Romney heading left
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Here's what I was wondering, watching the debates, as Romney betrayed every position and promise he made to the GOP base in the most blatant, insincere attempt at political whitewashing in modern electoral history:
Was it really only two years ago that the tea party seized the national imagination and ran so far right they fell off the edge of their flat earth?
Romney sounded almost, dare I say it? Like a liberal. He out-doved Obama in foreign policy, he vowed to up the take-home pay of regular, working Americans, he method-acted as the guardian of such classic liberal programs as Medicare and Social Security. He damn near got on his knees, standing up for the little guy.
At first, Obama seemed befuddled by the whole thing. As if he'd been running against the Romney the Right Wing Avenger all these months, and now he's supposed to debate Romney the Blow-up Pleasure Doll.
This was the same fellow who spent his summer firing up tea party rants, where you just know that somewhere in the crowd, off camera, a drooling fat dude was holding up a noose.
The fact that Romney had to run fast and furious to the center, even the left, to con the people into electing him is encouraging, is it not?
If America were the fundamentally conservative place the conservatives make it out to be, that wouldn't work, would it? If Romney tacked any harder left, he'd capsize. But so far, it seems, he's getting away with it.
Something about Obama rubs a lot of people wrong. It's like they voted for him in 2008 out of white guilt, and now they can't wait to take it back.
There is no other way to explain how one, off-key debate appearance--against a guy who held his own by disowning every position he'd ever held--turned a blowout win into a statistical dead heat overnight.
I don't get it and I never have; there must be something wrong with me. Because I kind of like the guy.
I'd like him more if he were the boogey man the other side, falsely, portrays him to be. I could take a dose of the Angry Black Man that he is not, but should be, the way he's been treated.
But Obama is not that guy. He's a moderate, even-tempered, don't-rock-the-boat, standard-issue tepid liberal who happens to be black. Obama is the target of rage, not the source. But manufactured anger is expensive. If it takes him down, we'll all pay the price.
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