Well, now that a newly-invigorated Mitt Romney has told us that he was flat out, completely, what-the-hell-was-I-thinking wrong about the 47 percent he had previously called “victims” who don’t take responsibility for their lives, and for whom he couldn’t possibly be bothered, Barack Obama’s lamentable performance during the first presidential debate is even more grievous.
Clearly Mitt Romney is a political whore of the worst kind. He won the debate; he won largely because he didn’t get called out on his despicable contempt for hard-working people who reap the rewards of their working lives by receiving Social Security, elderly folks who enjoy the security of Medicare, or poor people who need the social safety net their own taxes helped weave.
And so, having dodged the bullet, New Mitt has torn off the victory cape he’s worn for two days and has now donned his sackcloth and ashes, lugubriously mourning his previously hard heart and revealing a change of character rivaled only by Ebenezer Scrooge in Dickens’ A Christmas Carol.
The Ghosts of Post-Debate Polls Present undoubtedly spurred his change of heart, and who is surprised? Mitt Romney clearly has no moral core. The moderate, even somewhat progressive Romney of a decade ago has morphed into a rabidly plutocratic Tea Party puppet who has shown that he’ll say anything to make the base happy, do anything to prove that he’s a Tea Party, varmint-huntin’ kinda regular guy, and do it with no conscience, regardless of the disastrous results that follow. I call that whoring — not because he’s become more conservative, but because he’s become more of anything-any-audience-needs to hear. I may disagree with conservatives, but genuine ones have my admiration. Mitt is not a genuine anything other than a good-looking man. That he holds his convictions with a loose hand extended to the highest bidder is what makes him a whore, and any American who votes for a man who can so easily heap vitriol on their neighbors and themselves while facing one audience — and then claim profound contrition when he’s escaped the challenge he deserves when facing another — ought to expect that he will sell or trade their security and well-being to the highest bidder.
That bidder won’t be bidding in your favor. Trust me. The American people will become bargaining chips for a dishonest man with a moral core as malleable as cooked linguine and a character as shallow as a slow-draining sink. Sadly, a good number of people will bite at the bait he offers: whatever his audience wants, he’ll give them. Mitt offers a heaping helping of Charlie’s Catfish Blood Bait, plump and wiggling worms, Little Willie flys, and anything else the teeming audience wants — and he doesn’t have to believe in it, or even have it to offer. He doesn’t have to be reasonable, consistent, or thoughtful. When Mitt Romney is in front of an audience, he simply tosses out whatever the masses want.
In that respect, Mitt Romney is not just a whore. He’s a master baiter.