Wednesday, March 28, 2012

PLEASE, MITT -- PICK THIS GUY AS YOUR RUNNING MATE

You've read about the allegations that Ron Paul has entered into a non-aggression pact with Mitt Romney, in return for which Romney will pick Paul's son as his running mate.

Well, if that happens, at least one attack ad writes itself:

The top five oil companies in the United States have already made $5.8 billion in windfall profits from spiking gasoline prices this year. Yesterday, Senate Republicans agreed to debate a bill that repeals $2 billion in annual tax breaks for these super-wealthy oil giants....

[Senator Rand] Paul argued Big Oil deserves even more favors from government,
because they're doing such a good job extracting wealth from American families:
Instead of punishing them, you should want to encourage them. I would think you would want to say to the oil companies, "What obstacles are there to you making more money?" ...

Yes, there's a clip:





Yeah, in the clip he goes into the usual right-wing boilerplate about how we shouldn't punish success and how much tax the rich pay and on and on. But your attack ad is right here.

I know, I know: he'll be the running mate. Running mates don't affect the outcomes of presidential elections, except maybe in 2008 in the case of Sarah Palin.

But as I've been saying for months -- long before "Etch A Sketch" -- Mitt Romney has to pick a running mate who'll reassure his base. And the only kind of person who can reassure his base is someone who's undoubtedly said something inflammatory -- something that would horrify swing voters even as it delights Fox fans and Dittoheads. So I think we're going to get somebody on Romney's ticket whose past is a gold mine of clips like this.

2 comments:

Raenelle said...

If I were Romney, I'd go for a guy who seems competent. The base will come around; where the hell else are they going to go? What Romney has to sell is his supposedly skill at handling things. If his first decision, like McCain's, is to put the country in danger by choosing an idiot, that's a strike. So, I think he'll choose someone the Village all think of as a member of the Very Serious group. I bet Paul Ryan. I know Ryan has that destroying the safety net thingy against him, but the Republicans are going to be tied to that anyway, so they may as well embrace it, neutralize rather than avoid the issue. I think it's Ryan.

Steve M. said...

I think it might be Ryan. Romney will think he's safe because the mainstream press likes him, plus the right-wing media likes him. (And then he'll find out that ordinary people, even on the right, don't like him very much.)