To My Republican Friends

During the Republican convention in Tampa, Neil Newhouse, a Romney pollster, said,  “We’re not going to let our campaign be dictated by fact-checkers.” Over the course of his presidential campaign, Romney has refused to describe what measures he will take to reduce the deficit other than it will be “government spending.”  Except, in the same breath, he says he will increase military spending by two trillion dollars annually.  Obama came into office and the deficit was eleven trillion dollars at the time, a figure about which no rushboian Republican was concerned.  Obama’s budgets added a little more than one trillion dollars each of the four years to the deficit. If current levels of government spending were to stay the same, but the military budget increased another two trillion dollars, the deficit each year would be three trillion dollars.  Romney says he will reduce the deficit, but refuses to say how.  He says that he will lower taxes 20% across the board, but doesn’t tell us how that will reduce the deficit.  In a candid moment, he said he doesn’t care about the 47% of people who he thinks they think they’re victims, i.e. the veterans, military, those on social security, children, etc. but he does say he will not cut education costs.  I am no fact-checker and I am certainly not an economist, but I can do simple arithmetic.  I also do not believe in the tooth fairy, nor do I believe, as Romney suggests, that magicians can pull rabbits out of hats.  I think we are entitled to know what he plans for us if he is elected.  We already know that he has secrets in his own financial setup he is unwilling to share with us and his unwillingness to do so means that he knows it would demonstrate that the elite wealthy have tax advantages far beyond what us ordinary mortals enjoy.  Finally, and I have wanted to say this for a long time but I wanted to avoid hurting the feelings of the many pro-Romney Republican friends I have, I just cannot understand how so many smart people can be fooled into thinking that Romney, i.e. Bush Jr. on steroids, will make things better for the people of the United States.  Some of the more obvious detractors just cannot get away from the black thing.  They need to hate Obama. More than 40% of Republicans think he is an Islamist and I can understand why they would vote for Romney even though I think they are demented.  I can also understand why fat cat republicans who live in gated communities would vote for Romney.  Their mantra is ‘the rich get rich and the poor get poorer.’  But the rest of you fine people, I just don’t get it. 

Just saying . . .