The roar of ignorant applause merges seamlessly into the roaring winds of Hurricane Sandy in this iconic anti-Romney mash up from ClimateScience.org
According to the Rethugs, climate change is:
1. A hoax
2. A joke
It’s been obvious for a long time that their standard bearer, one Willard Mitt Romney, is a man who believes that the end justifies the means. The end in this case is the US presidency, and the means his willingness to say anything to any audience to capture it. If for nothing else, his campaign will be remembered for having set a new standard in micro-targeting deception.
An early supporter of a market based cap and trade approach to mitigate global warming, Romney capitulated to the fossil fuel industry funded, anti-science wing of his party in order to secure their support. Nowhere is that more apparent than in his lame attempt to ridicule President Obama’s (mostly muted) concern about climate change during his acceptance speech last August to the the Republican National Convention.
When political scientists and media pundits look back at the 2012 election and analyze the quality and the unprecedented amount of its political advertising, I hope they give the above commercial from ClimateScience.org it’s due. It’s brutal juxtaposition of Romney’s vacuous words and nature’s merciless deeds is a fitting coda to a campaign born of selfish ambition, and run on lies and deceptions unprecedented in modern political history.
One might suppose that Romney wished he could take back that bit of cheap pandering to the RNC crowd, but that would assume a fact not in evidence: a man of critical self-reflection with the ability to admit mistakes. I suppose he could always blame his speech writers– oh, wait. Didn’t he dismiss three professionals before, at the last minute, deciding to co-author the speech with his top aide, Stuart Stevens? Surprising that someone who believes himself to be a business genius doesn’t know that ya get what ya pay for.
Hubris has a penchant for giving way to irony, and often tragedy. Beyond Mitt’s personal tragedy of being exposed as a lying corporate raider with no clothes (magic underwear exempted), the real tragedy is what his campaign has done to the character of the American politics. The 2012 election has been a perfect storm that, thanks to the US Supreme Court Citizens United ruling, saw unlimited amounts of often anonymous cash fuel the ruthless, grandiose ambitions of a secretive plutocrat whose sense of entitlement comes from both the circumstances of his birth and his religion’s religious tradition, Mormonism’s so-called White Horse Prophecy. As Ann Romney told Barbara Walters about their prospects for occupying the White House: “It’s our turn…”
Win or lose, Hurricane Willard will have left mountains of trash in its path. For which, to borrow from the title of his autobiography, there will be No Apology.
