Wednesday, May 16, 2012

Romney's high school bullying vs how Obama bullied his way into politics


 The latest line of attack in support of another four years of a disastrous Obama presidency in which Barrack Obama wiped his feet on the backs of progressives, Democrats, and their agenda because of a lack of principle, backbone and integrity, is MoveOn's latest email trying to make a major campaign issue out of a bullying incident when Romney was in high school. What they don't mention is that Obama had his own bullying incident involving his mentor, a woman by the name of Alice Palmer, and Obama's political bullying of Palmer is how he got his start in politics.

 Certainly no one defends bullying, especially when the consequences can be so much more tragic now than when Romney was in high school, but to listen to the pathetic arguments made in the MoveOn email you would think it was something Romney did on his way to a campaign rally, not 50 years ago when Romney was in high school.

 The greater truth is that it reveals just how disastrous Obama's presidency has been for the progressive agenda that they have to stoop to this level to defend Obama's re-election.

But there is more to this than just a laughably empty attack on Romney. It is also blind hypocrisy. Because the email states in regards to the Romney bullying episode, "Every once in awhile a story comes along that captures a candidate and what he represents".

 Unfortunately MoveOn and others trying to make an issue out of Romney's high school bullying incident has never heard, or have chosen to ignore Obama's own bullying story and how through the worst kind of political bullying, he got his start in politics.

 It happened when Obama double crossed his political mentor, a woman by the name of Alice Palmer, a Democrat in the Illinois state senate who helped Obama get his start in politics. Palmer encouraged Obama to get into politics and after introducing him to the right people in Chicago's Democratic party, Obama decided to enter politics and run for office. For  Palmer's seat in the Illinois state senate. Obama won but only by bullying her off the ballot.

 Palmer was much loved and well respected in the district she represented and anyone who knows anything about Chicago politics at the time will tell you she would have been a cinch to get re-elected and by landslide numbers. But when Palmer submitted her petition to get on the ballot, a petition that contained thousands of signatures, Obama, with the help of some of his Harvard law school buddies made court challenges  to every single name on Alice Palmer's petition forcing those who signed to show up in court to prove who they were.

 Palmer didn't have the legal resources or the money to fight the challenges and as most "progressives" know, challenging petition signatures in court and forcing those who sign to come to court to prove who they are has been a bullying tactic to repress African American voters for years. It is also a lengthy and almost impossible tactic to fight since it requires going back to thousands of people and asking each one to go to court to prove their identity. Obama used this bullying tactic to force Palmer off the ballot. Unable to respond to all of Obama's legal challenges Obama successfully nullified her petition to be on the ballot and forced her to withdraw leaving the field clear for him to run as a Democrat and win since obviously no Republican had a chance of winning that district.

 The rest as they say, is somewhat politically sordid history. A history either MoveOn is too hypocritical and dishonest to admit, or something they just don't want to know. And just for the record, what did Obama do with his somewhat underhanded tactics to achieve elected office? Nothing. Absolutely nothing. In 11 years in the Illinois State senate Barrack Obama voted "present" more than 100 times so he wouldn't have to vote for or against anything. And in 11 years in the senate, Obama did not introduce, did not sponsor or did not co-sponsor one single peice of legislation. He spent 11 years representing the people of his district by doing nothing.

 The MoveOn email also went on to analogize the Romney high school bullying by claiming that "we are the 99% who get beat up by Romney's policies".

 This is not to defend Romney, but to point out that progressives are becoming as guilty of shameless dishonesty as conservatives have been. Who are the 99% that got "beat up" by Romney's policies? The Democrats in  blue state Massachusetts who  elected Romney governor twice? Does MoveOn think Massachusetts Democrats liked getting beat up by Romneys policies? Is that why the Democratic candidate for the senate lost to the Republican, in 2010, primarily because the citizens of Massachusetts said Romney's health care plan was better than Obama's and they didn't want to lose it? Are these transparently dishonest hypocritical arguments against Romney by MoveOn the best they can do? Or is MoveOn trying to bully Democrats and progressives into supporting Obama?

 What Move On and other progressive groups are still in denial about is that its liberals, Democrats, progressives and the country at large who got beat up by Obama's policies when they lost the public option because of his sell out to the health insurance lobby, saw $800 billion added to the deficit because Obama didn't have the backbone or integrity to live up to his promise to get rid of the Bush tax cuts for the upper 5%, or the fact that it was Obama who gutted Wall Street reform by directing that the prohibition against banks using their own money to gamble on derivatives and hedge funds be taken out, the very thing that just caused a $2 billion loss at JP Morgan. If Romney did any of that you'd have a pretty strong case against him and MoveOn would be screaming it from the rafters. Instead MoveOn and other try and harp on an incident that occurred when Romney was in high school. Which makes MoveOn and everyone else making an issue out of this, sophomoric.

 But yes, MoveOn, every so often a story comes along that captures a candidate and what he represents and that was the case with Obama and his bullying tactics against his former mentor Alice Palmer to force her off the ballot,  using the same kind of  tactics, ironically, that racists used to supress the African American vote.

 And let's not forget Obama's lying to the unemployed in Ohio in 2008, dishonestly blaming NAFTA for Ohio's high unemployment, trying to tie NAFTA to Hillary Clinton and pledging to get rid of it if he was elected, then getting caught sending Autan Goolsbee to the Canadian embassy to tell them to ignore what he was saying publicly about getting rid of NAFTA, that he doesn't mean a word of it, its just politics.

So this is who MoveOn and others are defending by attacking Romney over something he did in high school while ignoring how Obama got his start in politics and  how this duplicity and underhandedness has marked his whole political career as well as  his four years as president. How it cost the country true healthcare reform, true deficit reduction, true fairness in the tax laws, true accountability for Wall Street,  and a host of other promises made, then reneged on from a promise to use public financing for his presidential campaign, to what the ACLU called his horrible record on individual freedoms. And that's not high school stuff.
















1 comment:

sonrisa said...

you still subscribed to MoveOn? I got rid of them years ago when they defended bam-bam's decision not to use public financing. This was after they defended his gutting the 4th Amendment. One of the few times he did not vote Present. Tells alot about his character, doesn't it? Anyhow, MoveOn's excuses for both of these actions sounded downright Orwellian, if not a tad Hitlerian, & a chill ran thru me. I was like that's it, I don't want this spam in my mailbox anymore & promptly blocked it.