We are watching a dynamic that seems to demonstrate that the more blatant and outlandish the Willard Mitt Romney campaign gets, the more his poll numbers increase threatening President Obama’s re-election chances. This is – to state the obvious – an extremely disturbing trend.

Susan Cardoza expresses this frustration in her article this week in a voice that is echoed by many, but I will add my concerns leading into this discussion. I agree with Susan, but my concerns are not about those that find it effortless to support an amoeba like Mitt Romney who does not employ discretion of any kind about whose support he will suck up to. Susan is right when she writes, “Those Republican ideologues may be way out of the mainstream, but they definitely have core values”, even though to most their commitments are to a platform that the rest of us may find reprehensible - they have stuck with it.

They have no guilt around standing shoulder-to-shoulder demonstrating their cohesiveness while they spew lies about matters such as unemployment. Do you ever even hear them mention that nearly 600,000 jobs that were lost in recent years were government jobs? Isn’t that what they always say they want? Smaller government?

Facts have no place in all of this rhetoric and it wouldn’t matter anyway. We are dealing with people who are still furious over the fact that we have an African-American president and they will stop at nothing to end his term. A puppet like Mitt Romney is perfect for these extremists. He will do their bidding with the same vacant smirk and we will be longing for a time when we could bitch about our issues with the current White House.

Which brings me to my concerns. Each week the latest numbers reflect that this presidential race is virtually neck and neck. John Boehner recently said of his own republican members that coordinating them was like controlling a wheelbarrow full of frogs. Democrats are worse. The left is not only fractured into various camps of entrenched ideology, there exists a very dangerous tendency to pick up the toys and go home if all conditions have not been met.

I hear – repeatedly – disgruntled and disappointed liberals/progressives express their opinions about President Obama, and I understand that there are positions and actions that require legitimate discussion and opposition. BUT – let’s all pull our heads out of the idealistic sand and look at the black and white of where we are.

This is no longer simply about liberal vs. conservative; or democrat vs. republican – this is about…

We need to coalesce and stand together. Put away our infighting and realize that the hard truth of this is that we are facing a choice of Obama vs. Romney – and I think you can guess who I want to be there appointing the next 2 or more Supreme Court Justices between now and 2016.

I share Susan’s anger at the lack of moral character regarding Romney. This fraud is frighteningly close to the brass ring.

Romney on His Knees

by Susan Cardoza

This week I watched Mitt Romney partying with Donald Trump in Las Vegas on the night he clinched the Republican nomination. Trump of the birther movement, Trump of the multi-bankruptcies, Trump who has always made sure his own fortune was not touched but damn the people who lost as a result of his terrible business management. Please tell me what other individual who had filed bankruptcy four times would be treated like some Wall Street King? Heck an individual with one bankruptcy on their record has to jump through hoops to ever get another loan.

Anyway I wondered as I watched all this kowtowing to Trump just who Romney would not bow down to in order to live at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue? How about Manson? If Charles Manson had some clout and gave Romney a reception at Corcoran State Prison would Romney accept his endorsement? What about Attila the Hun? If he were alive and had some clout would Romney accept his endorsement? As has been said over and over, the man has no soul, no core and I believe he would do anything, accept any terms, in order to move into the White House next January.

Just look at his response when people asked him about the birther claims Trump has made against President Obama:

Mitt Romney, meanwhile, is waving the dispute aside. Asked about it on Monday, he said “I don’t agree with all the people who support me and my guess is they don’t all agree with everything I believe in.”

No, Mr. Romney, you don’t have to agree with everything people who support you believe but you should at the very least hope they have some class. The mere fact that Romney would accept Trump’s invitation – knowing his bat shit crazy ideas – totally reflects on him whether he believes the same delusions or not. After all, are we not all judged by the company we keep? How would Romney be any different? What exactly is the value of 40 pieces of silver to Romney? Can you imagine yourself accepting an endorsement from a loon like Trump? I cannot even fathom giving up my core values for any amount of money. I am sure I have a lot of company in that area.

Romney has demonstrated that he is not a committed believer in any economic principle or political value. Mitt Romney is committed to one thing and one thing alone – his own success. That’s why it wasn’t hard at all for Romney to shed his “moderate” past positions on issues like abortion rights, contraception, gay rights and immigration in order to become what he himself calls a “severe conservative.”

But would he remain a “severe conservative” if he is elected President? After all, people who have no core values are generally found to have no backbone. You won’t find Mitt Romney taking a stand against the dyed-in-the-wool ideologues that dominate the Republican caucus in Congress. Those Republican ideologues may be way out of the mainstream, but they definitely have core values. Some of them were so committed to those values that they were willing to take our country to the brink of bankruptcy last year due to their unwillingness to give an inch of compromise. The plain fact is that people with no core values never stand up to people who have core values, and Mitt Romney has the backbone of a jelly fish. We will all find out too late the first time the ultra right wing pulls his chain and demands that he heel, because he will fall right into line without hesitation.

Even if he decided he wanted to challenge the right wing agenda of the Tea Party, in a confrontation he would fold in an instant. When you have no core values, it’s always much easier to go along with the demands of passionate, committed true-believers than it is to stand your ground. And despite the fact the Tea Party people are not all that popular, you cannot argue with their commitment to changing our country to their liking.

Let’s revisit what right wing icon Grover Norquist said about Romney. He said he was not looking for presidential leadership from Romney. He believes that the leadership of the Republican Party will continue to come from right wing Republicans in Congress. All he asked of a president, he added, was “enough digits on his hand to hold a pen” to sign the bills a right wing Congress sends to his desk.

Take Romney’s speech at Liberty University. True to form, he said just what the leadership of Liberty University wanted to hear, not one critical word escaped his lips.

Romney’s unwillingness to challenge the far right does not pertain solely to the social conservative right. It also goes for economic right wingers like Grover Norquist, who want to return America to the bad old days of more Bush-like tax cuts for the wealthy, and the deregulation of Wall Street that did such damage to the middle class and led to the Great Recession that cost 8 million jobs.

And it also goes for the Neo-Con foreign policy right. Seventy percent of the 40 individuals identified by the Romney campaign as its foreign policy advisers served in the Bush administration and were responsible for the catastrophic Neo-Con foreign policy.

And that leads us to our decision for the coming election. Does the country want a man like Mitt Romney who can turn on a dime over issues that effect our daily lives? How does that trait work in foreign affairs? Can you expect respect from the countries of the world when you cannot even hold a core value for more than a few years? It takes a great deal of mutual respect to work with other countries in order to ensure our National Security and the well being of the world in general. Have we, as a nation, forgotten what happens in a world where other leaders or peoples do not respect our Commander in Chief? I still want to believe we are not that shallow or disengaged in this country, but November will tell. I hope that the country makes the right choice but the question remains what to do if we don’t?

If we do not then what we will get is a President who, in exchange for the Republican nomination, has sold his soul to the extreme right and the 1%. He has willingly walked into the right wing inner sanctum, and even if he wanted to, he doesn’t have the backbone to escape nor will he have the backbone to fight them on the real issues. And that does not bode well for our country.