[jeffkrol]

The Mitt Mirage - TIME

Let us leave aside for a moment the well-known fact that Obamacare is, at its core, Romneycare taken national--and Romneycare taken national was the fondest hope of the fellow I met in 2005. What annoyed me was that, for the umpteen-hundredth time in this campaign, Romney was playing dumb on a subject he knew extremely well. His health care scheme and Obama's were dual-mandate plans. The insurance companies had to cover everyone, and the government had to require everyone to buy into the system. The insurers needed the larger pool of healthy policyholders to offset the cost of covering those who were already sick. And so I was prepared to whap poor Romney upside the head for this phony concession.

But then Romney retracted it. Or an anonymous campaign aide did, saying Romney "was not proposing a federal mandate to require insurance plans to offer those particular features." And there, my fellow Americans, you have it: the Romney campaign in full flight yet again, embarrassed yet again. This is terribly sad. The guy I met in 2005 had potential. But the guy who ran for President in 2008 ran away from the guy I met in 2005, and the guy who's running this time has been even worse. He has made a public fool of himself, and it's important to ask why.

Read more: The Mitt Mirage - TIME

Let's throw in Dana Milbank for fun:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/dana-milbank-why-is-paul-ryan-getting...377_story.html

As much as I have enjoyed my prestige among religious conservatives, I fear it will be short-lived. This is because I plan to use my newfound bona fides to criticize Perkins and the Family Research Council.

Paul Ryan, the Republican vice presidential nominee, is scheduled to address the council’s “Values Voter Summit” in Washington Friday morning. And, as a member-in-good-standing of the religious right, I would like to tell Ryan that he is making a mistake. Fifty-three days before the election, this is not the sort of message Mitt Romney and Ryan should be sending to the American public.
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But while it’s needlessly provocative to put the council in the same category as groups that arrange lynching parties, I also argued that Perkins should cease the false propaganda his group has put out about gay people. Perkins hasn’t followed that advice. In fact, the group has done little, if anything, to distance itself from a range of absurd and outrageous statements on a variety of issues.

There’s Perkins’s claim that pedophilia is “a homosexual problem” and his labeling as “disgusting” a campaign to help gay youth overcome bullying. There’s the statement by Jerry Boykin, the group’s executive vice president, that “Islam is not a religion and does not deserve First Amendment protection” and his belief that Jews should be converted to Christianity. I asked council officials about such statements but was offered no repudiation of them.

There’s also the 2010 statement by Bryan Fischer of the American Family Association, one of the Values Voter Summit’s co-sponsors, that “homosexuality gave us Adolph Hitler, and homosexuals in the military gave us the Brown Shirts, the Nazi war machine and six million dead Jews.”

Classy.

Is this the sort of thing Ryan, and by extension Romney, wish to associate themselves with?

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Last edited by jeffkrol; 09-14-2012 at 09:48 AM.

[jeffkrol]

oooo romnety appears...........

Mitt Romney tells Values Voter Summit that 'culture matters' - latimes.com

“In short, culture matters,” Romney said. “And as president I will protect our culture and preserve the values of hard work, personal responsibility, family and faith.”

Romney touched on a number of key priorities of his party’s base, vowing to “uphold the sanctity of life,” “defend marriage, not try to redefine it” and “preserve the American spirit of one nation under God.”

Half a century ago, at the height of anti-Communist fervor, Congress added the words ''under God'' to the Pledge of Allegiance. It was a petty attempt to link patriotism with religious piety, to distinguish us from the godless Soviets. But after millions of repetitions over the years, the phrase has become part of the backdrop of American life, just like the words ''In God We Trust'' on our coins and ''God bless America'' uttered by presidents at the end of important speeches.

Yesterday, the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit in California ruled 2 to 1 that those words in the pledge violate the First Amendment, which says that ''Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion.'

AND so it goes................

Mitt Romney tells Values Voter Summit that 'culture matters' - latimes.com
'One Nation Under God' - NYTimes.com