There are many reasons why I would prefer the Romney-Ryan ticket to win the presidency in November, mostly because the Obama Administration has been a fiscal disaster for the nation; a disaster which will only get worse if he is reelected. At least Romney and Ryan, I believe, might restore some sense of fiscal responsibility to the government.
But, alas, Romney, Ryan, and the Republican Party richly deserve to lose.
That’s because the ultra-right-wing religious element of the party will make it extremely difficult for them to win. Once again, in their Biblical zeal they are overreaching, especially on hot button social issues, and that will probably cost them the election.
Frankly, I hope it does. It’s about time the Republican Party threw off the toxic yolk of religious extremists who call all the shots. It’s about time the Republican Party for once becomes attractive to freedom loving fiscally conservative Democrats, Independents, and Libertarians. It’s about time the Republicans became the party of reason.
Too bad it probably won’t happen this time around. The Romney-Ryan ticket can rightly be characterized by the Democrats as Bush-Cheney warmed over. That’s exactly how the Democrats should characterize it. If they do, they will most likely win the election since the United States has still not recovered in spirit from the devastatingly boneheaded blunders committed by George W. Bush.
The Republicans just don’t learn from their mistakes. Once again they are poised to officially place in their platform the call for a so-called "human life or personhood amendment" to the United States Constitution that would outlaw all abortions, even in cases of rape or incest.
"Faithful to the 'self-evident' truths enshrined in the Declaration of Independence, we assert the sanctity of human life and affirm that the unborn child has a fundamental individual right to life which cannot be infringed," the draft platform declares. "We support a human life amendment to the Constitution and endorse legislation to make clear that the Fourteenth Amendment's protections apply to unborn children."
In short, if they have their way, the Bible thumping knuckle-draggers of the Republican Party will actually force women by constitutional law to bear the unwanted offspring of rapists and relatives alike.
Nine year-old girls impregnated by their perverted grandfathers would be forced to endure physically and psychologically devastating pregnancies to term. Innocent victims of rape would be forced to carry the fruit of the crime and the psychological impact of it for the rest of their lives.
Every woman in America, once pregnant, would be denied her precious right to liberty in order to accommodate the constitutional rights of a fertilized egg. The state would take control of her body under the guise of the best interests of the unborn “person.”
It would result in an Orwellian nightmare. No reasonable voter will stand for this outrage once they come to realize fully all the implications of it. Even the super conservative voters in the states of Mississippi and Colorado rejected similar “personhood amendments” to their state constitutions after they soberly contemplated all the unintended consequences of such laws.
The Democrats should pound on this point again and again until every prospective voter is aware. They should bring up without fail over and over the utterly stupid, bigoted and ill-informed statements of Missouri Rep. Todd Akin, a U.S. Senate anti-abortion rights candidate, who actually believes that the bodies of women who are “legitimately raped” can shut down the pregnancy process on their own without the help of a doctor.
Both Romney and Ryan condemned Akin's remarks and called for him to quit his candidacy, but they are obviously hypocrites who know that they are just as anti-abortion in their political philosophy as Aiken. They both have opposed anti-abortion law exceptions for rape and incest, and have called for “fetal personhood” amendments. And, of course they are aware of their own party’s official platform.
Ryan has earned a perfect rating from the National Right to Life Committee for his votes during his 14 years in Congress. The National Abortion Rights Action League tallied 59 votes that Ryan took on abortion-related bills. On each measure, he voted against abortion rights. "I'm as pro-life as a person gets," Ryan told The Weekly Standard, a conservative magazine, in 2010.
Paul Ryan is a religious extremist.
Candidate John McCain tried to reasonably modify the abortion plank four years ago to make exceptions for rape, incest and the life of the mother, only to be angrily rebuffed by the ultra-right-wing social conservatives in his party. Tony Perkins, president of the Family Research Council said it would be "political suicide" for him to add such language.
And we all know what happened to John McCain and the Republican Party in 2008.
Little has changed between then and now.
Romney, Ryan and the Republicans deserve to lose.
From the viewpoint of the Sovereign Individual, there is essentially little to chose from. The differences between Tweedle Dee Obama and Tweedle Dum Romney on the important issues are minimal. They both deserve to lose.
ReplyDeleteThe social issues of abortion and gays in the hay are lost battles for social conservatives. Even if Romney and company should be elected, there is zero chance of any anti-abortion legislation passing. Why are we wasting our time talking about something that will not happen?
But what of the important issues? Is there any difference between the Tweedles on subjects such as wars, hot, cold or otherwise defined? Is there any difference between them, not in rhetoric, but in action, on the size and role of the State? How does the Dum Tweedle’s program for taxations, expenditures and debt differ significantly from that of Dee Tweedle’s - just driving off the cliff later rather than sooner, and slower, rather than faster?
There is only one course of action for the Sovereign Individual: Stop feeding the
Beast.
Paz - and keep your powder dry
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