Take a minute and think carefully of all the public figures you've disliked throughout your life. File through all the politicians, entertainers, sports figures, and the like. Assuming you are a somewhat reasonable, normal person, you probably have strong opinions some of these folks. Perhaps you reached the point of hating one or two of them. Now, if you can, try and mentally assemble all the people you never liked on a thermometer, with those you can probably tolerate at the bottom and those who make your blood boil at the very top. Take a mental picture of that person. Now bring it forward to the front of your mind. Do you see Mitt Romney?
It is well understood that Democrats do not like Mitt Romney's policies. In fact, our leading politicians will go out of their way, as we Democrats are wont to do, to praise Mitt Romney's character. We practice the rather high minded view that our disagreement with him and his party is not personal, but purely a matter of philosophical and political differences. We think it is impolite to call Mitt Romney "weird." That it is unseemly to ask questions about his church or the things taught from its pulpits. We cannot attack the character of his family or his associates. We think ourselves better than this sort of thing, content in being able to look at ourselves in the morning for not having gone done the road Republicans often do not hesitate to travel. Speaking for myself, however, my perception of Mitt Romney has almost nothing to do with his policies, most of which are standard nutcase Republican fare. There are plenty of other Republicans who parrot the same talking points as Mitt Romney, but they don't get up to the top of my thermometer. I even find Limbaugh a mere buffoon. But there is so much about Mitt Romney that makes me detest him more than any public figure I've known in my life. In my mind he's the worst kind of person that should be involved in politics. It basically comes down to this: Mitt Romney has spent his entire life preying on the weak and defenseless, always from a position of complete safety for himself. In other words, he's a coward.
His propensity for lying is well known. His lack of any central convictions about anything other than his own ambitions well documented. As he's run for the highest office in the land, we are now getting enough stories about his life that allow us to examine it as a whole. Consider his willingness in his youth to engage in violent hazing with a gang of similarly privileged ruffians against a defenseless outsider. Consider his callous mistreatment of his own household pets. Think back about the episode when Romney talked about how illegal immigrants ended up maintaining his lawn and his open hostility toward them today. Consider how harshly he has treated his own employees when money was at stake. Look at how he has treated his fellow competitors for the Republican nomination. In every case, Romney has always attacked the weak with particular viciousness. In every case, Romney has kept his distance, doing it all from the comfort of an office tower or lordly estate. Do you think Mitt Romney would personally deliver a pink slip to a steelworker? Would he personally walk up to a gardener and fire him to his face? Would he attack a gay person without a pack of toughs behind him? He offers $10,000 bets to people who don't have $10,000 to bet. He braggs about the joy he takes in firing people. Worse thing about it is, he does it in a way that makes it appear that he truly believes that he's doing you a favor. "Pranks and hijinks," he says. "Politics aren't bean bags," he says. An overbearing gorilla calls a woman a slut over the airwaves and his response is "not the sort of words I'd have chosen." The man is a coward. He won't confront the strong and forces himself on the weak. His entire life, that's all he's done. You can't find one instance where Mitt Romney actually stood up and fought for someone other than himself. Find a case where Mitt Romney put himself at risk on someone else's behalf. Look and see if you can find a single case where Mitt Romney sacrificed something for someone else's benefit. You can't because he doesn't.
No, Mitt Romney is not a patriot. No, Mitt Romney is not a great guy. No, Mitt Romney isn't a wonderful guy in private. Mitt Romney is an self-indulgent, egomaniacal, sociopathic coward. There are plenty of reasons to vote against Mitt Romney even if he agreed with us on policy. He isn't the kind of person who should be in public life, except perhaps as a "heel" character on pro wrestling. People like him should peak in high school and then go learn their life lessons through hard knocks in obscurity. Had it not been for Romney's wealth and pedigree, that is exactly what would have happened. Perhaps it is rather low brow to want a public leader who actually has a heart and a moral compass that aims true. Who laughs without ulterior motive. Who doesn't think legal entities are the same thing as human beings. But if there are voters who vote against Mitt Romney because they just can't stand him, that's fine with me. I'm right there with them. http://www.dailykos.com/story/2012/05/20/1093061/-Mitt-Romney-is-a-coward
Despite the persistent gender gap in opinion polls and mounting criticism of their hostility to women’s rights, Republicans are not backing off their assault on women’s equality and well-being. New laws in some states could mean a death sentence for a pregnant woman who suffers a life-threatening condition. But the attack goes well beyond abortion, into birth control, access to health care, equal pay and domestic violence.
