Tuesday, October 30, 2012

Romney Uses Tragedy To Score Cheap Political Points...Again!

As the sun rises America looks to the east to assess the damage left in the wake of Hurricane Sandy.  The winds are still too strong to get an aerial view of the situation and this morning’s 9AM high tide is certain to add more misery to an already catastrophic situation.   
What we do know that Sandy is the largest and most destructive storm in our history.  7 million are without power.  Lower Manhattan is struggling to recover from a 13 foot storm surge.  Atlantic City has been damaged to the extent that it will take years to recover economically.  And this assessment of coastal devastation does not take into account the damage that is certain to befall Pennsylvania, West Virginia and Ohio as Sandy collides with an arctic cold front moving in from the north.  Blizzard conditions have enveloped the Midwest as Sandy moves inland wreaking havoc on everything in its path.
On Monday the Romney Campaign announced that it would suspend its scheduled campaign events for Monday and Tuesday in deference to the storm victims…
That is until the Romney Campaign changed its mind later that same day.
As we were writing the previous post late last night we noticed CNN reporting that Romney will attend a  an event this morning that his campaign is billing as a “storm relief event” for those affected by Hurricane Sandy.  Romney will serve as host and will be joined by racecar driver Richard Petty and country music star Randy Owen.  We could not help notice that the governor has chosen to stage this event at the epicenter of the storm damage…Kettering, Ohio.
While Romney is raising relief funds in Ohio his running mate will be dropping by their campaign offices in Lacrosse and Hudson Wisconsin to public thank volunteers for collecting items for storm relief.  For those who are unaware…Wisconsin is another battleground state that is critical to Romney’s election prospects.
Meanwhile, Romney’s wife Ann will visit offices in Green Bay, Wisconsin and Davenport, Iowa before heading to a relief rally in Des Moines.  As you might have guessed; the state of Iowa is not expected to suffer any coastal erosion at the hands of Hurricane Sandy.  But the Romney Campaign does need to shore up any erosion of support in this key swing state.
Far be it for us to suggest that the governor is staging events in key swing states in order to garner cheap political points.  We’d like to believe that Romney is holding these events for truly well intentioned reasons.  But Romney’s history suggests that he is not above politicizing a tragedy for personal political gain.
After all this is the same guy who was in such a lather to gain political points off the storming of our embassies in Cairo and Benghazi that he rushed to stage the infamous press conference where he was wrong on the facts and tone deaf on the message.  This is also the same guy who tried to make cheap political points by using the deaths of Ambassador Chris Stevens and Navy Seal Glen Doherty in stump speeches.  The parents of both Stevens and Doherty called on Romney to stop politicizing their son’s tragic deaths.
One thing that you can count on with Mitt Romney; he is consistent.  He will take a firm stand on an issue one day and then sure as rain take just the opposite view a few days later.  You can also bet the ranch that if there is a tragedy to be mined for cheap political points…Romney will be there.                         

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