In an address following his announcement his bid for the 2012 GOP Presidential nomination, former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney minced no words and delivered some very harsh remarks about President Obama today, ultimately concluding that President Obama has “failed America” and that he (Romney) is the one that America really needs and should want for its next President. His litany of charges against President Obama seemed to be mostly right-wing drivel of the sort that continuously emanates from Fox (Republican) News Channel and his speech, not surprisingly included some pretty wild lies that apparently made fact-checking sites such as Politifact sit up and take notice. Republican politicians generally seem to be an especially dishonest group of people, so I expected little different from Mitt Romney as well. There are, of course, all kinds of shapes and sizes of lies and, although most of Romney’s comments during his address today were typical Fox News-inspired distortion and hyperbole, his contention that he and his fellow Republicans “wished him [Obama] well and hoped for the best” when he was elected President in 2008 was one of the most jaw-dropping statements I think I’ve heard in recent memory.
You’d have to have literally been in a coma from January 21, 2009 to now in order to not have seen how poorly the Republicans and other right-wingers have treated Obama ever since he’s been President. The only President in recent history that I’ve seen treated as (unjustifiably) bad or worse by Republicans was Bill Clinton, who was relentlessly attacked, smeared, and even impeached by Republicans and other assorted right-wingers during his two terms in office. Like with President Obama, the Republicans gave Clinton absolutely no quarter right from the starting gate and he had barely gotten started with his Presidency before they unleashed the full fury of their hate and anger over losing the 1992 Presidential election on Clinton, his wife, and even his daughter. Hate radio host and the Republican Party’s official propaganda organ since the early 1990’s (and one of Clinton’s most vociferous detractors), Rush Limbaugh, set the tone for how Republicans should approach Obama’s Presidency almost immediately after President Obama took office in 2009 by unequivocally declaring that he wanted President Obama to fail. He and other right-wingers also suggested that any sort of attempts at compromise with President Obama or genuine bipartisanship by anybody in the Republican Party was akin to heresy (if not treason). Limbaugh’s early declaration has essentially served as the prime directive for the Republican Party during these past 2+ years, as well as a roadmap for their political victory in last fall’s midterm elections.
I get that Romney is running for President on the Republican Party ticket and I certainly don’t expect him to agree with President Obama on anything nor do I expect him to be “nice” and “flowery” about President Obama (he does belong to the other party, after all). However, I would think that he should at least be intellectually honest enough to avoid making the laughably (and demonstrably) false claim that he and his fellow Republicans EVER gave President Obama a “chance” to succeed (which I personally believe he has- albeit IN SPITE of Limbaugh, Romney, and the rest of their ilk). It is becoming all too apparent to me, as it should be to everybody else, that Republican politicians, particularly those (considering) running for the GOP nomination next year have little desire to engage President Obama in actual substantive debates over on any important issues (like, say, creating jobs) and would rather focus on delivering empty and gratuitous personal attacks, insults, and smears against him instead. They seem to aim to make every single political battle President Obama’s “Waterloo” and reflexively obstruct anything that they don’t propose themselves so as to ensure that things that should be getting done don’t get done and that President Obama ultimately “fails”, presumably so that they can restore control of America to its rightful rulers- namely themselves. Following their midterm victories last fall, what did the Republicans declare was their #1 priority for 2011-2012? Creating jobs? Helping the economy back from the abyss that it nearly fell into in 2008? Addressing rising homelessness and poverty among this country’s citizens? Nope! As Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) helpfully clarified, the Republican Party’s #1 priority 2011-2012 is to ensure that President Obama will be a one-term President. That’s it and that’s all in a nutshell.
Romney, long considered to be a more moderate “establishment” Republican candidate has established (at least to me) through his big speech today that he has chosen to embrace the mantra of hate radio hosts like Rush Limbaugh that President Obama is not to be allowed to succeed at any costs. Indeed, as was previously mentioned, Romney has already apparently rendered a final judgment of President Obama’s tenure in office to date, declaring him to have failed this country. However, of course, just because Romney says that President Obama has “failed America”, doesn’t make it so and there is plenty of evidence to the contrary (though most Republican politicians will never accept facts that conflict with their predetermined conclusions). Maybe it is possible that Romney was referring to the last occupant of the Oval Office (who could justifiably wear that moniker much better than President Obama)? It’s hard to tell but what I find most disturbing about Romney and the rest of the Republican Party is not that they want to remove President Obama from office through our (mostly legitimate) electoral process in 2012 but rather that they are willing to do anything and to stop at nothing to ensure that President Obama’s hands are so firmly tied that he can’t do anything that might help the American people (that Romney, et. al always profess to care so much about) simply because it might be judged as a “success” by the American people and President Obama might get elected to another term in office as a result. When Limbaugh, Romney, et. al say that they want President Obama to fail or that he has already failed, what I believe they fail to realize is that the success and/or failure of our country depends largely on the leadership we have. When one side (or the other) declares the failure of that leadership to be their #1 priority and they proceed to do everything in their power to intentionally make said leadership dysfunctional and/or ineffective, I believe that they are ultimately helping facilitate the very failure of our entire country that they say they are hoping to avoid, which is going to be a very bad thing for everyone, including them.