Here is an "opening statement" I've prepared for President Obama's second debate with Mitt Romney.
***
Mitt, you're a nice guy - the best candidate in the GOP.
But America has watched you change so often -- on every fundamental
issue! -- that no one can be sure your head won't spin again.
If history is a guide, you will change again - quickly and often.
Over the years -- in fact over the course of this election season --
your positions have been a crap shoot.
Your positions were a crap shoot when you devised Romneycare.
You sponsored a crap shoot during the Republican primaries.
And you're conducting a crap shoot in this campaign.
Some cynics say you're going to announce a progressive tax scheme
during tonight's debate, telling people you'll raise taxes on the wealthy. Why
would you break your vow to Grover Norquist? Because you know that The
Base has nowhere else to go,
and that "undecided Americans" (who will decide this election) will
hear your glowing promise and say to themselves: "Now there's a reasonable
man!"
But you are not a reasonable man Governor and here's why.
Reason depends on core consistency.
Reason is incompatible with a relentless torrent of
bait-and-switch policy changes.
How can Americans trust you?
Why shouldn't Americans assume a never-ending crap shoot?
Just last week, you changed your position on abortion.
Again...
How many times has it been Governor?
Three?
Four?
Five?
Then, later that same day your "advisers" issued a
"correction." (And that wasn't the only time you've changed your view
in a single day.)
It's like parents with a wayward teen hurrying to the police station
where their kid's locked up: "But he's really a good boy, officer. We just
don't know what get's into him. It's a phase he's going through!"
Governor:
You're 65 years old.
You're not a kid anymore.
But you're acting like one.
You get a tantalizing glimpse of The
Oval Office; dear God, it's so close you can smell it. And to win that
prize you will say anything -- and then you will say
anything again... and again!
At bottom, you are a pragmatist's pragmatist.
Even your top aide says he doesn't know what you believe. Go ahead.
Fact check it. It's on video tape at
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/choice-2012/#a
The trouble is that your approach has nothing to do with vision.
The only vision you ever had was the enactment of Romneycare. And as
soon as that act of political courage became a liability you threw your own
baby under the bus.
Nope. You have no vision.
In fact, you've poked your own eyes out.
What do you think?
Am I wrong?
If so, help me out.
But first, answer this question.
As a fully grown adult, why have you advocated diametrically opposed
positions on abortion, individual mandate, Ronald Reagan, global warming,
campaign spending limits, immigration, economic stimulus, the right to bear
arms, taxes, Vietnam service?
Look. It does not surprise me that a beautiful woman like your wife
could turn your head.
But it does surprise me that you've turned your head -- back and forth
and back and forth and back and forth -- on every significant issue in modern
American politics.
What sparking synapse in your psyche and soul makes you flip flop on
every matter-of-consequence?
It is no secret, Governor, that you are a rich man.
It is also no secret that you barely pay tax. (In fact, your tax rate
is half that of many secretaries I know.)
But tell me...
With all that money -- and with the tiny tax burden you
"shoulder" -- America still wants to know...
Can you afford enough pencils so that, when you're done revising your
personal convictions, at least one of those pencils will still have some eraser
left?
Have you pondered your personal history lately?
Have you seen "The Ultimate Mitt Romney Flip Flop
Collection?" It's a compilation of video clips in which you -- just you --
talk for 20 minutes; first saying one thing, and then saying the exact
opposite.
Check it out. It's on YouTube. Once you've seen it, let me know if
you're as flabbergasted as I was.
Your split personality makes Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde look like June and
Ward in "Leave it to Beaver."
Why are you still changing your mind at 65 years of age?
First the ping.
Then the pong.
Then the ping, pong, ping, pong, ping, pong.
Put me straight.
The Republican Party has long been considered The Party of Staunch
Conviction - The Party of Unflinching Adherence To Unchanging Principles.
Is there any political principle in your life Governor that you have
not changed?
And when you change your principles, do you change them just to satisfy
the guys in market research? Just to make
whatever you "happen to be selling" look glitzier?
Or, do you change your principles because it's the easiest way to lock
up a few more votes, migrating incrementally to "the left" now that
the radical right is sewn up?
Just how far to the left are you prepared to go Governor?
George Soros says you'd enact another stimulus if you were a president.
Of course, right now, in the heat of this moment, you'll swear on a
stack of "The Book of Mormon" that you would NEVER enact another
stimulus!!!
Really?
Why should we believe you?
You are next-of-kin to "the boy who cried wolf," soon to
become the boy who cried cat.
And then the boy who cried mouse.
And then the boy who cried wee wee all the way home!
What have you done to earn any American's enduring trust? (We needn't
count The 1%. Their indebtedness is self-evident.)
This is not a rhetorical question Governor.
This is a fundamental question.
A question that must be answered -- by you -- before the nation buys a pig in a poke.
It is a question about belief, about conviction, about constancy -
about everything The Republican Party holds dear.
In the end, it is a question about honesty.
And the core question is this: Have you been honest with yourself?
Shakespeare cut to the quick:
This above all: to thine own self be true,
And it must follow, as the night the day,
Thou canst not then be false to any man.
***
Alan here... In theory, it would be a fine
oratorical flourish if Obama were to emphasize his own constancy:
"Look." he might begin. "I have not changed a single essential
position. I am the same person I was on Inauguration Day... Barack HUSSEIN
Obama, a Kenyan-born Muslim socialist, anti-American, job-killing quisling,
whose Anti-Christ goal is to strip Americans of their guns as prelude to
surrendering the United States to a One World Government headed
by Arab sheiks.
***
It would be good if Americans -- particularly Christian Americans -- took a closer look at Mormonism's founder, Joseph Smith, a sexual predator, also examining the fact that Mormonism is NOT a Christian religion.
The clarification of these two points -- both of them plain as potatoes -- is available at: http://paxonbothhouses.blogspot.com/2012/04/romney-mormonism-and-christianity.html
Personally I have no objection to anyone voting for Romney simply because he's a Mormon.
Hey! I'm voting for the Muslim.
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