Republicans Say the Most _______ Things

Art Linkletter was right – kids do say the darndest things. If he was alive today he could start a new show – Republicans say the scariest, most dangerous, most asinine things.

That is especially true when it comes to guns, rape, and anything Obama.

Take a look at some of the recent statements from Republican leaders and their followers, particularly the Tea Party and evangelical Christians.

The National Rifle Association, whose top leaders have pushed arming teachers across the country in response to the Newtown, Conn., shooting, have vowed to fight any gun control legislation and have been warning members that President Barack Obama is coming after their guns. That argument has led to a right-wing declaration that a civil war is brewing in this nation.

For example, James Yeager, the chief executive of Tactical Response, which teaches people weapons handling and other tactical skills in Tennessee, produced a YouTube video in which he declared that he will kill anyone who tries to confiscate his weapons. In the clip, Yeager said increased gun measures would “spark a civil war” in which he would be “glad to fire the first shot.”

“If it goes an inch further,” he said, “I’m going to start killing people.” While he now states that his pledge to “start killing people” was just overwrought anger, he has not backed away from his overall claims.

No wonder since Fox has become the major purveyor of the gun control will lead to insurrection meme.

Bill O’Reilly recently warned that we could have a civil war if Obama uses executive orders to alter gun control laws. O’Reilly said Obama could “chose to be a good President or whether he just wants to have blood in the streets.” O’Reilly went on to suggest that the President should cut spending on such things as Medicare and Social Security to avoid armed conflict.

O’Reilly was not the only rabid Fox employee to talk about insurrection. Several conservative – is there any other kind? – Fox contributors compared the President to Hitler and Stalin, and cited Nazi Germany to argue against his policies. They also warned of civil war, revolution, and insurrection if Obama’s policies on guns, spending, and entitlements are enacted.

Brian Kilmeade and Steve Doocy told their Fox and Friends audience that if the Obama government tried to confiscate guns nationally “there would be an insurrection.” A short time later, Todd Starnes, a Fox radio host tweeted: “I can assure you the federal government will not be confiscating the Starnes family guns,” which seems reasonable since there has been no recommendation that federal officers go door to door taking guns out of people’s homes.

Columnist Arthur Herman wrote in a Jan. 3 op-ed on FoxNews.com that riots in Argentina foreshadowed a coming civil war in America.

“Some have said my warnings about a coming civil war between makers and takers are exaggerated,” Herman wrote. “It’s true that Argentina’s politicians have been waging class warfare since Juan and Eva Peron – and they aren’t fazed when it turns bloody. Obama and the Democrats are relative newcomers to the game. But Argentina reveals who really suffers when those who create a nation’s wealth get mugged by those who spend it.”

Then there are the rape comments.

Months after Todd R. Akin and Richard Mourdock destroyed any Republican chances of picking up U.S. Senate seats with asinine comments about rape, Republican Rep. Phil Gingrey of Georgia decided to come to Akin’s defense by saying Akin was “partly right” in his declaration that in the case of legitimate rape, women’s bodies have the ability to shut down to avoid pregnancy.

“I’ve delivered lots of babies, and I know about these things,” said Gingrey, a former OB/GYN. “It is true. We tell infertile couples all the time that are having trouble conceiving because of the woman not ovulating, ‘Just relax. Drink a glass of wine. And don’t be so tense and uptight because all that adrenaline can cause you not to ovulate.’ So he was partially right wasn’t he? But the fact that a woman may have already ovulated 12 hours before she is raped, you’re not going to prevent a pregnancy there by a woman’s body shutting anything down because the horse has already left the barn, so to speak. And yet the media took that and tore it apart.”

As if such wild comments are not enough, Republicans have threatened to shut down the government or default on the nation's debt in an effort to force the President and Democrats to cut the safety net.

But the most egregious attacks may revolve around Obama’s efforts to fill his cabinet. Republicans have attacked him for seeking like-minded appointees. They have also assailed him for recommending a former Republican Senator, Chuck Hagel, for a major security post. Apparently, reaching across the aisle for talented people is against the rules.

Sen. John Cornyn, a Texas Republican, says Hagel should not be confirmed as Secretary of Defense because Hagel was against imposing economic sanctions on Iran. One would think that would make Hagel a good candidate in the eyes of the GOP since its members spent the last election saying the sanctions are weak and ineffective. The Iran sanctions, according to Republicans, made Obama weaker than Jimmy Carter.

