In the election of 2004 I voted for the first time in my newly adopted state of Maine for the Dems (straight ticket as always) to no avail. We lost that one many say because Ohio, home to the blue collar rust-belt vote came in sollidly behind the Guns, Gays n' God candidate on the other side -- despite four years of proving (nearly everyday) what an embarrassing azhat that idiot proclaimed himself repeatedly to be.
But he was, after all, our Prezeldent, right or what-frigin'-ever.
The previous 25 years I'd spent living just outside of Dayton raising my three kids before falling early victim to the Bush 9/11 recession and sub-prime loan "bubble" (rip off), so I knew my share of true blue, knuckle draggin' blue collar GOP afficianados, but still couldn't believe they'd voted back in the same guy who'd cost us 250,000 manufacturing jobs during his first go round.
Today, it seems, that group has finally heard the Newtster channeling OWS or, IOWs, is sweating reality finally....
The New York Times
The GOP establishment has not so secretly been backing former Governor Mitt Romney to be the 2012 Presidential Candidate since long before the primary process even began. If you know nothing about the well established tradition of Republicans in nominating a presidential candidate, but you know that Republicans routinely and methodically select the guy who was runner up in the preivious general election cycle to pick up their banner next time out, then you know it all. There have been noteworthy exceptions. 1964 in many ways mirrors the extreme and radical swings in the base between, Gov.s William Scranton and Nelson Rockefeller, and Barry Goldwater. Even folks today remember Johnson's "Daisy" commercial in rebuttal to Goldwater Republicans then. Today, instead of a Neo-Con or other type of militarist, the GOP wants to run an unapologetic plutocrat, a product of the kind of locust, crony Capitalism that hands opportunity and wealth off to the nearest gated community neighbor as they consume the entire wheat field of growth and abundance that is needed to feed the masses.
For a long while now the American Dream has de-volved to faith (and hope) in a kind of economic system whose only chance of delivering workers into the upper middle class or true wealth is winning the lottery with energy, at least, substituting for any sort of love whatsoever.
Mitt Romney, currently defend(s) himself against allegations from within his own party that he is a “vulture” capitalist and who in the last week has suggested that he takes pleasure in firing those who fail to provide good service and that politics might best be practiced by those who have paid off their mortgages. Richard Stevenson, NYTs
Stevenson in his NYT's post argues about Obama also being a millionaire and a Harvard grad as if that were egually off setting to blue collar workers but a quick scan of Barack Obama's rise to affluence certainly reads a tad differently: the grandson of a WWII Veteran and immigrants son whose father gave him over to the American middle class to bring up he achieved his recognition through hard work and intelligence; the kind of product of meritocracy rather than plutocracy that is readily apparent to any typical person working hard just for a break themselves.
Piri Thomas, author of "Down These Mean Streets", wrote "the rich don't need to kill you with hatred, they kill you with envy" but when the blinders finally come off and the truth of the kind of economic repression and contempt for working people that Romney symbolizes becomes glaring clear throughout this landscape of hyper communication that infuses more levels of our society more and more in many glorious and mysterious ways, the people who still long to work honestly and hard are finally, it seems, beginning to see the light.
"What do you mean by crushing my people and grinding the face of the poor into the dirt?" declares the Lord God Almighty. - Isaiah 3:15