Mitt Romney wasted no time yesterday getting down to his primary message during the closing day of the Republican National Convention in Tampa, Florida. Jobs, and lots of them, 12 million more of them to be exact. It was the message that Americans wanted to hear, while Romney’s speech only glanced at social issues that come along with voting for the GOP.
Where did you go Moderate Mitt?
In order to make himself less detached and robotic, the stage at the RNC was modified to have people surrounding him instead of him appearing on a pedestal. The problems that Romney has had relating to average people cannot be solved by camera trickery, but it was a step in the right direction. So was his purposefully slow entrance where he shook a lot of hands and smiled at everyone repeatedly. Again, it felt staged, but it was better than his performances before.
His message was high on hope, and much less sharp than the previous Republican attack chihuahuas like Reince Preibus for example. Romney seems to understand that Americans do not want to see fighting, they are tired of battling, and they want ideas. But on that account, Romney did not deliver.
In the speech, Romney promised energy independence, jobs and accelerated growth, and a return to the belief in America. The last point is empty rhetoric, since Obama took office everyone has started to believe in America again, particularly minorities, women, gay people, and the poor. But it sounds good for Romney to say. As for job creation, he promised a 20% tax cut across the board, without mentioning a single program that would be cut to prevent the ballooning debt from exploding. To a party that loathes the national debt, that must have seemed suspect.
Finally, Romney called for the repeal of Obamacare, but did not offer a counter solution to rising health costs and deteriorating public health. If Obamacare is not the answer, Romney is not the one to provide a different solution, since it was his idea in the first place (and while not a spectacular idea, it was definitely good and a step in the right direction, why can’t he just come out and say that it was a good idea?).
The Wrong Wing wishes that moderate Romney would come back, and that he would not be hamstrung by donors who only want lower taxes at the expense of society. We want to see moderate Romney who was a fiscal conservative but supported gay rights, the right to choose, religious tolerance, and tougher gun laws. That candidate would be someone we could support, and someone whose success in business would be a huge asset towards steering our economy in the right direction. Admittedly, Obama has not performed well on the economy. There are millions and billions of factors for this, and in the globalized world there is not much that a leader of one country can do. But Obama is a leader, he connects with the American people, he is revered around the world, and his achievements in office are the closest thing our generation has seen to progress. His confidence, ability to orate, and success on social issues and foreign policy make him true Presidential material.
Maybe that’s why Romney feels so fake now, he is not being his true self, he is selling out to fulfill some self-created familial destiny. He is not leading a business that he created, he is trying to lead a country that created him. Selling a business is good. Selling your soul is not. And that is nothing short of reprehensible.