Then there are the attacks against feeding poor children in America. Guest on Fox Business’ Varney & Co. spent a great deal of time recently claiming that children receiving food assistance through the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program are becoming a “group of entitlement nation children.” Feeding those kids through the SNAP program, the Fox contributors said, means those children will grow up with a sense of entitlement that will hamper their productivity throughout life.

We can’t forget the comments concerning same-sex marriages. According to one conservative preacher, an acceptance of homosexuality and same-sex marriages mark the end of time. The pastor, Scott Lively, who is on trial for inciting human rights abuses against members of the LGBT community in Uganda, recently said that the great flood of the Bible was caused by people writing songs about same-sex marriages.

“We need to remember that in the time leading up to the Flood what the rabbis teach about the last straw for God before He brought the Flood was when they started writing wedding songs to homosexual marriage and Jesus said that you’ll know the End Times because it will be like the days of Noah,” Lively said in an interview with Sandy Rios of the American Family Association.

“I think this is the issue of the End Times, homosexuality,” he continued in the interview. “It’s present, if you do a careful investigation of all the scriptures dealing with this from the beginning and all the way to the end, God is painting a very clear picture that this represents the outer extent of rebellion against Him in a society and the last thing that happens before wrath comes.”

His comments echoed those of another conservative southern preacher, Aaron Fruh of Alabama, who also blamed the biblical flood on homosexuality. Fruh said God “knew that the people on the earth were going to destroy themselves through same-sex marriage.”

Of course, there is also the denial of climate change (Fox asked if the government faked the hottest year on record data released recently); Wyoming’s effort to nullify any federal firearms regulations by making it a felony punishable by up to five years in prison for any federal official to enforce any gun laws; the downplaying of a government default on the nation and the world economy; the hostage style negotiations over the debt limit; and Sean Hannity’s attacks against John Brennan.

Indeed, Republicans say the scariest, most dangerous, and most asinine things.

On the Redolence of Washington

There is a repugnancy that permeates our political system, a malodor that wafts from Capitol Hill across this vast nation. It hovers not only in the air around us, but also reaches deep into our social consciousness, and leaves a stench that overwhelms ours and the nation’s souls. Occasionally, though, a strong wind comes through providing us with a cleansing or a reprieve.

The deal to avert the so-called fiscal cliff was such a moment. For a short time, it seemed that Republicans and Democrats on Capitol Hill smelled what the rest of us had smelled for the last four years. Our lawmakers in Washington came together, albeit at a late hour, to keep us from plunging in what many had described as an economic abyss. Although the deal was less than perfect, it gave many a moment of hope, a sense that the best way to pass meaningful legislation is to begin in the U.S. Senate.

Of course, it was a fleeting moment. Before the fiscal cliff bill could reach President Barack Obama’s desk for signature Republicans had already returned to their recalcitrant ways.

House Speaker John Boehner, who had thrown the fiscal cliff debacle to the President and Senate, announced to the nation that his party would again use the debt ceiling in seeking to wrest spending cuts from the President and Democrats.

His statement was reinforced by Sen. John Cronyn of Texas, who declared that the GOP is willing to shut down the government in order to extract concessions from Obama.

“The coming deadlines will be the next flashpoints in our ongoing fight to bring fiscal sanity to Washington,” Cornyn wrote in an op-ed for the Houston Chronicle not long after a fiscal cliff deal was reached. “It may be necessary to partially shut down the government in order to secure the long-term fiscal wellbeing of our country, rather than plod along the path of Greece, Italy and Spain. President Obama needs to take note of this reality and put forward a plan to avoid it immediately.”

Cornyn, like many of his GOP colleagues, has decided that the only way to go is to slash the safety net that helps to support as many people in the red states as it does those in the blue states.

“Republicans are more determined than ever to implement the spending cuts and structural entitlement reforms that are needed to secure the long-term fiscal integrity of our country,” Cornyn wrote days after Sen. Pat Toomey, a Pennsylvania Republican, said Republicans should be ready to tolerate a partial government shutdown in the battle over the debt limit.

The declarations by Boehner, Cornyn, Toomey, and other Republicans of course sent the pundit class into a tizzy. Within hours of the fiscal cliff deal and the Republican announcements, pundits began debating, pontificating on, and dissecting the winners and losers of that deal as if the obstinate players were the only ones that mattered.

But while the talking heads search for new ways to describe the game they help promote the rest of us should look deeper for answers and connections. The problem is we may not find many.

The Jan. 1 deal does bring much needed revenue – granted not as much as desired – to the federal coffers. It also preserves unemployment insurance – while not a substitute for employment – for 2 million people without incomes. It will keep the cost of milk – already high – from rising through the roof. And it will allow poor, working, and middle-class people to continue using the child and tuition tax credits to lower their tax bills.

