With Candidates Like These. . .

Right now, if I was a Republican who voted in the primary, I'd be pissed.  After all, if I wanted to vote for a candidate who would be prone to saying absolutely stupid things, I would've voted for Michelle Bachmann or Rick Santorum.  Romney was supposed to be the guy who actually knew what he was doing. . .

Or not.  At a private fundraiser, Romney opened up his big mouth and said that Obama's supporters are all on public assistance so, and so fuck those guys.  Well, he didn't say that exactly, but he did say that he doesn't have to care about those people.  Per the article:
"[M]y job is is not to worry about those people. I'll never convince them they should take personal responsibility and care for their lives."

For a guy who is already wildly unpopular, who's campaign has swung dramatically from one strategy to the next, this kind of statement is particularly problematic.  As I said before, all candidates have prove that they are more than the image the other campaign tries to paint.  Bush could prove he was no dummy by spouting off a few names of world leaders, and Obama proves he's normal by being a normal guy (brewing his own beer doesn't hurt either).  Kerry's "I voted for it before I voted against it" line confirmed the worst line of attack on Kerry, and Al Gore's sighing at the debates played into the negative image Bush had crafted of him.

Similarly, Romney has managed to prove that he is an out-of-touch elitist who thinks that 47% of the American people are total and complete fuck-ups.  By the way, the 47% figure is something of a canard  - that figure includes people who work but don't pay federal income taxes (but do pay federal payroll taxes, state sales taxes, etc.), and retirees.  And quite few of the "47%" are those tea partiers who carried signs that said "Get your government hands off my Medicare."  Of course, those people don't believe they are on government assistance, and will vote for Romney.

The real problem isn't the 47%, if you will, but the rest of us who hear Romney's comments and think - "Holy shit, what a dick!"  Add that to his comments that people making $250k are middle class, or that he doesn't care about the very poor, or one of his myriad of other tone deaf comments (including last week's smirk), and Romney becomes virtually radioactive.

Now, while it is true that I'm a Democrat, I am also a political junkie.  So while my voting behavior is determined by my own policy preferences, I can separate those preferences when looking at the politics.  So, with that said, my dear Republican friends, I feel your pain.  Believe me, after watching Dukakis, Gore, Mondale*, and Kerry all bumble their way through the Presidential campaigns, I understand what its like to have a candidate who seemingly doesn't want to be elected President.

But while I feel your pain, rememb
*Okay, I don't remember Mondale that well - I was eight years old during the race, after all.  But Mondale actually had a negative bounce out of his convention.  Meaning the more people heard about Mondale, the less they liked him.