Ugh…this post about Romney, divisiveness, Democrats, media, and Paul Ryan is wrong on so many levels….but that’s why I pay myself the big cents to wade through this slosh. Emphasis mine, reformatted:
Failed GOP presidential nominee Mitt Romney lamented that the demise of traditional media is empowering Republican “insurgents” and preventing establishment Republicans from compromising more with Democrats.
Gak! First thought – it was BECAUSE the traditional media that the Left didn’t appear to be all that Left in the first place. Why? There was no contrarian and competing media to present other views. Homogenous was all you get – and all of the news anchors of the Big Three Networks were very much Liberals as well as the powerhouse print media. It really wasn’t until Rush went and took talk radio over (from around 125 stations at the time to over 1500 today) that stalwart conservative views were heard on a wide basis.
And if it wasn’t for the Intertubes, there’d be little in the way of conversations having solid conservative values being spoken – like what you hear at the ‘Grok and thousands of like minded sites.
So Romney would like us all to go away? Again, while politics is supposed to be the art of compromise, too often we have seen the result of it being Rs compromising our values and principles away. Indeed, we now plainly see what is now called the Fusion Party – the elites of both pretty much arriving at the same results, albeit from ONLY slightly different viewpoints (thanks for the deep Beltway Bathtub Dunking those in DC seem to be immersed in). Or does he want it / us to go away so that the dark shadows in the dark corners grow longer and out of sight of the public?
Remember, compromise just for the sake of compromise is no compromise at all.
…“There was a time when we all got the news with the same facts, if you will,” he said. “We had three networks we watched for the evening news. Most of us got newspapers. Everybody in the middle class got a newspaper, so we got the same facts whether we agreed or not with them.”
Again, Mitt – WHO controlled that information? What bias was applied to it, what kind of slant? And worse, what news NEVER got presented, even though it was just as valid as that which was presented? Or was it that the unpresented news was deemed invalid BECAUSE of who was doing the news copy writing and the news presenting?
Now, according to Romney, people “get their news on the web” and “they tend to read those things which they agree with.” He said people are “not seeing the other side” and “not even getting the same facts” while “we have commentators” on left-leaning and right-leaning cable news channels “who are hyperbolic in expressing their views on issues.”
He’s true to a point – why would I want to get my news from sites (radio and TV, too) that outright hate me (and Romney, truth be told)? Why would I want to sit glued to MSNBC and read the NYT or Boston Globe, or surf on ThinkProgress (to mention but just four) who not just believe with every fiber of their being that folks like me and us at GraniteGrok are not just wrong but EVIL?? After all, did not Hillary just call us the enemies?
Romney lamented that more Democrats are considering themselves “liberal” and “in my party, there are more and more who feel they are more insurgent than towards the center of the party.”
And WHY would that be, there Mitt? Do you think it is because with LOTS more eyeballs and folks watching the votes, we’ve figured out that the “center of the Party” ain’t voting WITH the Party much anymore? That they consider the base of their Party similar to enemies? After all, Walt Havenstein, NH GOP nominee for Gov, called most of us here in NH in the conservative base “teabaggers” – and smirked about it. We’ve watched those at the Party’s elite levels and political operatives do worse to their base and conservative candidates than what they seem to treat Democrats.
When the NH GOP Committeeman and woman (Duprey and Bergerson) openly support gay marriage contra the Platform they are supposed to support, that’s a problem. When Duprey supports abortion, contra the Platform, that’s a problem. I could keep going on and on in this same vein but the point here is to ask, why is it so wrong that those on high should be able to flaunt their twisting of what Republicans are supposed to believe in?
And those at the top protect such behavior?
“And I think that divisiveness is one of the things that has led to Washington having such a hard time getting things done,” he said.
Umm, how about the rise of that foreign political philosophy, Progressivism, in both parties starting back at the turn of the last century – after all, Woodrow Wilson DESPISED the Constitution and now that political sickness is permeating the body politic – and has completely taken over the Left side of the aisle. Mitt, might you think THAT is the source of the “divisiveness” rather than the collapse of what used to be a few homogeneous media outlets?
Seriously?
…“There are some in our party who think the best approach is throwing bombs,” he said. “The problem with bomb throwing so far is that most of the bombs have landed on our own team. That doesn’t help.
A Party is supposed to stand for something. After all, winning is merely a precursor; it is what you do afterwards is most important. And that “do afterwards” is supposed to be guided by the Party Principles – can we not lay in “admonishment” for what would be called “behavior unbecoming”? Or are we just supposed to ignore all that under the rubric of “Progress!”?
After praising presidential candidates Jeb Bush, Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL), John Kasich and Chris Christie on CNN, Romney said there are others who think that the “best approach is to see if we can’t find common ground with the people across the aisle.”
“We have Paul Ryan, for instance, that’s willing to work with Democrats,” Romney said. “I think that’s a productive thing.”
Sure thing on that open border stuff, yeah? Look, let’s get real – there is LITTLE in common ground between the Right and Left; Romney is obviously thinking that the Middle is populated and rich. Instead it is a wasteland as the Dems have all but gone full Socialist and the Right is moving back to its former foundations in the Constitution. Even the language, the words, mean far different things. If values, issues, words, tactics are so different so as to be orthogonal, how can there be common ground?
It can’t – and it shows that while being a very decent man, it shows, like his reminincing on decades gone by for the media, his view of the political realm may well be in the past as well.
