From the Times: "Asked whether he had struggled with the fact that his church excluded blacks from its priesthood until 1978, Mr. Romney said that he supported civil rights and remembered hearing about the change in policy on the radio while he was driving. "I pulled over, and literally wept," he said. "Even to this day it's emotional," he said, tearing up." Forget about it. Men don't cry... That's the kiss of death in he-man, macho U.S. politics.
Also worth noting in the same article is the thin-skinned nature of U.S. business, according to the Des Moines Register. They criticized John Edwards for his "harsh, anti-corporate rhetoric..." that would make it hard to "work with the business community."
What? Do the suits whine and say, "You talked bad about us and now we can't work with you...?"
Coming from Illinois, let's give it up for our junior senator!!! He is, shall I say, surging??? Oprah and Obama - flexing Midwest muscle.
And boy is Hillary worried...now she is a "change" agent....trying to glob onto Obama's message.
But Mr. Krugman is a bit cranky on Obama and his health care plan. All these health care plans are quite similar - Clinton's, Obama's and Edwards' - as I understand it - they all keep the for-profit insurance companies in the picture at some level. But Krugman is really pissed about Obama's plan and says it ruins the whole progressive agenda...Frankly, if it's going to be about being pure on corporations then Dennis Kucinich is the only one who supports totally cutting out profit from the health care scene. I think Mr. Krugman is missing a certain forest for the trees by placing a candidate's stand on health care reform as the central nature of the progressive agenda. There is something else that is central: fight against racism...and that puts Obama's candidacy itself at the center of progressivism.
Tell me if I'm wrong!!!
2 comments:
I think Romney's kiss of death came when he hung out with Republican Party pariah George H. W. Bush talking about how he wants to impose his religious values on the country recently.
Not that Republicans are opposed to imposing religious values (especially literalist Christian interpretations of the Bible), but that Romney was snuggling with the elder "no new taxes" Bush.
Maybe the Right is beginning to remember that Mitt is the some of another George, who was governor of Michigan when I was at the University of Michigan. That Romney was a "liberal"(to the left of Nixon) would-be Republican candidate for the 1968 presidential nomination, and shot himself in the foot when he tried to shift on Vietnam, saying that he had been "brainwashed" on a trip there.
Mitt is as far to the right of his Daddy as George W is to his.
As for Krugman and health care, H676, the Conyers Bill, or Medicaire for All, is the only serious answer, the only program that can bring the U.S. in line with the rest of the developed world and materially improve the welfare of the people. Only Kucinich is committed to that program, but the others can and should be presssured to move toward 676.
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