'Help' Romney Didn't Need

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I really wasn’t going to do another column about Mitt Romney this week. Really. I promise. But I can’t help it. On Wednesday, they served up a pitch that’s so slow and easy, I just have to take a whack at it.

It all started when Romney spokeswoman Andrea Saul responded to an ad that was created by one of those SuperPACs that are so thick on the ground this year. The ad, titled “Understands,” features a former steelworker named Joe Soptic.

The plant where Soptic worked was shut down by Romney’s company, Bain Capital. Soptic lost his health insurance. His wife was diagnosed with cancer and died because, the ad implies, she couldn’t afford to go to the doctor until she got too sick to ignore her symptoms, and by then it was too late. Mrs. Soptic died 22 days after being diagnosed.

“I do not think Mitt Romney realizes what he’s done to anyone,” Soptic concludes. “And furthermore, I do not think Mitt Romney is concerned.” Basically, Soptic says, Mitt Romney and his company are responsible for his wife’s death, and the MittBot doesn’t care. Wow. That’s gonna leave a mark.

Now, as it turns out, Soptic’s wife didn’t get sick till several years after Soptic lost his job, and she had health insurance from her own job for part of that time. The aforementioned Ms. Saul pointed that out. But then she stepped in it, big time. “If people had been in Massachusetts, under Governor Romney’s health care plan,” she told Fox News, “they would have had health care.”

This was most likely true, and to any normal candidate, it would have been a major selling point. But Romney is not a normal candidate. He’s a guy who’s trying very hard to distance himself from his biggest achievement as governor: the health plan that was the model for the national health plan he now vows to repeal, because if he didn’t promise that, he wouldn’t get the nomination.

So saying “Governor Romney’s health care plan might have saved this woman’s life” was actually exactly the wrong thing to say. If you needed any more proof that American politics in 2012 is completely insane, you need look no further than that.

I suppose one can’t blame Ms. Saul too much. After all, when you work for a guy who changes his stances on issues more times that most people change positions in their sleep, it must keep getting harder and harder to keep everything straight.

That didn’t stop the right wing from going completely haywire over the statement. Even more than usual, I mean. Rush Limbaugh said that “Andrea Saul’s appearance on Fox was a potential gold mine for Obama supporters.” Ann Coulter demanded that Saul be fired if Romney ever wanted any more contributions from conservatives.

Erick Erickson of CNN and the flagship right wing blog RedState called it “a mind-numbingly bit of spin [sic] that may mark the day the Romney campaign died.” Erickson noted that the right wing had never really trusted or warmed to Romney, and this wasn’t helping: “Consider the scab picked, the wound opened, and the distrust trickling out again.”

Euuuwww. Nice image there, Erick.

The assertion that this “may mark the day the Romney campaign died” is probably as overwrought as the original ad. But Team Romney does seem to be experiencing the Death of a Thousand Cuts, almost all of them self-inflicted. They’re creating an impression that’s worse for them than the perception that they’re flip-floppers or that they don’t tell the truth — they look inept.

People may be willing to overlook a little flip-flopping or even a little mendacity as something that politicians on both sides do. But when one of the overriding themes of your campaign is that your guy is this cool, experienced, uber-competent CEO who can manage us out of the crisis, ineptitude may be the only unforgivable sin.

When your message is “You’re in a hole and our guy can get you out of it,” it doesn’t help if you act like you don’t know which end of the shovel is which.

This is especially true when you’re going up against the guy that ended the Iraq War, got real health care reform done when no one thought he could, gave the orders that killed Osama bin Laden, saved the auto industry, and presided over 29 months of job growth despite an obstructive House determined to keep things bad for political gain.

AND he can sing on-key.

THANKS, RICK AND RUSH!

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This week, I'd like to reach across the aisle, as it were, and offer my thanks to a couple of Republicans.I know this might seem shocking, and it does break with the position of many of my fellow liberals, but I'd like to extend the hand of thanks to Rick Santorum and Rush Limbaugh.

Sen. Santorum, as a supporter of this president and someone who'd like to see him win a second term, I'd like to offer my warmest gratitude to you for your complete inability to stay on message.

Oh, I know that, with employment rising and other good economic news, the Republican platform of "everything sucks and it's all Obama's fault" becomes somewhat problematic. It's going to be hard to keep those moderates and independents on your side when you have to keep dismissing, mocking and trying to change the subject when there's any piece of good news. The Debbie Downer character from "Saturday Night Live" may be amusing, but I wouldn't pick her for my communications director.