But what price will we have to pay?

Indeed, the fiscal cliff deal fell short on many fronts. It failed to include a stimulus package. It failed to avert another battle over the debt ceiling. It allowed the temporary payroll tax cut to expire. It did not raise taxes on capital gains and estates high enough. And it did not solve any long term fiscal problems.

More important, it put us back where we were 18 months ago, preparing to fight another battle with a political party that believes not only in taking hostages, but in executing them as well.

That is why we may not find those deeper answers and connections.

The fact that the deal was negotiated by Vice President Joe Biden and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell signals just how bad things have become in Washington in general and the House of Representatives in particular.

That so many urged the President to allow the Bush-era tax cuts to expire in an effort to gain greater negotiating leverage over the Republicans shows that too many people in Washington fail to recognize the real consequences of such actions. Theirs are arguments steeped in politics not policy.

For the millions of people whose unemployment ran out a few days before the deal was struck, it was no game. Yes, Congress could have passed a bill after Jan. 1, resulting in retroactive benefits. But unless one has lived from paycheck to paycheck one does not understand how a delay, even of a few days or weeks, can create havoc. Allowing those benefits to expire would have caused real harm to real families, something lawmakers should avoid at all costs.

The problem of course is that Washington is unable to do anything – even the things on which all parties agree – until the last moment

“Debt-ceiling dilemma: In the short run, it enables Republicans in Congress to excite their base about entitlement reform that base doesn't really want. (After all, it's the over-65 Republican base that collects most entitlements.) In the long run, it hardens the image of the congressional GOP as a collection of desperadoes who can never safely be trusted with power," David Frum, a The Daily Beast writer and former speechwriter for George W. Bush, said after the fiscal cliff deal.

The debt-ceiling dilemma and the Republican response so far also remind us that the slightest shift in the wind can bring back that fetid aroma emanating from inside the Beltway.

Turn Right? Turn Left? What's the Destination?

As the House of Representatives heads home for a short Christmas break, I am reminded of a story about two men – one a leftist, the other a right winger – who live across the street from each other. Both men are driving to the same venue, but do not share a ride because of their disdain for each other. Before they leave for their destination each man seeks to convince the other that he alone has the best short cut.

“All you have to do is go left at the corner then turn left again, and so on,” the leftist says.

“Oh, BS,” says the right winger. “You go right at each corner. Everyone knows that.”

The men decided to bet on whose was the better short cut. Each took his own route only to end up back in front of their individual homes.

I offer that story because it seems to be where we are in Washington today. No matter what, those on the right want to continue going right, while those on the left want to continue going left – neither acknowledging that adhering to such directions just takes us back to where we started.

This past week, House Republicans showed us just how ignorant making the same right turn time and time again takes us nowhere but back to square one. After a lot of posturing, whining, and maneuvering, House Speaker John Boehner walked away from the negotiation table where efforts were underway to avoid the so-called fiscal cliff. Instead of continuing talks with President Barack Obama to close the gap between each other’s deficit reduction proposals, Boehner offered up a “Plan B” that called for tax increases only on those making $1 million or more a year. “Plan B” never reached the House floor for a vote, with Boehner pulling it because he did not have enough support for it among his own caucus.

Meanwhile, those on the left argue that we continue on their route, refusing to acknowledge that while we must preserve the safety net, we cannot adhere blindly to all of its provisions. As the nation ages the cost of Medicaid, Medicare, and Social Security will keep rising. While we do not have to eviscerate those programs we must take prudent steps to safe guard them.

The same is true with gun control. We cannot continue with a mishmash of gun laws around the country, a poor mental health system, and a blind adherence to the Second Amendment if we want to save ourselves from the senseless whims of mass murderers. There is not one answer to the question we face on gun control laws, but there are some things that we can put into place to lessen the risks we face as a nation. Will we be able to completely remove guns from our society? No, but we can limit access to high-power weapons and multi-round clips.

Yet, neither the left nor the right seems ready and willing to act sensibly. For the right, any effort to regulate firearms is an attack on personal liberty. The Second Amendment, according to many of them, was intended so that Americans could protect themselves against a tyrannical Federal Government. That the Second Amendment calls for gun ownership as a way to maintain a “well-regulated militia” is lost on the right, as well as the U.S. Supreme Court.

