Alas poor Mitt

Do we see now a Republican Party built on a foundation of marshmallow with the backbone of a Twinkie? Just two weeks back the Republicans were rabid for their candidate and were looking forward to a glorious GOP coronation. Now I hear from many Republican and Conservative operatives that Mitt Romney is a name they do not want to hear spoken and the suggestion is that Mitt should find a nice rock and make himself comfortable under it.

Of course Mitt hasn’t helped his own cause with his ridiculous whining.

Those same party operatives and sympathizers are scurrying around making suggestions on how the GOP will have to change to attract a more diverse population. Stop! Am I hearing that the Republican Party is willing to change its core values in order to survive? A good argument can be made for having the GOP stick to its beliefs and take a chance that it will not go the way of the dinosaurs.

Do we need another party that is just like the Democrats? I remember when George Wallace was campaigning he complained that there was not a dime’s worth of difference between the two parties, but that time is long gone. Maybe it’s time for a new party with new ideas to push the GOP aside. If that new party is the old GOP all gussied up to look like the Democratic Party, then I totally reject it. Maybe the GOP should take note of what happened in the last election: you couldn’t trust what Mitt Romney advocated because he never stuck to a position very long and was quick to change so as to match the political situation at any one time and any one place. Does the GOP want to become the party that has no firm principles or values? The Republican Party platform may suck but to throw it all out is dishonest and like Mitt, people will no longer have trust or respect for the GOP.

In the final analysis

Okay. it has been several days and I have read or heard dozens of reasonable and not so reasonable views on the drubbing the Republican’s took in this last election, despite it being the perfect opportunity to cast the prince of darkness down from the white house and return America to the rich old white men for which it stands.

The best explanation? The Republicans fell for their own lies and the American voters were nowhere near as stupid as the GOP considered them.

I suppose it’s a variation on the ancient tale, The Emperor’s New Clothes. Mitt’s advisors and election staff all told him he couldn’t lose. They shook the Etch a Sketch and provided a new Romney for every occasion. They even recalculated the polls to show a growing advantage while at the same time attacking anyone who said otherwise. From within this bubble of mendacity and chicanery, poor Mitt actually thought the magic underwear made him invincible.

But in the end it was a chimera and a growing diversity of Americans popped the bubble. Too bad for Mitt and all conservatives … this might well have been the last election where the GOP coalition of angry white men had a chance to be relevant.

Good news from Mitt Romney?

Yes, Mitt has made it clear that he has mastered the art of Doublespeak. You may have heard in the secondary news market that Mitt has shaken the Etch-a-Sketch again and now promises that he will not work to repeal or modify any Abortion Laws. But that’s not the good news. The good news is that we have a wonderful statement on which to exercise our critical thinking skills.

First, let’s take a moment and consider the concept of Doublespeak. Although most people might point to George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four as the origin of this concept, it actually is not in that book; rather, Orwell references “Doublethink” and “Newspeak.” What is important to remember about all three of these terms is that they are meant to obscure, mislead, and perpetuate untruths. Orwell writes in Nineteen Eighty-Four:

The power of holding two contradictory beliefs in one’s mind simultaneously, and accepting both of them….To tell deliberate lies while genuinely believing in them, to forget any fact that has become inconvenient, and then, when it becomes necessary again, to draw it back from oblivion for just as long as it is needed, to deny the existence of objective reality and all the while to take account of the reality which one denies.

I’m sure we can recall numerous examples of Doublespeak in politics, but the subject here is one easily misleading statement by a candidate for President of the United States.

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