EUGENE, Ore. - When volunteers for the "Occupy" movement prepared for their Jan. 16 celebration march to honor Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, there were also signs from GOP backers who think "social issues be damned," because their pick for president, Mitt Romney, has his hands full in a battle for the soul of capitalism.
“No Romney,” was shared by a group of protesters in downtown Eugene Jan. 15 who were preparing for Sunday’s march to celebrate Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, and they couldn’t help but post an image of Romney from the local newspaper with the word “No” written over this politician who does not embody their high ideas that all Americans are created equal. In turn, Thomas Frank’s recent book: “Pity the Billionaire: The Hard-Times Swindle and the Unlikely Comeback of the Right,” has become a must read for those voters who are confused by the likes of Romney and other so-called conservative politicians who view capitalism as the beat they move to in their claim to become president in 2012. In a Jan. 15 commentary in the Los Angeles Times, Frank writes that while the GOP is in a “frenzied search for a presidential candidate” -- who will not unite the country, but beat President Obama -- the buck now stops with Romney who Frank calls “inauthentic” because it was this Massachusetts governor who designed the state’s health insurance that was “the model for Obamacare.”
GOP looking for a Romney antidote
“A group of social conservatives, evangelicals, are putting together a meeting together in Texas this weekend. And we're told what they're doing is looking for a conservative alternative to Romney,” reported PBS Jan. 13 as the lead story nationwide.
In turn, New York Times columnist David Brooks explained that Romney has been “taking some heat, and he hasn’t been doing particularly well. He’s been taking heat on the one issue that I do think he is actually vulnerable on, and that's Bain Capital.”
While it’s unclear who these GOP “deciders” picked to run for president over Romney, Frank writes in the Los Angeles Times Jan. 15 that they should not forget that Romney “is the soul of American capitalism in the flesh.”
For instance, Frank writes that if one looks back at Romney’s career “as a predator drone at Bain Capital,” voters will find that “Romney said that the bank bailouts of 2008-09 were necessary.”
Also, “you say Romney is an unprincipled faker,” writes Frank, “Fair enough – he is. He’s so plastic he’s almost animatronic.”
Romney’s been persecuted by GOP
Michael Gerson, who served as President George W. Bush’s assistant for policy and strategic planning, wrote about Romney being persecuted in the Washington Post Jan. 15, with Newt Gingrich calling “Romney a ‘liar,” while Gingrich also “promised that unflattering material on Romney would come daily, including Gingrich’s revelation that Romney was a predator when he co-owned Bain Capital.
Gerson also notes that Romney’s first-place finish in New Hampshire is not “the slingshot” for the Republican nomination.
In turn, Jonah Goldberg – the editor-at-large of National Review Online, and a visiting fellow at the American Enterprise Institute – that “Romney is under attack for being a hugely successful banker at Bain Capital. Bain identified distressed companies and found value in them for shareholders, investors and ultimately, consumers. When things worked right, Romney and his team streamlined firms and injected fresh capital and helped companies thrive by returning them to their ‘core competencies.’ It’s an impressive record, but it doesn’t prove he knows how to ‘create jobs.’”
Pity the Billionaire Romney
Thomas Frank – author of the bestseller “Pity the Billionaire: The Hard-Times Swindle and the Unlikely Comeback of the Right” -- also writes in the Los Angeles Times Jan. 15, that Romney’s “no stranger to the core Tea Party myth of the noble businessman persecuted by big government. Indeed, at the Conservative Political Action Conference in 2009, Romney opened his talk this way: ‘I gotta get through this speech before federal officials come here and arrest me for practicing capitalism.’”
In turn, Frank dubs Romney a “centimillionaire venture capitalist” who pounces on the weak with his buckets of money from Bain Capital; while Frank has done research on what Romney likes to do in his free time, and he said it’s reading about “heroic businessmen, like those rugged, resourceful fellows in the Ayn Rand novels you love.”
Also, Frank notes that with Romney as president, “social issues" will not be his highest priority because "Romney will ensure that we get the one thing that this country can’t do without on its path to hell: further deregulation of Wall Street;” while also stating that “Pity the billionaire” will be Romney’s powerful rallying cry for his run for the White House in 2012.
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