In addition, we cannot fix our fiscal house if we do not recognize some very basic tenets, including that while Federal spending must be brought down, we cannot continue to allow such people as Willard Mitt Romney to pay less than 15 percent in taxes on income above $20 million, while those making much, much less pay a higher rate. We cannot reduce the budget deficit if we do not add jobs to the nation through additional stimulus spending, which could result in greater demand for goods by both businesses and individuals. We cannot tackle the long-term systemic issues in our economy if we do not recognize that the current level of safety net spending cannot be maintained forever.

The same goes for our gun policies. We cannot address mass killings in America if we do not recognize that many of the shooters have been young men in that age range where mental illness becomes most pronounced. We cannot help those young men who are a threat to themselves, and more important, a threat to society if the mental health system is fragmented with few options for parents and others who detect the warning signs of a meltdown. We cannot provide the treatment those young men need if we do not have the facilities or if insurance companies are allowed to limit how much psychiatric care a person can receive.

And we cannot stem the flow of guns into the hands of those who would do the most harm if we continue to allow each state to have varying laws, to allow weapons to be sold at gun shows without background checks, to allow people to buy as many guns as they can carry without red flags going off, to allow people to continue purchasing large amounts of ammunition without some investigation.

The battle over gun control is not just about the mass killings that seem to be occurring more frequently in this nation. It is about the thousands of shootings that occur across the nation every week. It is about making it harder for abusive husbands – and in some cases wives – to grab a gun and kill their spouses. It is about taking guns out of the hands of people who would commit suicide. It is about recognizing that in the majority of murders in the United States the victim and the assailant knew each other. It is about accepting that more guns do not necessarily make the world safer. Mostly, it is about admitting that our love affair with guns as a symbol of freedom is an anachronism, a vestige of time that has long passed.

And the fiscal battle being waged is not about right-wing or left-wing doctrines. It is about the millions of people who remain underemployed or unemployed. It is about a deteriorating infrastructure. It is about investing in education to better prepare our students for tomorrow. It is about reducing long-term costs for safety net programs. It is about restoring a sense of confidence in the American economy and the nation's ability to tackle large issues.

More important, though, it is deciding that if we really want to get somewhere in this nation, if we really want to make that journey together, to reach our destination then we are going to have to make some right and some left turns. Otherwise we will end up back where we started.

Let America be America

If you are still struggling with who won the 2012 presidential election then let me give you a hint: America.

Was it simply because President Barack Hussein Obama was re-elected to the White House, defeating Willard Mitt Romney? No. America won because more people than expected voted, and in doing so they rejected the idea that we must become a callous, vengeful, and barbarous nation, one in which selfishness, greed, and xenophobia stand supreme.

Indeed, voters did not give any candidate or party an overwhelming “mandate” as many have said, but the majority did speak loudly about the type of nation they want. They spoke not only in the voting booth, but also in exit polls in which they addressed questions the answers to which cannot always be discerned by analyzing election results.

Yes, about 48 percent of Americans supported Romney, and about 51 percent supported Obama. More important, though, was the number of voters who in exit polls supported a kinder America. For example, 60 percent of those polled say they agree with increasing taxes on those making more than $250,000 a year as part of a balanced debt reduction plan, compared with 30 percent who oppose any tax increases. In addition, a majority of voters supported protecting the safety net. If the exit polls reflect how people really feel, then that means even some people who voted for Romney support a more balanced approach to dealing with the nation’s problems.

Or as E.J. Dionne said in a recent Washington Post column: “The voters repudiated the very worst aspects of post-Bush conservatism: its harsh tone toward those in need, its doctrinaire inflexibility on taxes, its inclination toward extreme pronouncements on social issues, and its hard anti-government rhetoric that ignored the pragmatic attitude of the electorate’s great middle about what the public sector can and can’t do.”

That voter response would suggest that we should begin moving forward, allowing America to open her arms to all of her children. Of course, that does not mean we will. Already, conservatives are trying to re-fight the election.

Some conservative business people have given walking papers to employees in retaliation for Obama’s win, while others say they will add surcharges to customers’ bills and will reduce hours for workers to avoid providing health care insurance.

The day after the election, Robert Murray, the chief executive of the Murray Energy Corp., a privately held mining company, gave 160 workers layoff notices, citing the re-election of what he called a coal hating president. John Metz, whose company owns and/or manages numerous Denny’s and Hurricane Grill & Wings restaurants, said he will add a 5 percent surcharge to customers’ bills, as well as reduce employ hours to below 17, to deal with the added costs of Obamacare. John Schnatter, the chief executive at Papa John’s Pizza, is willing to give away 2 million free pizzas to the tune of $24 million to $32 million a year, according to a recent Forbes article, but he is not willing to add $5 million to $8 million to his bottom line in order to pay for employees’ health care. He has threatened to cut workers to below 30 hours a week to avoid Obamacare requirements, and has said he would add 11 cents to 14 cents per pie. (Forbes calculated that Obamacare would add an extra 3.4 cents to 4.6 cents per pie at Papa John's.)

