HALF OF AMERICA HAS ROMNESIA

What has to be unbelievable, to an objective observer, is that with all that has happened in this election cycle, the National Polls still show Romney and Obama neck and neck. (While this is not the case in key battleground States it is still instructive to examine this phenomenon).

Whatever happens almost half the country, blindly, accepts Romney as a viable candidate to entrust with the Country’s future. Peggy Noonan, the Republican commentator, sometime back called Romney’s campaign a “Galloping Catastrophe”. Nothing has happened to change this perception and now it has become a “Galloping Disaster” that snowballs day after day. All Romney has had going for him was that Obama had one bad debate. Before that Romney ran on the bad economy that Bush had left Obama. Romney maintained that, he Romney would have done a better job making it recover. This was because of his business and personal experience where he outsourced jobs and hid money in foreign havens and paid as little tax as possible.

In the teeth of this all the National polls still reflect a statistical dead heat.

ROMNEY’S RESUME

First and foremost, Romney and Ryan are not available and have not been for several weeks to be questioned or interviewed on anything that has happened or they have said and done. They both literally do what they want to in the belief that it is irrelevant to their political chances and that they are unaccountable.

This has to be seen as a background to Romney’s repeated changes of position on innumerable issues on fiscal, foreign policy and social agendas. This includes his unambiguous and continuing outsourcing of jobs, his belief, that it was fair, that his secretary pay less taxes than him, his double somersaulting and daily changing positions on social issues such as women and their reproductive rights, his vacillation on Roe versus Wade, his vicious position on the Latinos and then the inevitable backpedaling, the disastrous foreign trip and his outlandish accusations on Benghazi, his statement that Russia was the biggest danger to America, his cold war desire to increase, against the Pentagon’s wishes, the Defense Budget  by 2 trillion dollars, the wholesale reduction of every welfare program, making exceptions every time he is challenged, his bizarre approach to health care where his official position is to “Reverse Obamacare” on his first day in office, only to modify his position when he is challenged – he is for retention of insurance for pre-existing conditions, and of course he won’t change allowing children under 26 to remain on their parents insurance…,  his refusal to increase the marginal income tax on those earning $250,000 from 35% to 39%,  his changed position on climate change, his refusal to show his income  tax returns, his derogatory statement that all Obama supporters were bums who were parasites to society and on and on and on.

As Ron Reagan, son of THE icon, summing it all up, said, “Romney said that he was not going to let his campaign be run by fact checkers and he has been, (for once), true to his word!”

And as Eisenhower’s granddaughter, Susan, who considers herself the spokesperson of the descendants, added, “ I am more confused than ever whatever Romney stands for, He has no core beliefs”. She said she was voting for Obama as how could one entrust the Presidency to someone who does not who he is.

Yet about half of America seems to have the same Romnesia that Romney suffers from. Maybe they want two Presidents for the price of one. Maybe all that money that is being spent to promote the “Galloping Disaster” agenda is working.  Maybe Romnesia is a highly contagious disease.

ACUTE ON CHRONIC ROMNESIA

With the country reeling from hurricane Sandy, two new cases of Romnesia broke out. One was related to the disaster itself and the other related to a political ad only viewed in selective counties in Ohio.

* Romney on Obama and Chrysler Outsourcing Jobs to China

Romney produced an ad relating to the outsourcing of auto jobs to China. The ad was not announced as all of Romney’s are. The reason for announcing an ad is that you then get the ad becoming news and it is viewed for free as the news hungry media reproduce it again and again.

You have to admire Romney’s chutzpah. As the pioneer of outsourcing jobs to China he accused Chrysler directly and Obama indirectly for moving Jeep production to China.  Romney had written an Op Ed piece in the New York Times in 2008 entitled, “Let Detroit go Bankrupt.” Romney had been attacked in a Detroit News editorial for his position. Now he was accusing Chrysler and Obama for outsourcing jobs to China. By so trashing Chrysler, Romney seemed oblivious what it might do to it’s sales.

Obama and several analysts called this Romney’s biggest lie to date – and that is saying something! The Chrysler Company responded by debunking the ad and said that, on the contrary, they were creating over a 1000 new jobs in Ohio at the Jeep factory.

• Romney doubles Down,

In response to the rebuttals by all and sundry Romney merely repeated the allegations in a new ad and added, with the ultimate cynicism that Obama had created jobs for China and not Ohio. Chrysler responded that one needed a Hubble Telescope to detect the ad’s relationship with reality. The Jeep employees had been anxious as a result of these ads and needed reassurance that this whole episode was bogus. A General Motors spokesman stated that Romney was entering a parallel universe. The ads were crass and misleading.

Chrysler acknowledged that they had a Jeep plant in China. However this was for producing Jeeps for the Chinese market. They said that that they would repatriate the profit from this venture immediately and had nothing to do with the Ohio plant that they were expanding. Potentially there was 500 million dollars in revenue for the US.

The renewed criticism has produced no response from team Romney He does not care. Neither has this affected his position in the polls from fellow sufferers of Romnesia.

*FEMA and Hurricane Sandy.

FEMA is an acronym for the Federal Emergency Management Agency. Romney’s position on FEMA is well known. In answer to a question as to whether he would get rid of FEMA in a Republican Primary Debate, Romney responded:

“Absolutely,” he said. “Every time you have an occasion to take something from the federal government and send it back to the states, that’s the right direction. And if you can go even further and send it back to the private sector, that’s even better.” Mr. Romney not only believes that states acting independently can handle the response to a vast East Coast storm better than Washington, but that profit-making companies can do an even better job. He said it was “immoral” for the federal government to do all these things if it means increasing the debt.

