Failing poll numbers, a disastrous start to a overseas trip, and a tax return scandal have left the Romney campaign with one strategy going forward: overt racism.
“We are part of an Anglo-Saxon heritage, and he feels that the special relationship is special. The White House didn’t fully appreciate the shared history we have.” (Unknown Romney Advisor – 7.24.12)
Abandoning even a dog whistle, Mitt Romney’s campaign has appeared to place their all-in bet in this November’s election on the racist tendencies of white Americans, laying an all-out frontal assault on the President by implying that he simply isn’t “American” enough to run our country – a code word, simply, for the fact that he is too black to run our country. Perhaps if the above quote was the only instance of the racist implications of the Romney campaign, it could be ignored. But,
ThinkProgress has helpfully provided a full timeline of Romney statements that seemingly question Obama’s “American-ness”:
11:30 AM — OBAMA HAS TO ‘LEARN HOW TO BE AN AMERICAN’: “The men and women all over America who have worked hard to build these businesses, their businesses, from the ground up is how our economy became the envy of the world. It is the American way. And I wish this president would learn how to be an American. [Co-chair John Sununu, Romney campaign conference call]
1:35 PM — ROMNEY SAYS OBAMA’S POLICIES ARE ‘EXTRAORDINARILY FOREIGN’: “Celebrating success instead of attacking it and denigrating making America strong. That’s the right course for the country. His course is extraordinarily foreign.” [Mitt Romney, Pennsylvania]
The continued swipes over Obama’s multi-cultural upbringing are idiotically racist, the sign of a failing Presidential campaign that is trying to elect a man who has zero principles, has flip-flopped on almost every major issue, and now may very well have committed a federal felony in lying about his time at Bain Capitol. The Romney campaign is now providing only one real messaging talking point: reminding us over and over and over again that this President is black – and that Mitt Romney is the best choice for President because, well, he’s the whitest choice possible.
Where’s the racism coming from? It’s arrived in this fashion because Romney’s continued need to distract from near weekly major disasters in his campaign, most recently from the disastrous beginning to his foreign policy tour, beginning in the
UK for the 2012 Summer Olympics:
Cameron soon rebuked Romney. "We are holding an Olympic Games in one of the busiest, most active, bustling cities anywhere in the world. Of course, it's easier if you hold an Olympic Games in the middle of nowhere," he said.
"I think we will show the whole world not just that we come together as a United Kingdom, but also we're extremely good at welcoming people from across the world," Cameron added. "I will obviously make those points to Mitt Romney. I look forward to meeting him."
Made a fool of by the Prime Minister of the country you’re visiting? Check.
How about saying our most important ally is “Just a small island that makes stuff that nobody wants? Check:
England [sic] is just a small island. Its roads and houses are small. With few exceptions, it doesn't make things that people in the rest of the world want to buy. And if it hadn't been separated from the continent by water, it almost certainly would have been lost to Hitler's ambitions.
What else?
“Hours later, London Mayor Boris Johnson played on Mr Romney's earlier comments while revving up a crowd of thousands of people in London's Hyde Park.
Calling London "the greatest city on earth," Mr Johnson told the crowd: "I hear there's a guy called Mitt Romney who wants to know whether we're ready. Are we ready?"
This foreign policy nightmare, incensing nearly every important leader in what is our closest ally in the world, was preceded by a Titanic-esque disaster where he refused to release all but two years of federal income tax returns,
most likely because he did not pay ANY federal income tax in the year of 2009:
As a member of the ultra-rich, Romney probably wasn’t spared major losses. And it’s possible he suffered a large enough capital loss that, carried forward and coupled with his various offshore tax havens, he wound up paying no U.S. federal taxes at all in 2009. If true, this would be politically deadly for him. Even assuming that his return was thoroughly clean and legal—a safe assumption, it seems to me—the fallout would dwarf the controversy that attended the news that Romney had paid a tax rate of just 14 percent in 2010 and that estimated he’d pay a similar rate in 2011.
That’s right folks – a single mother making $7.25 an hour paid more federal income tax in 2009 than Mitt Romney. It does really put into focus how, indeed, Mitt Romney is “not concerned about the very poor” – ironically, who are made up by a very large block of minorities.
With updated polling now showing President Obama pulling away from Romney nationally and on the electoral map, it appears that a return to racism is the only way the GOP thinks they can win this election, and this time they don’t have John McCain to put the veto on it. Mitt Romney is one thing – a panderer. It is blatantly obvious that if he believed that burning a cross on the White House lawn would get him the Presidency, he would do so.
It’s incredible the damage Mitt Romney has done to himself in the last few months. Before April, even I didn’t think Mitt Romney was actually a bad guy – he may have been disconnected from reality, ignorant of the masses, but at least he donated to charity and didn’t actively seem to cheat the system – but the last few months have exposed the true Mitt Romney. A political chameleon who will do anything and everything to gain power and money – who cares so little about the average American that his
wife publicly talks about “you people” with disdain in interviews. Now he’s stooping to the level of David Duke, George Wallace, and the 50’s era mentality of white, heterosexist supremacy over all affairs. What a disgusting man – and not a man fit to be President of the most diverse country in the world.