In addition, conservative Republicans already have begun the election conspiracy theories, from mysterious black people showing up like extraterrestrials at rural polling places in Maine to Obama using mind control on people so that he and the United Nations can create a communist dictatorship in America.

Of course, no post-election spin can be complete without the doubling down of old conservative standbys, including efforts by the Conservative Majority Fund to start an impeachment drive against the President because he is not a natural born citizen in its view. “Our only recourse now is to move forward with the full impeachment of President Obama,” the fund announced in a recent fundraising letter. “We suspect that Obama is guilty of high crimes and misdemeanors and that there may be grounds for impeachment as is laid out in the constitution. Further, he may not even be a U.S. citizen because nobody, I mean no one, has seen an actual physical copy of his birth certificate. Impeachment is our only option.”

We also have seen calls by conservatives to revolt against the federal government, including on-line secession petitions from 40 states. Romney has returned to his disparaging of the “47 percent” of takers in this country, saying in a conference call to his conservative donors that Obama won because he gave “gifts” to minorities and young women. (Republican Sen. Orrin Hatch of Utah later corrected Romney’s assertion that 47 percent of the population is moochers. Hatch says it is 51 percent.)

But even with all of that America is still the winner because while overt and subtle racism are up, according to an Associated Press poll released before the Nov. 6 presidential election, the numbers are not as high as they were a decade or two ago. And the racist dogma is being rejected by a majority of America, especially the young. Obama won with a broad based coalition that included blacks, Latinos, Asian-Americans, women, white workers, and the young.

Suffice it to say that the 2012 election did not put to rest all of the issues facing our nation. It did, however, give us a greater sense of what the majority of Americans want and how they want to proceed. By rejecting the calls for a return to the 1950s, the voters gave America a resounding victory.

America can, finally, be America again.

The Bitterness Within Us

With the U.S. presidential election entering its final weeks, it might be time to ask ourselves what we have learned this year about our nation and its people. The answers may not come very easily and may not be to anyone’s liking. The partisan divide makes one wonder if this nation will be able to move forward after such a contentious election season.

We appear more divided than ever, with few people able to open their minds to the harsh realities that lie ahead. Too many of us have become trapped in political echo chambers, unable to hear anything but the sounds of the like-minded. Few people actually listen to opposing views. Some seem afraid that respect for another opinion will shatter all previous beliefs, that it would upend the universe. Civility and respect are lost in a cacophony of hateful rhetoric, and the win at all cost attitudes of so many. Chalk it up to the messiness that is democracy, many say.

But what ails discourse in this country goes beyond the messiness of democracy. Our ailments lie in bitter hearts unable to empathize with others, in jaundiced eyes unable to see the tragedy that exists in a world different from our own. Two distinctive incidents recently brought this home.

One was the attempted murder of 14-year-old Malala Yousafzai in Pakistan on Oct. 9. The other was the responses to a New York Times column in which Nicholas D. Kristof wrote about his uninsured college roommate, Scott Androes, who was dying of Stage 4 prostate cancer.

Malala, as nearly everyone knows by now, was heading home from school when gunmen boarded her school van, demanded she be identified, and then fired three shots – striking Malala and two other girls. Malala was rushed to a military hospital where she remained until recently being transferred to a hospital in Britain. The Taliban has claimed responsibility for the attack, saying that it will go after Malala again.

Why? The Taliban said because Malala is “promoting secularism” by pushing for education for women and girls. The attempted murder of Malala was rightfully met with outrage from many corners of the world. On Oct. 14, tens of thousands of people in Karachi protested against the Taliban’s actions.

In the United States, President Barack Obama decried the shooting as “reprehensible and disgusting and tragic.”

“Directing violence at children is barbaric, it’s cowardly, and our hearts go out to her and the others who were wounded as well as their families,” Jay Carney, the White House press secretary, said.

In Britain, the BBC quoted Foreign Secretary William Hague as saying that the attack had “shocked Pakistan and the world,” and that Malala’s bravery was “an example to us all.”

“The public revulsion and condemnation of this cowardly attack shows that the people of Pakistan will not be beaten by terrorists,” Hague said. “The UK stands shoulder to shoulder with Pakistan in its fight against terrorism.”

