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Left-Wing Daily Beast Columnist Voting For Romney – and he’s not fooling me
I’m skeptical. This entire article may be designed to dampen the far right’s enthusiasm for Romney.
In the opening he makes it clear that he is far left and that Romney is a moderate that far left voters can live with.
This is not a frivolous decision, nor is it an easy one. I grew up on the Upper West Side of New York, arguably the country’s nexus of liberalogy, where it wouldn’t have surprised me in the least as a child to discover that my parents, along with all the other attendees in some garret reminiscent of the French Resistance, had thrown eggs at Abbie Hoffman at a political get-together because he wasn’t liberal enough.
The tipping point was last week’s debate in Denver. Romney finally did what he should have done all along instead of his balky cha cha with the old white men of the conservative Republican wing: he acted as the moderate he is, for the first time running as himself, not against himself, embracing his record as governor of Massachusetts.
{Obama} struck me as burnt out, tired of selling his message although he has always been terrible at selling his message when it veers from idealism into the practical.
By instinct I still cling to my Democrat roots. But I admit that as I get older, on the cusp of 58, I am moving more to the center or even tweaking right, or at least not tied to any ideology. Those making more than $250,000 should pay more taxes, and that does include me. But I also am tired of Obama’s constant demonization, of those he spits out as “millionaires and billionaires,” as pariahs.
There is a part of me that feels like a traitor myself, having seen firsthand on a sustained basis the cesspool of crime and crack and teenage prostitution and sinking-house dilapidation in which 25 percent of my hometown, the city of Philadelphia, lives, in poverty. Of all the hopes I have for Romney, this is the most tenuous. But take a walk in neighboring Camden, said by some to be the poorest and most dangerous city in America, and ask yourself how urban policy has even been a part of the president’s agenda.
I am not sure Obama really wants to be president in any practical way. He hates the rolling up of sleeves and schmoozing that is politics. I respect his principles, the way he does not veer from them, but politics is not principle whether we like it or not. It is friendliness and compromise.
I believe that Romney’s move to the center is not yet another flip-flop sleight of hand, perhaps naively. I believe he will send to the political Guantanamo those dirty old white men of the party ready to bomb Iran (speaking of wars, are we out of Afghanistan yet, despite our so-called allies killing our soldiers? See Obama policy).
AbigailAdams
October 8th, 2012
I just scanned the linked “article.” I couldn’t read it in-depth if I’d wanted to, because there is no depth to it. Cripes! Can’t believe Buzz Bissinger considers himself a writer or that others do. But hey, if he wants to vote for Romney I don’t care what his reason are. And if he is trying to convince others of that decision so much the better. I’m just glad I don’t have any more friends like him who I have to sit and listen to after an otherwise fabulous dinner party. Burp.
redgrandma
October 8th, 2012
I think there are a lot of “old hippies” (ex-hippies?) who have gotten their slice of the pie and have been desperate to find a reason to sidle up to conservative values. They may want to keep that “slice of the pie” that they now recognize they actually worked to achieve. That may be at the core of their change of heart, rather than accepting Romney as a moderate in order to embrace a new, practical and moral principals. But how to do that and not look like a hypocrite — abandoning the childish, feel-good, ideals that they touted as good for everyone else. Most of us former 60′s idealists recognized this change of heart as “growing up” and did it a long time ago. It may be a ploy — but maybe not. And if they are growing up, now is a really critical time to do so. Better late than never.
bob
October 8th, 2012
Romney sliding to the center? Really?
Methinks this guy is seeing what he wants to see.
Which means of course, that he is trying hard to find something to like on Romney because he has nothing to see in Obama.
Another leftie bailing on the ol’ Barry-O.