May 18, 2012--No Mocking Matter
If you watch Saturday Night Live, The Daily Show with Jon Stewart, The Colbert Report, Real Time with Bill Maher, MSNBC, any of the network late night talk shows, or follow liberal blogs such as the Daily Kos you would think that Mitt Romney is more a subject for ridicule than a serious candidate.
We hear endless jokes about his now infamous family trip to Canada with his dog strapped on the roof of the car and about his daily gaffs--"Corporations are people, my friend"; how he pals around with NASCAR owners; offers to make $10,000 bets; and how he likes to "be able to fire people."
He deserves to be criticized for these and even held up to mockery, and maybe it's OK for Al Sharpton on his MSNBC show to insist on calling him "Willard," Romney's actual first name (though it wouldn't be cool to call Barack Obama by his actual first name--"Barry"); but these folks, if they want to help reelect Obama, had better start taking Mitt Romney seriously.
After a bruising Republican primary campaign during which Romney was dismantled by Newt Gingrich and Rick Santorum, a campaign that focused on the predatory capitalism of Romney's old company, Bain Capital, and how the hated Obamacare is actually modeled after Massachusetts Governor Romney's Romney-Care; and now after similar attacks on Romney by Barack Obama and especially Vice President Joe Biden, how is Romney actually doing?
One would assume not very well.
In fact, he is doing exceptionally well--
During April his campaign raised almost as much money as Obama's--and I am not talking about his PAC groups which are out-raising Obama's by at least three to one--and all the national polls have him either in a statistical dead-heat with Obama or leading.
With the economy likely to continue to be uncertain and with a still large undercurrent of racism, Romney's candidacy is no laughing matter.
No matter how terrible a candidate Romney appears to progressives and comedians to be, no matter how funny all the jokes, unless he is taken seriously, he has a very good chance of winning in November.
We hear endless jokes about his now infamous family trip to Canada with his dog strapped on the roof of the car and about his daily gaffs--"Corporations are people, my friend"; how he pals around with NASCAR owners; offers to make $10,000 bets; and how he likes to "be able to fire people."
He deserves to be criticized for these and even held up to mockery, and maybe it's OK for Al Sharpton on his MSNBC show to insist on calling him "Willard," Romney's actual first name (though it wouldn't be cool to call Barack Obama by his actual first name--"Barry"); but these folks, if they want to help reelect Obama, had better start taking Mitt Romney seriously.
After a bruising Republican primary campaign during which Romney was dismantled by Newt Gingrich and Rick Santorum, a campaign that focused on the predatory capitalism of Romney's old company, Bain Capital, and how the hated Obamacare is actually modeled after Massachusetts Governor Romney's Romney-Care; and now after similar attacks on Romney by Barack Obama and especially Vice President Joe Biden, how is Romney actually doing?
One would assume not very well.
In fact, he is doing exceptionally well--
During April his campaign raised almost as much money as Obama's--and I am not talking about his PAC groups which are out-raising Obama's by at least three to one--and all the national polls have him either in a statistical dead-heat with Obama or leading.
With the economy likely to continue to be uncertain and with a still large undercurrent of racism, Romney's candidacy is no laughing matter.
No matter how terrible a candidate Romney appears to progressives and comedians to be, no matter how funny all the jokes, unless he is taken seriously, he has a very good chance of winning in November.
posted by Steven Zwerling at
6:05 AM
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