Unfortunately in America, the shooting of Malala became a political football, a way to attack the Obama Administration. One conservative blog, Redstate.com, took a December 2011 comment by Vice President Joe Biden out of context in an effort to suggest that Obama and Biden had no issues with the Taliban and it’s shooting of Malala.

“Look, the Taliban per se is not our enemy,” Biden said in an interview with Leslie Gelb of Newsweek. “That’s critical. There is not a single statement that the president has ever made in any of our policy assertions that the Taliban is our enemy because it threatens U.S. interests.”

During the interview, Biden was seeking to explain U.S. efforts in Afghanistan, in particular those aimed at reconciliation between the Afghan government and the Taliban. Biden was also discussing U.S. reasons for going into Afghanistan: To oust al-Qaeda, not necessarily to wipe out the Taliban.

Meanwhile, others decided that the shooting was an opportunity to attack Islam in general and the President in particular, rather than show solidarity with Malala. The virulent attacks were numerous and outrageous. One has to ask: What manner of person is unable to empathize with a young girl nearly killed for seeking an education?

The answer may be found in the reaction to Kristof’s column. Kristof wrote that Scott Androes “had a midlife crisis and left his job in the pension industry to read books and play poker.” Androes worked part time and earned $13,000 last year. To save money he did not carry health insurance and did not go to the doctor for wellness visits. During that time, Androes developed prostate cancer that spread to his bones.

Kristof used Androes’s story to argue the merits of Obamacare. While many readers empathized with Androes, many also blamed him for his plight, basically saying he made his bed and must lie in it.

According to Kristof, one Oregon reader wrote: “Not sure why I’m to feel guilty about your friend’s problem. I take care of myself and mine, and I am not responsible for anyone else.”

Another reader wrote that many people in hospitals are there because of their own poor choices: “Smoking, obesity, drugs, alcohol, noncompliance with medical advice. Extreme age and debility, patients so sick, old, demented, weak, that if families had to pay one-tenth the cost of keeping the poor souls alive, they would instantly see that it was money wasted.”

A third reader said, “Your friend made a foolish choice, and actions have consequences,”

It would be easy to chalk up those responses to a few callous people hiding behind the anonymity of Internet posts. To do so is to fail to recognize that in these trying times, people are not only filled with disdain and vitriol, they are even more willing to share that with all of society. Recent Pew Research Center polling found, for example, that such feelings have increased dramatically among Republicans.

And that raises some serious questions about how this nation will move forward, and whether everyone will be invited on the trip.

Selling America's Soul for a White House

Nearly a year ago I wrote that this presidential election was a battle for America’s soul. That is truer today than it was on Oct. 12, 2011, when that post first appeared. You don’t agree? Take a look at this election cycle and you will see what I mean. There is an assault on the ideas that make America great. It is not only the mendacity of the Republican presidential candidate. It is the efforts by the GOP, particularly conservatives, to roll back the progress that has occurred over the last 50 to 60 years, from civil rights to voting rights, from education to worship. No longer do we discourage the corrupting influences of big money in our elections, we revel in it.

And we do it all in the guise of protecting the U.S. Constitution, though many of those who claim to hold that document sacred fail to adequately distinguish it from the Declaration of Independence. We have become a nation of angry tribes whose members cannot see beyond their own myopias, unable to discern fact from fiction, dogma from policy, substance from style, bluster from diplomacy. You sell it, we'll buy it. The market place of ideas has been inundated with cheap products with fake expiration dates.

Willard Mitt Romney’s recent debate performance was a prime example of the obfuscating that is occurring in this election. Indeed, Romney and President Barack Obama have engaged in hyperbole in an effort to win votes. When facts were not available, each has turned to spin and speculation to make a point. But what we are seeing from Romney is a complete abandonment of the ideas that sprung from his “severely conservative” philosophy. His dodging is beyond what we have seen in previous elections. Romney shows the sales skills that helped him become a multi-millionaire, not the skills that are needed to be a leader.

During the Republican presidential primary, for example, Romney promised that his tax cut plan would help the “job creators” (the 1 percent) not the moochers (the 47 percent). During the presidential debate, he declared that he had no tax cut for the wealthy, just a gosh-darn great plan to cut taxes by 20 percent across the board. According to the non-partisan Tax Policy Center, as well as other groups, Romney’s math does not add up because there are not enough high-end loopholes to make up for the level of tax reduction he seeks. The center estimated that Romney’s “plan” would cost $456 billion by 2015. Extrapolated over 10 years, including inflation and other costs, the total would be $4.8 trillion, the center concluded. Of course that $4.8 trillion ($5 trillion when rounded) is not a hard number because Romney has refused to give details. But that is not the problem. No, the problem occurred when he tried to suggest that he would not reduce the amount of money that the wealthy pays in taxes, a counter argument to what he had been saying since the Republican primary.

