of the sinister and destructive Reagan policy of "strangling the Democrat Party beast" by denying it funds. In Reagan's day, the President raised the specter of Communism to bolster an argument for increased defense spending (who could vote against funds for our troops?). Reagan's scheme was to create annual deficits i.e. "tight money" that would limit the Democrats ability to enact or fund social welfare legislation and improvements to infrastructure. The modern GOP has come up with an alternate unreasonable fear, "fear of the deficit", a fear most economists (read Nobel Laureate Paul Krugman) believe is unfounded.

The voters rejected the Romney plan to press for an austerity budget now to deal with the middle class is necessary now and is to be coupled with tax cuts for the super wealthy and more funding for our already bloated military. That dog don't hunt. The voters figured that out right away...they rejected it.

Finally, in the face of Hurricane Sandy which charged ashore with 90 mile-per-hour winds, and a thirteen-foot tidal surge, voters emphatically rejected the idea that FEMA should be defunded or its functions passed off to the states to manage on their own.

In one way the voters DID reject Romney. He was rejected as being the one who would likely choose the next Supreme Court Justice. Perhaps he and his VP choice seemed too much a pair of ideologues for the nation as a whole.

Get the picture?

rjk