Day: 7/30/2012

IMPLOMACY: Mitt Romney Goes To Israel And Insults Palestinians

Posted by on July 30, 2012 at 8:32 pm. 4 Comments :

After insulting the British, Mitt Romney jetted off to the Middle East and promptly insulted Palestinians. The frequency with which Romney creates international incidents is more than slightly suggestive of his unfitness to serve as president. And his proclivity for such gaffes begs for a new word to describe his imploding diplomacy, which I am calling “Implomacy.”

This time Romney was attempting to praise Israel as a prosperous and productive nation, but in his inimitably derisive manner, Romney approached the subject from a direction that portrayed Palestinians as inferior culturally.

Romney: Culture makes all the difference. […] As you come here and you see the GDP per capita, for instance, in Israel which is about $21,000 dollars, and compare that with the GDP per capita just across the areas managed by the Palestinian authority, which is more like $10,000 per capita, you notice such a dramatically stark difference in economic vitality. […] And as I come here and I look out over this city and consider the accomplishments of the people of this nation, I recognize the power of at least culture and a few other things.

Let’s set aside for the moment that Romney badly misstated the economic facts. According to the World Bank, in 2011 Israel’s GDP was $31,000 per capita, compared to just over $1,500 in the West Bank and Gaza. But the bigger problem with Romney’s remarks is that they are an affront to people who do not have control over their economy. Israel enforces severe restrictions on the territories inhabited by Palestinians. Granted, they may have good cause considering the threat of attacks that have originated from those territories, but the resultant economic conditions can hardly be attributed to any cultural shortcomings on the part of the Palestinian people. The inappropriateness of Romney’s comments are evident if you take the same comments and replace the names of those involved. For instance…

As you come here and you see the median household income, for instance, in Beverly Hills which is about $96,000 dollars, and compare that with the median income just across town in Watts, which is more like $25,000, you notice such a dramatically stark difference in economic vitality. […] And as I come here and I look out over this city and consider the accomplishments of the people of this nation, I recognize the power of at least culture and a few other things.

Would Romney suggest that the residents of Watts are culturally inferior? Or Harlem? Or Mississippi? Does he notice a “dramatically stark difference” in the vitality of residents of Greenwich, CT, as compared to those in West Virginia?

If Romney were to have said something along these lines he would have certainly forfeited the votes of those communities. The problem with his doing it in Israel is that, were he president, he could fatally harm the efforts to bring the region to a negotiated peace. As it stands now, how willing do you think the Palestinians would be to trust Romney to be a fair dealer in future peace talks?

This is not a trivial political dust-up. Lives hang in the balance. And Romney is proving that his hamfisted boorishness is too dangerous to take a chance on. He continues to make us wonder who means by “us.”

Mitt Romney

Mitt Romney’s Shocking Confession: I Am Unqualified To Be President

Posted by on July 30, 2012 at 12:02 pm. 3 Comments :

It’s not often that a candidate for president will publicly declare that he doesn’t consider himself to be qualified for the office he is seeking. But that is precisely what the putative Republican nominee Mitt Romney has just done.

In an interview with ABC News this weekend, Romney was asked about his stubborn refusal to make his tax returns public, as almost every candidate for president has done since his own father set the precedent over forty years ago. Romney’s response was a typically arrogant expression of his sense of privilege wherein members of his elitist caste are not subject to the rules that the rest of the riff raff have to live by:

Romney: “I don’t pay more than are legally due and frankly if I had paid more than are legally due I don’t think I’d be qualified to become president,”

Once again Romney has stuck to his position that he doesn’t believe that the American people are worthy appraisers of his fitness for office or that they are entitled to ascertain whether he has had any shady dealings or conflicts of interest. And with a financial portfolio as vast as Romney’s, conflicts are difficult to avoid.

But what’s really interesting is his self-assessment about what qualifies one to be president. According to Romney the criteria includes whether or not you ever overpaid your federal income taxes. Unfortunately, Romney’s determined defiance to reveal his tax returns prevents us from applying his own criteria so that we make a judgment as to his qualifications.

However, another source has emerged that may settle the question. Ben Domenech, of the ultra-rightist web site RedState, has discovered what Romney is really hiding. The truth, according to Domenech, is that Romney did overpay his federal taxes. Domenech, citing “people who were familiar with the veep vetting process for McCain in 2008,” said…

“We know he turned over more than two decades of returns to the McCain campaign during the veepstakes vetting process. What was in them? Mitt’s taxes were complex, but clean. He overpaid his taxes.”

There you have it. The only people other than Romney’s accounting staff who have seen his tax returns have affirmed that Romney overpaid. Romney believes that such overpayment of taxes is a disqualification for the presidency. That might explain his obstinance with regards to being honest with voters about his taxes. He doesn’t want them to know that he is an unqualified hack by his own standards.

For the record, I don’t buy for minute that Romney overpaid his taxes. That’s a transparently biased polishing of his record by a far right-wing toady who opened his big mouth before Romney laid out his silly principle of overpayment. Now it has doubled back to bite him in the ass. But the controversy illustrates just how tone-deaf Romney is about the tax return issue. Voters need to know that their president is not a crook (h/t R. Nixon), but Romney will not provide the documentation necessary for us to make an informed judgment. It’s clear that Romney has made his own judgment as articulated by conservative George Will (along with eighteen other prominent conservatives):

“The costs of not releasing the returns are clear, therefore he must have calculated that there are higher costs in releasing them.”

Exactly. And that’s why the American people need to know more about Romney before they can ever take his candidacy seriously.