Needless to say Romney has ducked answering whether he still would eradicate FEMA. Romney was seen 14 times on television being asked by different reporters ignoring the question. Again Team Romney does not seem to care.

Romney’s position is asinine, as this crisis has shown. You have to have an integrated approach to a disaster of this order. Not only does a State not have the resources to respond, inevitably the disaster involves more than one State. If one takes Romney’s argument to it’s logical conclusion then the individual States should be responsible for their own defense locally and internationally. Even better the private sector should be responsible and mercenaries should defend each state. Romney of course would probably outsource defense to China.

With regard to privatizing the agency, one would have hoped that a lesson had been learned from the Iraq war where almost everything was outsourced to Halliburton, the company that Cheney had been CEO of. Billions of dollars to this day are still unaccounted for. It was interesting to note that Halliburton has since moved their offices to Dubai. Cheney shows about as much embarrassment as Romney in what is really financial treason.

            *Obama and FEMA

Obama’s success in the management of this crisis is not an accident. He has worked from Day 0ne to get the Agency up to speed. This particularly in the light as to the way Bush’s FEMA functioned in the Katrina disaster.

Jay H Ell has firsthand knowledge of the seriousness that the administration has approached Disaster Management. He is on the Disaster Committee of a small rural hospital. Obama's FEMA has provided grants and guidance to coordinating and setting standards for emergency response to all types of disasters from terrorist attacks to a massive road accidents.  Standards are set, Seminars are arranged. Disaster drills are mandatory. There is a ton of online information as to how to organize and respond to a disaster whether it is a biological war attack or a hurricane. Federal reviewers visit to see if the grant stipulations are being carried out. All this in a tiny rural hospital that is linked in a chain to several others with the objective of coordinating an area disaster response. Paramedics, firefighters, police are all part of the picture.

So it should have come as no surprise that Hurricane Sandy had Obama and FEMA officials on the ground long before it hit and everything was in place.

*Hurricane Sandy, FEMA and Politics.

*Obama and Christie and local government.

Obama had very little option but to go into the situation room, the National Response Coordination Center, to take charge of the crisis. The temptation to have just one more campaign meeting, a double header with Bill Clinton, was resisted and he returned to Washington. In fact a week of double headers with Clinton were now off the table.

Obama established continuing contact with all the players at every level. He really had nothing to worry about. All the pieces were in place. He just needed to keep a cool head and look Presidential, which he was, and follow the script. The script, however, had not imagined a crisis in the last week of a touch and go election.

His success on focusing on the disaster can be reflected by the response of New Jersey Governor Chris Christie. The latter was the keynote speaker at the Republican Congress and considered the Republican standard bearer who just did not run. He had nothing but praise for Obama. He labeled him, in several press interviews, as “outstanding”, “all over it”, and available directly. Christie contacted him three times directly once at midnight. Christie could not thank the President enough and said he deserved all the credit.

In this current partisan climate this praise, from the Republican last hope, is heady stuff. More than Fox news could handle. The latter asked Christie if Romney would be touring the disaster areas with him. Christie responded that he was neither concerned nor interested as to what Romney might do and didn’t give a damn. All Christie was interested in was the people of New Jersey. Obama was due to tour the devastated New Jersey with Christie the next day. (Now there are plenty of political explanations as to why Christie has done all this including the fact that he believes Obama will win and he is looking to 2016. However, he obviously feels confident that Obama had delivered the goods well enough to support his position).

Christie was not the only politician to heap praise on Obama and it came from every quarter – every mayor, governor and operative that could get a word in.  This included the Republican Governor of Virginia and the influential New York Mayor Bloomberg who has announced his endorsement of Obama.

Eight out 10 polled believed the President had done a good job in managing the crisis.

*Romney

Romney for his part cancelled electioneering.  However, this did not remove him from the stump. He labeled an election rally a “Disaster Relief Meeting” and soldiered on. At one of these “Relief” meetings McCain had a go at the President on Benghazi and all this while Romney’s Jeep jobs to China ads were running.

Romney at one of these meetings focused on what the individual, (code for private industry), could do and told everyone to bring some food item for the victims to give to the Red Cross. Yet even this went this wrong. The Romney operatives bought $5,000 of goods at the local Wal-Mart. These were handed to those supporters that came to the meeting who had not brought a contribution. At best Romney seemed uncomfortable and out of touch, in what, indeed, was a difficult situation for him to react.

UPSHOT OF IT ALL

It is fair to say that the Romney cause took another pounding this week but so far this has not been reflected in the national polls. The elephant in the room is his and Ryan’s stated position to defund FEMA and or create the same unseemly bohaai that they did when Hurricane Irene had to be paid for. They demanded cuts from other projects, before voting for the money. But whatever they do does not seem to matter.

Half the country, like Romney, seems to be in status Romnesia and he can continue doing what he likes with impunity and without any accountability to his 47% of support. What this says about the American electorate is for history to decide. The Romnesiacs can only hope that it is all forgotten with the Obama electoral victory, retention of the Senate and a better than expected showing in the House of Representatives. Perhaps if this happens the American Civil War will finally be behind us as the present Republican Party unravels and America will enter a new era, once again reinventing itself.