For months, Mitt Romney reminded Republican primary voters
and party tacticians to not be distracted by Obama’s policy gimmicks:
joblessness is the overwhelming issue,
and on that overwhelming issue, single-minded Mitt Romney will win.
Yet, immediately after last Friday’s release of August’s disappointing
unemployment report, he changed the subject, one subject after another:
returning to God, then the fragile state of the American military, then health
insurance coverage, and finally the next move of the US Federal Reserve.
He didn’t fully define any of them as bite-sized election
issues. It’s not clear whether he was responding to new intelligence on target
voters or giving us a glimpse into issues he’s having trouble sorting out in
his own head. Maybe he just can’t help telling people what’s bothering him.
Romney conceded long ago that Obama appears to be a pretty
normal father and probably is a nice guy. How do you then start getting
disturbed about God’s place in a second Obama administration? A normal American
male from Chicago just doesn’t have a secret agenda to kick God out of
town. Nevertheless, in Virginia Beach on
Saturday, Romney drew a new line in the sand: “I will not take God out of our
platform. I will not take God off our coins, and I will not take God out of my
heart.”
Sure doesn’t sound like one of his jokes about not being
asked where he was born.
(Possibly, Romney is worried about remnants of Lincoln’s
godless reputation as America’s first Republican president—remember, he also
ran on a platform that forgot to mention God.)
Romney spoke only long enough on each of the other subjects
necessary to keep changing the subject.
Apparently, it was a mistake for congressional Republicans
to “go along” with White House proposed defense and domestic spending cuts that
were offered as minimal necessary responses to threats by the same Republican Congress—slash
spending now or we’ll force a default on the Federal Government’s debt payment
obligations.
Americans with pre-existing medical conditions, Romney now
assures, will be guaranteed health insurance coverage, somehow without Obama’s
suffocating regulatory framework.
Romney also observed that the Federal Reserve couldn’t
stimulate immediate improvements in the unemployment numbers later this week.
In stating the obvious, he left the impression that he believes that the Fed
needn’t do anything about anemic economic growth. The leader of the Party of
Business Confidences now thinks there’s no point in doing anything that can’t
be realized before November election?
It’s beginning to look like Mitt Romney has the attention
span of an investment banker in a bubble market.
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