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Today I am joining colleague Sarah Jones in piling on Mitt Romney. I strongly recommend her March 21st contribution entitled “You Sank My Battleship; Etch-A-Sketch Gaffe buries Romney momentum” as a precursor to this Romney bash. Jason Easley also speaks ill of the serial tax evader.

Gaffes, lies and tax-evading sleaze aside, let us learn from history.

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One of the most iconic political photographs ever was the front-page picture of Harry S. Truman holding up the November 3, 1948 Chicago Tribune banner headline “Dewey Defeats Truman”. A bit misleading as the exact opposite was true; underdog Truman defeated Dewey by over 4 percentage points.

So it can happen. Both erroneous headlines and underdog wins. That’s why I want to talk about the Democrat’s worst-case scenario, a presidential win by Mitt-wit Romney. Not that the U.S. voting population is wild about Romney. Meter readers get a better reception. But what must never be forgotten is that the last two republican presidential wins were rigged. And it only took one state in each election to do it. Florida in 2000 and Ohio in 2004. In each instance, people should have been imprisoned.

In the 2012 presidential race my greatest fear is vote tampering by way of voting machine and memory card tampering. In a future story, I’ll explain why that process is frighteningly easy to accomplish.

So it does appear that the Republicans are going to end up with Romney, his campaign’s latest gaffe notwithstanding. Perhaps the greatest indication being the March 21st endorsement of Romney by Jeb Bush, the guy the power boys want in the oval office more than anybody else. High profile republican political opportunists are sure to follow with their imprimaturs.

The calculations for a four-year delay of Jeb’s inevitable run for the White House have been made. The GOP brain trust of Rove, the Koch brothers, ALEC and the Fortune 500, must still think that it’s too early to march out yet another Bush. It’s also tough to beat an incumbent president. Lastly, should Santorum somehow make a successful last-minute push for the office, the winning Obama margin would be in the neighborhood of 20-25 percentage points and tons of down ballot races would be at risk. The heavily Republican House would even be vulnerable.

So the Bush endorsement is effectively the death sentence for the Santorum run or anybody else’s. It’s Romney!

Let’s do a little pop assessment of this rather strange duck. And let’s use his own words to do it. I’ve downloaded the text of his Illinois victory speech. Let’s examine this address to supporters. It is a mirror image of all his speeches in that it’s an orgy of generalities. “…this is a decisive moment that requires real leadership.” REAL leadership! Obama “leads from behind on world affairs.” Mitt talks about economic freedom; he says ‘freedom’ a lot because dummies react positively to that word without having the foggiest idea what it means in the context of their lives. “This administration has been engaged in an assault on our ‘freedoms’.” Exactly what are those freedoms you cherish fellow citizens? The freedom to lower taxes on billionaires? How about the freedom to eviscerate Medicare or the freedom to repeal the only meaningful health care initiative in the last century. Then there’s the freedom to privatize social security. Romney loves the freedom to pollute.That’s the greatest freedom of all. And there’s that indispensable freedom to hate Obama, homosexuals, the poor and Muslims.

See – our freedoms haven’t been taken away.

Let’s look at one statement in particular, where he says “Today, we can’t even build a pipeline.” He’s talking about the Keystone Pipeline project that the Obama administration has put on hold. Its environmental risks are legion. Hardly worth the effort for an export pipeline. ‘Export’ means what it says. The end-product from Keystone, diesel and other products, will be moved south, then mostly exported tax-free to Europe and Latin America. It will not exert one penny of downward pressure on U.S. gas prices. In fact, it will raise U.S. gas prices.

Romney also tirelessly repeats the drilling mantra for his corporate masters. “Under President Obama, bureaucrats prevent drilling rigs from going to work in the Gulf.” Let’s start with some numbers. U.S. drilling was at its highest level ever a couple of years ago, imports are down dramatically and demand has been declining since 2007. Even if we went on an offshore drilling tear, the Energy Information Agency tells us that such increased drilling would have no impact on prices for nearly 20 years, then it would amount to a nickel a gallon at most. The facts don’t match the BS. And republicans have repeatedly blocked billions in tax breaks (the anti-tax party, remember?) and cash grants for renewable energy.

A word about friggin’ frackin’. That’s hydraulic fracturing in drilling natural gas wells. The EPA recently released a report that indicates there are pockets of highly contaminated shallow groundwater occurring in the same aquifer as drinking water wells. People with any concern for their fellow humans should read a wonderfully insightful first-person article on the subject in the March 1st edition of The Progressive Populist.

One final word about Romney’s highly self-touted business experience. In talking about running a business, Mitt, at his sneering best, says, “you can’t learn that teaching Constitutional law.” H’mmmm. Let’s look at Romney’s business experience. He says he has helped companies provide jobs that let “families buy their first homes, put their kids through school, live better lives, dream a little bigger.” Partially true, but let’s listen to those who have known him best over the past year, his opponents in the run to the Republican presidential nomination. To a man they all describe Mitt as exercising predatory practices to make himself millions while firing workers and bankrupting companies (“dream a little bigger”). And these are fellow corporate kiss-up Republicans. And they’re right. Nearly a quarter of Bain Capital’s highly leveraged company purchases went bankrupt. Many moved their operations overseas and thousands of workers were fired. Yeah, that’s business experience all right.

Meanwhile, Barack Obama, the object of Romney’s disdain runs an enormous business in being the CEO of the United States. A 24/7 job with over 310 million clients. THAT’s business experience.

Just as the Reagan White House was run by neo-cons and George W. Bush was under the thumb of Karl Rove, a Romney administration would answer exclusively to a corporate oligarchy and everything would be privatized to the advantage of the Fortune 500.

Be vigilant. Heed my warnings about Republicans rigging yet another election. Those in positions of power have found their surrogate. A fellow unfeeling cheat of extreme wealth who also has no ethics, morals or limitations on what he will do to acquire full national, state and local power. They’re a wonderful team. Never forget that.