Add to that his statements about having a health plan that protects people who have pre-existing conditions (not so said his campaign after the debate); his claims that he would seek no limits to abortion access (he has said he wants to appoint Supreme Court justices who will overturn Roe v Wade and he wants to defund Planned Parenthood); his support for hiring more teachers (in June and again this week he mocked Obama for wanting to hire more teachers); his claim that Obama wants to drastically cut the defense budget (a plan approved by the House GOP); and one sees the manner in which Romney has distorted the political landscape.

The same is true of his party. Republicans have been claiming since their national convention that they, like much of America, supported the President and wanted him to do well. The problem, they say, is the President was in over his head. That argument requires us to forget that since the first day of the Obama presidency GOP lawmakers have done all they could to deny him a second term. That included taking the nation to the fiscal cliff during the debt ceiling debate, spending more time on voting to repeal Obamacare than helping to fix the economy, and launching all out attacks on women’s reproductive rights, including suggesting that abortions should only be available in the cases of “forcible rape.” (This week House Republicans are investigating "lax" security at the U.S. embassy in Benghazi, although they will say little about more than $400 million in GOP cuts to the State Department's security budget over the last two years.) Add to that local Republican efforts to tamp down the vote through a series of voter identification laws and we see a GOP that has put its interests before that of the nation.

And they have been able to do so because of the shady dealings of a host of conservative billionaires who have created shell groups disguised as grass-roots movements in an effort to buy the campaign without most people knowing. From the Koch brothers to Sheldon Adelson to Karl Rove’s army of check-writing robots, conservative billionaires have decided that no political race will be without their financial influence. (Conservative billionaires have spent $20 million in Ohio alone in an effort to oust Democrat Sen. Sherrod Brown.) They have pumped millions upon millions into congressional campaigns not to promote the general welfare, but to increase their own.

David Siegel, the chief executive of the timeshare company Westgate, went so far as to send a menacing email to his employees telling them that their jobs would be in jeopardy if Obama wins next month, according to a story posted to The Huffington Post. While the email was couched in terms of tax increases, it raises questions about whether Siegel was making an indirect threat against his employees. Vote for Obama and you get to be part of the mooching 47 percent. Richard Lacks, the chief executive of the car parts manufacturer Lacks Enterprises, told his workers that an Obama election would result in a decrease in their pay, the Huffington Post article said. Those two incidents came after a Republican coal mine owner forced his workers to take part of the day off without pay so they could be props for a Romney campaign stop.

The result is a close election where few people truly understand the issues or are willing to study them. Instead they are swayed by bluster. Too many voters have decided that the election season is too long and every politician is too corrupt to warrant citizen participation in the political process. More pronounced, of course, are the so called undecided voters, those who have not made up their minds this late in the game. One has to ask: If one cannot choose between Obama and Romney after more than a year of campaigning, then what else does one need before making a choice?

What makes it all the more appalling is the U.S. Supreme Court’s failure to recognize that its Citizen United decision has indeed corrupted the political system, turning corporations into people and making the will of the few more valuable than the needs of the many. The High Court, as well as several lower Federal courts, has all but gutted Montana’s century-old, anti-corruption laws, which were aimed at protecting the electoral process.

It is a Faustian bargain that Republicans have made in an effort to wrest control from President Obama. It was most evident when Romney went from being “severely conservative” to “moderate” in 90 minutes. He leads that team that has put a “For Sale” sign on America’s soul. But what can one expect from a man who – if not for the advantages of his family pedigree – might otherwise be selling used cars in Roxbury?

The Allure of the First Debate Winner

The political pundits and party surrogates have spoken: Willard Mitt Romney, the former governor of Massachusetts and the Republican presidential candidate, won the first presidential debate in Denver Wednesday night. The problem with that conclusion is that the voters, particularly the undecided ones in the swing states, have yet to speak on the issue.

Indeed, Romney was the more assertive and more focused candidate. He rattled off statistic after statistic, and he seemed in control of the numbers. Meanwhile, President Barack Hussein Obama appeared tentative and disengaged for much of the debate. It was not until late in the exchange that the President seemed to gain his footing.

