The culmination of the GOP convention ended with Mitt Romney walking the red carpet in a “State of the Union” pretend moment as he made his way to the stage rather than to the dais reserved for POTUS; a fitting ending for three days of a pretend reality.
As each pretender came onto the stage over the last three days in what was billed as a carefully staged choreography to showcase the candidate, the audience watched each speaker promote themselves until they finally had to pretend to support their candidate near the end. The only exception to this was Ann Romney, not a likely candidate for future office, who proclaimed her “love” for women – albeit only upper middle-class women and her “fix-it” man. There was love for the “working moms who love their jobs,” the “single, married, widowed,” and the “ones that have to do a little bit more and you know what it is like to earn [work] a little bit harder [to] earn the respect you deserve at work.”
Apparently you don’t qualify for Ann’s love if you’re poor (not once mentioned), divorced, or are not a parent.
To Ann, you work harder to gain the respect you deserve at work, but evidently not an increase in your paycheck. The Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act was an “we’ll get back to you” moment by the campaign.
You can be a “working mom” and love your job, but you’ll get no love for being a mom looking for a job.
Ann apparently knows about “those late-night phone calls with an elderly parent…and those long weekend drives just to see how they’re doing” but she doesn’t know about those families where mom or dad has had to move in because they didn’t have a pension plan or, if they did, one that no longer exists because of the financial collapse (or Bain Capital like entities who shipped their jobs overseas). She apparently also doesn’t know that the GOP plan to decimate Medicaid will have a profound effect on the ability for those working mothers who will need to quit their jobs to take care of their elderly parents or a disabled child because any assistance they receive now would likely be reduced or eliminated under the Ryan budget Romney embraced early on.
Ann must be pretending these people do not exist, as she ignored them in her speech.
Romney pretends the country comes “together after elections,” and members of his party have pretended to care about the country and its citizens, yet on the very day of Obama’s inauguration the leaders of their party (Eric Cantor, Jeb Hensarling, Pete Hoekstra, Dan Lungren, Kevin McCarthy, Paul Ryan and Pete Sessions and, from the Senate, Tom Coburn, Bob Corker, Jim DeMint, John Ensign, and Jon Kyl, along with former House Speaker Newt Gingrich and Republican strategist Frank Luntz) met and came to the following conclusion,
If you act like you’re the minority, you’re going to stay in the minority,” said Kevin McCarthy, quoted by Draper. “We’ve gotta challenge them on every single bill and challenge them on every single campaign.
Romney pretends “When every new wave of immigrants looked up and saw the Statue of Liberty…these new Americans sure had many questions [most in their own language], but none doubted that here in America they could build a better life. That, in America, their children would be blessed more than they.” He ignores that his party today demands they speak English when they arrive (so they can navigate the English only papers they need to complete to even get a job), or the hate filled speech that has accompanied each wave of immigrants who have entered this country – be they Irish, Germans, Poles, Russian, Chinese (who couldn’t even become citizens until 1943, even though their ancestors helped build the transcontinental railroad, among others), etc. Today, many American’s, mostly on the right point their hatred at the Latina population, as well as Muslims or anyone who looks like a Muslim. They want to secure the [southern] border yet say nothing about the 50% of the immigrant population who fly here and just don’t go home. And, of course, the original Americans – not we immigrants who came to their country – have been vilified or ignored since we arrived.
In Romney world only those who work “deserve” what America has to offer, even though the many unemployed remain unemployed not because of the private sector {that both he and Obama agree are doing “fine”), but because of the vast unemployed in the public sector who have been denigrated in GOP controlled state after state for belonging to a union – often getting lesser pay in order to get better benefits for their retirement – and contributing to those benefits themselves – have lost their jobs. That the GOP could (as they have time and again under past Republican and Democratic Presidents) voted to provide funds to these states to keep our teachers, firefighters and cops, who have lost jobs by the hundreds of thousands, on the job and, thereby, keeping more money in communities that will keep other employees at their jobs.
I guess blaming the poor for buying so much housing they crashed the entire world wide economy wasn’t selling as well as they hoped, so the unions they’ve wanted to crush since Reagan was the next ploy.
Romney chooses to place the blame on our economic woes not on past governments (both Democratic and Republican) that provided the impetus for the financial greed that befell us, but lays it at the feet of President Obama who wasn’t even in any public office during these periods.
He also pretends the defiant minority did “act in good faith,” rather than in what I would term an act of treason against we the people they are supposed to represent by refusing in any way to assist in a recovery.
As a result, recovery has remained anemic and the “prayers for a better tomorrow” Romney suggests could easily be answered today, but for the likes of McConnell & Co.
It was telling when Romney at the end of his speech commented, “That [a] united America will care for the poor and sick, will honor and respect the elderly and will giving a helping hand to those in need. That America is the best within each of us. That America we want for our children” and no one applauded.
At least the audience was not ready to pretend for the cameras how they feel about the poor, the sick, the elderly and those in need. Or maybe they were just pretending not to hear?
