Political Capitalism 101

First, the other day I received a bumper sticker, plus the usual letter asking for money, from some very conservative right-wing Catholic organization explaining how my religious liberty was at stake because the Affordable Health Care Act allows for insurance companies to provide contraception coverage for women who are not Catholic.  The religious liberty of these women, assuming they have a religion, did not seem to be an issue.  But the bumper sticker read, “I’m Catholic, and I vote”.  I looked at it for a long time, and then put it on my vehicle.  But underneath, and it fit quite nicely, I placed an Obama/Biden sticker, so it now reads, “I’m Catholic and I vote Obama/Biden”.  So, if anyone who reads this gets the above mentioned bumper sticker, please use it in the manner I have described.  Mustn’t let any free bumper sticker go to waste!

But the main point of this post is the extraordinarily blunder Mitt Romney made concerning the incident in the Middle East.  Let’s review the time line.

1.       A rather noisy crowd gathers in front of the American Embassy in Cairo regarding a ginned up 10 minute crass video insulting the Prophet Mohammed.

2.      The members of the Embassy are rightly concerned and issue a statement decrying the video and making a statement to the effect that it is not the policy of the United States to insult anyone’s religious faith, and that our country is based on freedom of religion. 

3.      Concurrently, the American Consulate in Benghazi, Libya, is really under attack, and four Americans are killed, including the American Ambassador to Libya. 

4.      Prior to the news of the tragedy in Benghazi, however, Romney issued a statement that the Obama Administration had apologized to the protesters in Cairo, and that this is but more of Obama’s bad foreign policy of apologizing for America, blah, blah, blah.  (That neither Obama nor his Administration has ever apologized for America is apparently totally irrelevant to Romney.)

As we know, these protests against this disgusting video have traveled clear across the Moslem world from Morocco to Indonesia by today, 9/14/12.  As many thoughtful pundits have said, it is very difficult for people who have lived their entire lives under a dictatorship that controlled their very lives to understand that in the United States we have freedom of speech, religion, the right of free association, etc.  Thus, when something like this video is made, it is virtually impossible to make those offended understand the government was not behind it.

What does this tell us about Mitt Romney?  Michelle Obama made a comment during her speech at the Democratic Convention that was spot on when she said that being in office doesn’t change who you are; it reveals who you are.  I can attest to that from my own experience, miniscule though it was compared to the Presidency.  I found I had talents I had no idea even existed.  So, what do we know now about Mitt Romney.

From a previous blog, Romney and Bullying, I discussed Romney’s lack of empathy for either dogs or people:  from harassing the perhaps gay boy in high school, to strapping the dog’s kennel on the roof of the car for a 12 hour trip, to gutting businesses for profit and thereby stripping the workers of health care, jobs and pensions.

Der Mitt jumped on this event in Cairo before he had all of the facts, though that has usually never bothered him before, in an effort to expand his political capital.  He saw an opportunity to undercut President Obama, he thought, and it apparently never occurred to him that he was damaging the image of the United States at the same time.  Nor, I doubt, did he care.

The kindest thing to believe is that he blundered, though he has not only not backed down, he has tripled-down on his statements that Obama is weak because he hasn’t invaded another country yet.

Or, the unkindest thing to believe is that the video was deliberately brought to the attention of the Moslem world on the anniversary of 9/11 to incite riots and give Romney an opportunity to indulge in what the radical right wing of the Republican Party would perceive to be “strong manly and American” rhetoric, rather than the nuanced and striving for peace of the Obama foreign policy.  (I doubt that even the radical right wing anticipated the tragedy in Libya because apparently it was a separate operation by a rather small radical right wing group in Libya.) 

Romney had his speech deriding the Obama administration readily at hand.  He stumbled in his presentation to make it fit the statement from the Embassy.  The surfacing of the video, the incitement to protests, this statement from Romney have an unpleasant “Turd Blossom” odor.