Republicans seem immune to criticism. In an angry speech last month, John Boehner, the House speaker, said claims that his party was damaging the welfare of women were “entirely created” by Democrats. Earlier, the Republican National Committee chairman, Reince Priebus, sneered that any suggestion of a G.O.P. “war on women” was as big a fiction as a “war on caterpillars.”
But just last Wednesday, Mr. Boehner refuted his own argument by ramming through the House a bill that seriously weakens the Violence Against Women Act. That followed the Republican push in Virginia and elsewhere to require medically unnecessary and physically invasive sonograms before an abortion, and Senate Republicans’ persistent blocking of a measure to better address the entrenched problem of sex-based wage discrimination.
On Capitol Hill and in state legislatures, Republicans are attacking women’s rights in four broad areas.
ABORTION On Thursday, a House subcommittee denied the District of Columbia’s Democratic delegate, Eleanor Holmes Norton, a chance to testify at a hearing called to promote a proposed federal ban on nearly all abortions in the District 20 weeks after fertilization. The bill flouts the Roe v. Wade standard of fetal viability.
Seven states have enacted similar measures. In Arizona, Gov. Jan Brewer signed a law that bans most abortions two weeks earlier. Each measure will create real hardships for women who will have to decide whether to terminate a pregnancy before learning of major fetal abnormalities or risks to their own health.
These laws go a cruel step further than the familiar Republican attacks on Roe v. Wade. They omit reasonable exceptions for a woman’s health or cases of rape, incest or grievous fetal impairment. These laws would require a woman seeking an abortion to be near death, a standard that could easily delay medical treatment until it is too late.
All contain intimidating criminal penalties, fines and reporting requirements designed to scare doctors away. Last year, the House passed a measure that would have allowed hospitals receiving federal money to refuse to perform an emergency abortion even when a woman’s life was at stake. The Senate has not taken up that bill, fortunately.
ACCESS TO HEALTH CARE Governor Brewer also recently signed a bill eliminating public funding for Planned Parenthood. Arizona law already barred spending public money on abortions, which are in any case a small part of the services that Planned Parenthood provides. The new bill denies the organization public money for nonabortion services, like cancer screening and family planning, often the only services of that kind available to poor women.
Gov. Rick Perry of Texas and the state’s Republican-dominated Legislature tried a similar thing in 2011, and were sued in federal court by a group of clinics. The state argues that it is trying to deny money to organizations that “promote” abortions. That is nonsense. Texas already did not give taxpayer money for abortions, and the clinics that sued do not perform abortions.
Last year, the newly installed House Republican majority rushed to pass bills (stopped by the Democratic-led Senate) to eliminate funding for Planned Parenthood and Title X. That federal program provides millions of women with birth control, lifesaving screening for breast and cervical cancer, and other preventive care. It is a highly effective way of preventing the unintended pregnancies and abortions that Republicans claim to be so worried about.
EQUAL PAY Gov. Scott Walker of Wisconsin, the epicenter of all kinds of punitive and regressive legislation, signed the repeal of a 2009 law that allowed women and others to bring lawsuits in state courts against pay discrimination, instead of requiring them to be heard as slower and more costly federal cases. It also stiffened penalties for employers found guilty of discrimination.
He defended that bad decision by saying he did not want those suits to “clog up the legal system.” He turned that power over to his government, which has a record of hostility toward workers’ rights.
President Obama has been trying for three years to update and bolster the 1963 Equal Pay Act to enhance remedies for victims of gender-based wage discrimination, shield employees from retaliation for sharing salary information with co-workers, and mandate that employers show that wage differences are job-related, not sex-based, and driven by business necessity.
DOMESTIC VIOLENCE Last month, the Senate approved a reauthorization of the Violence Against Women Act, designed to protect victims of domestic and sexual abuse and bring their abusers to justice. The disappointing House bill omits new protections for gay, Indian, student and immigrant abuse victims that are contained in the bipartisan Senate bill. It also rolls back protections for immigrant women whose status is dependent on a spouse, making it more likely that they will stay with their abusers, at real personal risk, and ends existing protections for undocumented immigrants who report abuse and cooperate with law enforcement to pursue the abuser.
Whether this pattern of disturbing developments constitutes a war on women is a political argument. That women’s rights and health are casualties of Republican policy is indisputable.
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