 Nevertheless, economic gloom and doom is the message the Republican Party has chosen to embrace, and that's the one the candidates are expected to broadcast.

But you, Sen. Santorum - when it comes to any issue involving sex in general and contraception in particular, you're like my dog when he sees a squirrel on our morning walk. He knows he's not supposed to take off running full-tilt after it, but he just can't help himself.



Likewise, whenever the subject of contraception comes up, you may know, somewhere back in the recesses of your mind, that the issue is an electoral minefield, given that polls show three-quarters of American women have used the pill, only 8 percent of them think that birth control is morally wrong, and 89 percent of Catholic women - your own fellow religionists - not only have no problem with birth control, but favor expanding access to it for people who can't afford it. But you can't help but chase that squirrel, can you?

You can't keep from blurting out things like how contraception is "a license to do things in a sexual realm that is counter to how things are supposed to be," and that states should have the power to ban it, even for married couples.

Which brings us to Rush Limbaugh. Thank you, Mr. Limbaugh, for your recent comments regarding Georgetown University law student Sandra Fluke.

When Republican House members refused to let any women testify at a hearing involving a rule that private insurance plans had to include contraception, the Democrats held their own hearing. Ms. Fluke was a witness.
She talked about the financial hardship some women suffered because the student health plan at her private university did not provide coverage for contraception and related how a friend who took the pill to control her agonizingly painful polycystic ovarian syndrome was denied coverage and suffered as a result.

So you, Mr. Limbaugh, then went off on a bizarre diatribe over three days about how Ms. Fluke was a "slut" and a "prostitute" who "wanted taxpayers to pay her to have sex," even though, again, this was a discussion of regulation of a privately funded insurance plan at a private university and had nothing to do with taxpayer funding.

Further, Ms. Fluke hadn't even talked about her sex life. Nevertheless, in one of the creepiest jokes ever heard on the American airwaves, you demanded that Fluke should videotape herself having sex and post it on the Internet so you, a 61-year-old man, could watch it.

Now, a lot of people have given you grief for that. As of this writing, 45 sponsors have pulled out of your show after a storm of Internet protests. There have been calls to take you off the taxpayer-funded Armed Forces Radio.

But I say, please continue. Keep disrespecting women with whom you disagree in the crudest possible fashion, while positioning yourself as the voice of American conservatism.

And Sen. Santorum, please stay in the race as the "conservative alternative," while uncontrollably spouting off a radical position on birth control that's sure to alienate the vast majority of female voters.

Because pretty much all of the women of voting age that I've talked to recently are as angry and energized as I've ever seen them over these issues. And they're not energized for your party.A recent AP poll showed the president's approval ratings up 10 percent among women since December, beating Romney 54 percent to 41 percent in this key demographic.

Thank you, fellows. And enjoy the second Obama term.

They're Not Even Trying to Hide the Racism Any More

Rush Limbaugh Calls The First Lady ‘Uppity’ (VIDEO) | Addicting Info:

I’ll tell you something else. We don’t like paying millions of dollars for Mrs. Obama’s vacations. The NASCAR crowd doesn’t quite understand why when the husband and the wife are going to the same place, the first lady has to take her own Boeing 757 with family and kids and hangers-on four hours earlier than her husband, who will be on his 747. NASCAR people understand that’s a little bit of a waste. They understand it’s a little bit of uppity-ism.

There's no way he can spin this. Oh, he'll try, but 'uppity' is a racially charged word, and Limbaugh  knows it.

Rush Limbaugh's ratings are falling sharply. Hardly any Republican pol feels compelled to kiss his butt any more. He's trying desperately to get attention, and it's only going to get worse. 


This is mostly useful as a way of outing those idiots who claim "we're not racists, Democrats are the real racists, because Robert Byrd was in the KKK before any of us were born." Watch closely: anyone trying to defend Limbaugh and/or his use of the word 'uppity' is ipso facto racist. And I don't care if it offends them to be called what they are. 

Please, Brer Rush, Don't Throw Us In That Briar Patch

Limbaugh: I'll Leave US If Health Care Reform Passes (VIDEO)

Responding to a caller who asked him where he would go for health care if Congress enacts reform, Limbaugh replied,

I don't know. I'll just tell you this, if this passes and it's five years from now and all that stuff gets implemented -- I am leaving the country. I'll go to Costa Rica.

First: Costa Rica has a socialized, single payer health care system.

Second: It's ranked higher than ours.

Third: Remember when Alec Baldwin was called a traitor for saying he'd leave the country if Bush was re-elected?

hat tip: Balloon Juice