The race for the Republican presidential nomination has been an embarrassing affair this year.
Debates were centered around personal attacks and rarely discussed actual plans for the country, the party has been divided by differing levels of conservative fanaticism, and I think Ron Paul fell asleep at the podium a few times. Gingrich dropped out under the weight of his own troubled past (or maybe just his weight), Santorum had his name literally redefined (Google it), and Rick Perry’s attempt at being the next George Dubya Bush fell flat against criticism from the gay and minority communities.
So now we are left with Mitt Romney, who succeeded basically because he hasn’t done enough to offend the country. He has done this by flip-flopping on multiple issues and lying low while the other candidates tore each other to shreds in a political sequel to “Mean Girls.”
What do we really know about Mitt Romney? He seems so tame and naive at times, but what worries me is that he seems genuinely unprepared. He will say almost anything to please a crowd, and his views go from radically decisive to being so vague he might as well be talking about the weather. But enough about the good things — let’s take a look at what makes Mitt Romney the man he is.
For starters, his dad’s money. Despite his claims of being a champion of the working man, Romney inherited millions from his father who was a politician and former head of American Motors. Romney attended an elite private high school before attending Harvard for law school. Romney expanded on this wealth when he was the head of investment firm Bain Capital, a company infamous for laying off thousands of workers to increase profits. The company has been criticized for its dishonest dealings on Wall Street, as well as being quoted by the former managing director as “having a scheme where the rich got richer.” The Los Angeles Times reported that he even set up shell companies in the Cayman and Bermuda islands in order to funnel money through them and avoid heavy American taxes.
As for job creation, under Mitt Romney’s leadership, Massachusetts ranked 47th among the 50 states in job creation and had a job growth rate of 0.9 percent, far behind the national average of over 5 percent. Romney has been quoted as saying, “Corporations are people,” a dangerous notion that leads to less taxes for big corporations and heavier taxes for the little guy. About the working class: Romney has a new tax cut set up for them. He wants to cut capital gains taxes for anyone earning $200,000 or less a year.
The issue? Research by thinkprogress.org shows that around 74 percent of people in this category will not benefit from this because few households in this category even earn capital gains, which is defined as money earned from investments such as real estate, stocks and bonds. It does, however, benefit the wealthy that have access to capital gains. According to the Tax Policy Center, 67 percent of the entire benefit from lower capital gains tax rates goes to millionaires. Seventy-five percent of the benefit goes to the wealthiest 1 percent of Americans. This tax plan costs around $7 trillion and is supposed to have a focus on the middle class, but all the benefits suggest otherwise.
He has flip-flopped on the issue of abortion before but currently believes that it is not a woman’s right to choose and that abortion should be illegal. He is also against gay marriage and has campaigned against it. In an interview with the Ohio News Network, Romney was asked about his position on the Blunt Amendment, a controversial bill that attacked contraception and health benefits, and he responded that he was against it. Moments after the interview ended, however, the Romney PR team redacted this statement and said he was confused by the question and actually supports the amendment.
So basically what we have here is a wealthy businessman more concerned with the bottom line than the interests of the average American. Unless you are a super-religious millionaire, what can you possibly gain from electing this man? And speaking of religion, I am all for the freedom to believe in what you choose. But his religion expressly states that the Garden of Eden was in Missouri, that Jesus visited America and Native Americans are actually descendants of a lost Israeli tribe, and that God is a physical being who lives near a planet called Kolob. I don’t think I could trust the fate of our country, and the fate of our scientific endeavors, to a man who believes in faith over logic.
This man is not evil, he is simply unprepared. And electing him in such a tumultuous time would be a disastrous mistake for our government and economy. Barack Obama might not be perfect, but at least we know what to expect from him.
