Truth be told, I don’t care for Romney
Alsson disapproved of my commentary on Mitt Romney’s comments about how he disapproved of the very poor.. He writes:
You don’t like Romney. You don’t like Republicans. That’s where you begin, and that’s why your point is so poorly made.
You’re certainly right that I don’t like Romney. And I don’t like the way the Republican party has manifested itself lately—though plenty of people I respect are still Republicans. But that’s not where I started.
Romney and I started back when he was a moderate Republican governor of the liberal state I lived in. At the time, I called myself an independent—but I voted overwhelmingly Republican. When Romney tried to restore the death penalty in Massachusetts hoping to shore up his conservative credentials in anticipation of a Presidential bid. I turned pretty aggressively against him. I can respect principled disagreement—even on something as important as a life issue. But I have no patience for putting people to death for political convenience.
That was the beginning of the end for me and the Republican Party.
I don’t think it’s possible to make your point well, in any case, because it’s goal isn’t truth or fact. Rather you want to paint a man in a bad light. But you ought to be able to do a better job than you have.
If I simply wanted to paint Romney in a bad light, I’d simply repeat the story about how Mitt Romney drove around with his dog strapped to the top of his car, even after it shat itself in terror. As Jeff Miller eloquently points out, Mitt Romney isn’t the only American who could care less about the very poor.
Want to try again? Want to define poverty and the systemic causes thereof? It would be interesting to at least know how you define such things, since you think you have something important to say about them and their neglect by one candidate.
As it turns out, I would be happy to discuss poverty and the systemic causes thereof. But … that’s actually something I know a bit about—which means it’s going to take a while to get it in the concise and digestible format the Internet likes. Give me a few more hours.
(Source: squashed)
