'Slick Willard' Isn't So Slick Anymore

By Manifesto Joe

After the past couple of weeks, I'll have to stop using the nickname of "Slick Willard" to refer to Mitt Scumney. He hasn't been slick at all, and some of the American people are getting a chance to see whom this really is.

I suppose his asinine behavior while visiting the Summer Olympic Games in London should have been enough foreshadowing of this. Like Obama's predecessor, this is a doofus, a son of privilege whose main talent seems to be for making a fool of himself.

He followed up on insults to America's closest ally with the Libya debacle, attacking alleged weakness in the Obama administration even before the victims' families had been notified. Even many top Republicans were aghast at that one.

Then there were the "47 percent" remarks, which appear to show Romney as the ignorant plutocrat he really is. The only "redistribution of wealth" that people like him object to is the kind that travels down the socioeconomic ladder. When it comes from the bottom up -- as it usually does -- it's called "smart business."

'Incompetent' was polite

Even prominent plutocrats are upset. Peggy Noonan, the onetime Reagan speechwriter who's now with The Wall Street Journal, said she was being polite when she called the Scumney campaign "incompetent." What she meant, she said, is that it is more like a "rolling calamity."

Here's a link to a story about Noonan's dismay.

Many polls are now showing Obama in the lead, reversing previous trends. One factor, I would say, is a closing of ranks among America's "center-left." Obama's lack of fight, at least for a long time while faced with Republican intractability, was disheartening to many. But the Republican Party has come so much under the spell of its kook element that the "center-left's" potential dissidents realize that Obama is the only person standing between us and utterly irresponsible right-wingers.

I worry, though, remembering an old adage that nobody ever lost a dime underestimating the intelligence of the American people. It has surprised even me, just a bit, how many people are still obsessing over where Obama was born when the U.S. is being faced with such a grave choice in November. The "birthers" always deny this, but I think the fact that there's an uppity n----r in the White House is what bothers them most. I would have thought that the Il Doofus (Bush 43) disaster would have spoiled the "Republican brand" for at least a generation, but the election of a black president seemed to make a lot of Il Doofus' damage invisible to many middle-class white people.

Scumney may still be able to make it close enough for the Republicans to steal it with their voter disenfranchisement strategy, and so forth. But at least the latest gaffes are giving people a chance to see whom he really is. As Massachusetts governor, he talked like a moderate, and even governed like one to a great extent. But recent missteps, plus his choice of Paul "Ayn" Ryan as his running mate, make clear that this is merely a privileged, opportunistic dork who's willing to tell anybody anything to have the office to which he obviously thinks he's entitled. The Republican right wing owns him now, and they also will do anything to grab power.

Manifesto Joe Is An Underground Writer Living In Texas.