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October 13, 2012
Debate Advice for Barack Obama
By Gregory Paul
Some helpful advice for the POTUS.
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Here are some items that many may wish the POTUS will deploy against Romney in the upcoming debates.
"Governor Romney, you claim that you will be an effective, job-creating leader of this nation, relying on your experience as a CEO job-maker. Yet as governor of the great state of Massachusetts, you ran for only one term, because your popularity was so low by the end that you knew you could not win reelection, and did not want to go down to defeat. One reason you were so unpopular was because under your guidance,
"And while we are at it. Will you finally tell Americans at long last how many people you fired when at Bain? And how many jobs you shipped overseas? And how many small businesses and their mom and pop owners you put out of business with the chain franchises like Staples you promoted? (For discussion on this see click here.) You have been claiming to be a skilled creator of jobs and small businesses, so surely you can show us how many of both you created compared to how many you wiped out, right? Didn't you keep count? If you don't have hard figures, then why should we trust you, when you proved so bad at creating jobs when you governed
"Dear voters. Think about it. The governor is going to lose the election big time in the state he ran just a few years ago. Why is that? And he is likely to lose in his home state, where his father was a popular advocate of the automobile industry that his son wanted to toss into the ditch a few years ago. Why is that? It is because the people of these states know that Romney might have been good at making quick profits at Bain, but he has no idea to do what I am working at, the long term job of building up the middle class that really makes this nation great and prosperous.
"Governor Romney. You have quite correctly condemned the hateful statement by Republican Senate candidate Todd Akin about how women who are "legitimately" raped almost never get pregnant. But he is still running for the office, with considerable support from your party as it strives to win control of the Senate. Are you willing, here and now, to urge the good people of the state of Missouri to vote to reelect Senator McCaskill simply to keep Akin out of the august body he has no place aspiring to be in? To put principle above political expediency?
"Governor Romney. You are opposed to abortion. Why? Because you think it is murder? If so, then do you really think that women who have abortions are murderers? Do you really think they should be punished as criminals? After all, if you don't make abortion a criminal homicide then you can't ban it. Governor, don't you trust the women of
"Who are you, governor? Seriously, you say one thing at one time and exactly the opposite at the other so often that we have to ask. Who is the real Romney? Now, at the last debate, I admit I was kind of befuddled. To the point a lot of the time I had to mull things over more than I liked because I was trying to figure out what you had just said since it was likely to be the opposite of what you said a week or two before. I expected Tea Party Romney to show up. But you had gone all Etch-A-Sketch. The Republican candidate who showed up was moderate
"You are now saying we should arm the Syrian rebels. But when I intervened in
"Governor, you need to be entirely clear to
"Governor, do what I did, and what your father did. Release your tax filings for this century. Don't demand that the voters trust you, show them whether they can trust you.
"Dear fellow Americans. If you want a man who had one of the worst job-creation records as governor, vote for Romney. If you want a president who showed tremendous skill at making enormous profits for his clients on the backs of the workers whose jobs he eliminated or sent overseas, vote for Romney. If you want a president who will continue the Republican libertarian scheme of using the government to benefit the rich at the expense of the middle class, vote for Romney. If you want a president who will continue the Republican way of deregulating the financial industry to the degree that the rich rig the system for their benefit while making it so unstable that it will again crash, vote for Romney. If you want a president who will work to make women who have an abortion a criminal, vote from my challenger. If you want a president who is relying upon many of the same Bush advisers who got us into questionable wars, vote for Romney.
"With me, you know what you get. So if you want a president that when he came into office stopped the nation from plunging into outright depression, and has since overseen the steady creation of millions of jobs, then vote for me. If you think the financial industry should be kept from again spinning out of control, give me four more years. If you want a president who will work for the bedrock of our nation and economy, the middle class, then give me four more years. If you want a president who will keep our nation strong, and will pursue a prudent foreign policy, then give me four more years. If you want to ensure that abortion remains safe and legal, vote for me. Are you opposed to the Supreme Court being packed with conservatives? I will see to it that it is not. If you want a president who will not do what Romney wants, to convert Medicare to vouchers that benefit the insurance industry while ripping off the elderly, vote for me. If you want a president who will not allow the Republicans to do what they have always dreamed of, convert Social Security to investment schemes that will fill the overseas bank accounts of the financiers while leaving seniors holding the bag, then give me four more years.
"Candidate Romney is not part of the solution. He is part of the problem. He is part and parcel of the very financial system that has been hurting the middle class for decades, and got us into this mess in the first place--A mess I have been cleaning up for the last three and a half years. It is hard to believe that a national party nominated a person who is part of the problem and then wants us to actually believe he has any idea of what the solution is. What are they thinking? The Republicans never seem to learn, they keep going back to the same right-wing ideology of the government giving the gifts to the top percent and hoping the middle class gets some of it, a fantasy that has never worked. Let's finally put a stop to the Republican incompetence. They are stuck in the 1920s, they have no idea how to run a modern government. Reelect the sensible, middle-of-the-road Democrat. Give me four more years."
(A final comment. Obama needs to stop saying "ummm" and "uh" so much. Seriously. It is a bad verbal tick no one seems to have gotten him to knock off. Makes him sound indecisive.)