But once voters get past the style questions of the first debate they might find that the allure Romney projected is much like that presented by a hook up at a party. From across the room, that person looks attractive, worth considering for a long-term relationship. Then you get up close, engaging that person in conversation. The more that person talks and the more you listen the less attractive he or she becomes. Eventually, there comes the realization that the object of your desires, that alluring, generous specimen of humanity is actually very vacuous and self-absorbed, lacking many socially redeeming qualities.

Core values shift depending on with whom the person speaks. The passion comes and goes depending on whom that person is seeking to court. That was Willard Mitt Romney Wednesday night. He was alluring, charming, and warm from 9 p.m. to 10:30 p.m., but chances are he will become cold and unattractive at 2 a.m. when the party is well over and the euphoria of the night’s alcohol wears off.

Why? Because that is when one steps back, looks at the real person, and asks: “Did he really say that?”

Yes, America, Willard Mitt Romney really did say that.

After 18 months of proclaiming that he had a multi-billion dollar tax cut plan that included breaks for the top 1 percent of earners, Romney announced Wednesday night that he did not have a tax plan that could cost the nation $5 trillion over 10 years. While the numbers attached to Romney’s tax plan were not of his making, they were a realistic assessment by economists and tax experts – including some whom he claims agree with him – seeking to fill the numbers void left by Romney’s lack of details.

According to Romney, he will not offer any tax plan that adds to the deficit. If that is true, then how does he plan to reduce taxes by 20 percent across the board? Nearly every study looking at Romney’s proposed tax cut says he cannot accomplish his goals by simply closing loopholes and eliminating deductions for the rich. The non-partisan Tax Policy Center – which Romney views as credible when it challenges Obama’s plans, but not when it questions his – suggests that Romney would have to raise taxes on the middle class to reach his goals. So do other studies, including one by Martin Feldstein, a Romney advisor and Harvard economist.

Feldstein’s study showed that Romney can accomplish his tax-cut goals if he eliminates deductions for mortgage interest, charitable contributions, and state and local taxes for households making more than $100,000. The problem is Romney views the middle class as including people whose household income reaches $250,000, a figure many economists put above the middle class.

“First of all, I don’t have a $5 trillion tax cut,” Romney proclaimed to Obama. “I don’t have a tax cut of a scale that you’re talking about. My view is that we ought to provide tax relief to people in the middle class. But I’m not going to reduce the share of taxes paid by high-income people.”

He added later: “With regards to that tax cut, look, I’m not looking to cut massive taxes and to reduce – the revenues going to the government. My – my number-one principle is, there will be no tax cut that adds to the deficit. I want to underline that: no tax cut that adds to the deficit.”

Of course, such a proclamation sounds great, but in order for it to be true we have to take the word of a man who has often changed his positions on major topics. According to Romney, 47 percent of the people who do not pay taxes in this nation are moochers, a bunch of lazy government draining takers living off the sweat and hard work of the makers. The makers, Romney proclaimed during the Republican primary, need tax relief because they are the job creators. Those job creators are the 1 percent of the population that Romney now says will not receive any tax relief beyond what can be paid for, suggesting that the tax rate cannot drop by 20 percent.

In addition, Romney wants to develop a medical insurance program that allows children to remain on their parents’ policies until age 26; that bans insurance companies from denying coverage to people with pre-existing conditions when those people change jobs; that helps to reduce medical costs. To accomplish such Romney has vowed to repeal Obamacare and replace it with . . . Obamacare. He also said recently that sick people can get free health care in emergency rooms, a practice that both Obamacare and Romneycare seek to discourage because of the additional costs incurred in such situations. Romney did not address how he will accommodate the millions of people who would be left uninsured, or how he will replace the preventive care provisions of Obamacare that make contraceptives free for women.

On Wednesday Romney also proclaimed the need to hire more teachers -- a major shift from what he said during a speech to Iowans in June. In that speech Romney claimed that Obama's call for more teachers was an expansion of Big Government that must be stopped.

"He says we need more firemen, more policemen, more teachers," Romney said on June 8. "Did he not get the message of Wisconsin? The American people did. It's time for us to cut back government and help the American people."

And then there is Dodd-Frank. For 18 months, Romney proclaimed that government regulations, particularly Dodd-Frank, were ruining the economy. That changed Wednesday night when he offered support for regulations and Dodd-Frank, if not in total at least in part.

“Regulation is essential,” Romney said. “You can't have a free market work if you don't have regulation. As a businessperson, I had to have – I need to know the regulations. I needed them there. You couldn't have people opening up banks in their – in their garage and making loans. I mean, you have to have regulations so that you can have an economy work. Every free economy has good regulation.”

It’s getting late and Willard Mitt Romney is losing his luster.