Romney whines about personal attacks, then accuses Obama of declaring “war on religion.”
Mitt Romney accuses the President, by name, of using health policy to “declare war on religion,” while whining about attacks on his loose business ethics and secretive personal finances.
A bully is always a coward.
Footnote Lech Walesa seems to have forgotten it, but Solidarity was a trade union, and got the main financial support for its struggle against tyranny from the AFL-CIO. Â It turns out that Polish unionists don’t share Walensa’s enthusiasm for union-busting vulture capitalists.
Author: Mark Kleiman
Professor of Public Policy at the NYU Marron Institute for Urban Management and editor of the Journal of Drug Policy Analysis. Teaches about the methods of policy analysis about drug abuse control and crime control policy, working out the implications of two principles: that swift and certain sanctions don't have to be severe to be effective, and that well-designed threats usually don't have to be carried out.
Books:
Drugs and Drug Policy: What Everyone Needs to Know (with Jonathan Caulkins and Angela Hawken)
When Brute Force Fails: How to Have Less Crime and Less Punishment (Princeton, 2009; named one of the "books of the year" by The Economist
Against Excess: Drug Policy for Results (Basic, 1993)
Marijuana: Costs of Abuse, Costs of Control (Greenwood, 1989)
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Contact: Markarkleiman-at-gmail.com
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Not only that, but he’s demanding a truce from the President, and stating that his tenure at Bain Capital should be off limits. A desperate move, because Romney know that the Obama campaign is exploiting his one strength (his business background) and quickly turning it into his biggest weakness, in playbook Karl Rove style.
If we examine the situation honestly, the Romney is using aggressive lies and untruths to attack Obama, to no effect, while the Obama administration is raising either facts or legitimate queries for information (Romney’s taxes), and it’s destroying Romney.
I completely agree with the analysis.
While I enjoy the spectacle of out-Roving Rove on one level, I am one of those people. I worry about what the trend means. That doesn’t mean that the tactics should be left to only the Republicans to use, of course. But both the high road and the low road seem to lead to bad places.
Yeah, I wondered about him cozying up to Walesa so conspicuously at the time. Walesa may still be a hero to certain groups here in this country, but my understanding has been that in Poland he’s become kind of a grumpy old man figure who’s generally seen as completely out of touch, at best, and a kind of sell-out at worst. More romney tone-deafness, I guess.
I think the brutal truth is that Walesa’s day is long over – and this is another case of Romney refighting a Cold War which most people have effectively forgotten long after it ceased to be electorally salient.