The strawman attack, a favorite of the lazy, intellectually dishonest idealogue everywhere. Mitt Romney is certainly no exception. Here’s a classic example of it as Romney responds to Obama’s quip about his privileged upbringing:
(LA Times) — “I’m certainly not going to apologize for my dad and his success in life,” Romney harrumphed. “He was born poor. He worked his way to become very successful despite the fact that he didn’t have a college degree, and one of the things he wanted to do was to provide for me and my brother and sisters.”
No one is saying Romney senior was born with a silver spoon in his mouth, they’re pointing out Romney junior was. Mittens knows this of course, and he knows he’s vulnerable to this charge, so he tries to make it attack on his venerated family and gets all pretend pouty. I can almost picture him stuffing that scarecrow full of straw.
Obama was born the biracial son of a single mother and raised in part by his blue-collar grandparents who lived in Kansas. From that modest heartland background, Obama went on to college and Harvard Law, aided by academic scholarships and government subsidized student loans. Romney grew up the millionaire son of a CEO-governor. Agree or disagree with them politically, that’s just a fact. The things is, few people would hold it against Romney anymore than they held it against Kennedy or Roosevelt, if not for his words and actions over the last few years.
Romney is running as the head of a party that wants to give the wealthiest, most powerful people in the US more money and less responsibility, at the expense of the working-class and poor. It’s not just that it’s self-serving, it’s not just that it’s ugly; he wants to enact policies that make it harder for the middle class and the poor to get a leg up. Plus he’s doing so right after those very same policies tossed millions into unemployment lines, left our economy in tatters, the military over stretched, and the nation mired in debt. Romney and his cohorts call this scam by various names, liberty and freedom chief among them. But that’s what it boils down to.
And it’s especially odious coming from a pampered one percenter turned corporate raider.
I’d like to get Mitt to take that silver spoon out of his mouth so he can kiss my ass.
Missed the point, missed the barn, winged a strawman.
The right have finally been revealed as the selfish. This is a character trait I was taught to despise, and still do. “More money with less responsibility” is the very essence of selfishness, and the Republicans are trying to put a respectable face on this despicable quality. Self-interest is different; you can work in your own self-interest while acknowledging that your own economic, social and physical health depends on the health of the society around you. (“Enlightened self-interest”, from Plato, as I remember). Selfishness in politics is Thatcherism — “there is no such thing as a society.” Which is exactly the philosophy that got us into this fine mess.
Romney is just following the precedent he set when he was CEO of Bain. He and his company would buy a small but financially secure company with a hostile takeover, almost always a leveraged buyout (LBO)*. Bain would then transfer the acquisition debt to the newly acquired company. To pay off the debt, many of the company’s assets are sold, employees are laid off, benefits are cut, if there’s a pension fund it’s looted, and generally the acquired company is driven into bankruptcy. But Bain’s executives and shareholders are paid quite handsomely.
This is all done quite legally. Romney and his backers want to make corporate raiding even more profitable. If the working and middle classes get hurt, it’s their own fault for not picking their parents more wisely.
*In an LBO, the buyer borrows heavily to pay for the acquisition, usually through high-yield (junk) bonds.
I’d feel a lot better about the Republican candidate if it WERE Romney’s dad running.
And Romney’s dad would likely be disgusted with the blank slate he sired–at least I hope so.
Happens to Demos too – progressive father, twit son. See Birch and Evan Bayh.
“To pay off the debt, many of the company’s assets are sold, employees are laid off, benefits are cut, if there’s a pension fund it’s looted, and generally the acquired company is driven into bankruptcy.”
I’m pretty sure I saw an episode of The Seprano’s where Tony and company did something like that to someone’s sporting goods store.
Whoops, Soprano’s, not Seprano’s
Rmoney’s error there is more of a non-sequiteur (ie it just doesn’t follow & isn’t connected to the first premise / contention) than a strawman I think. Right?