My open letter to Mr Romney...

I just got back from vacation last Sunday at 11:00 PM and, as often happens, wandered around in a fog for about 24 hours before I snapped out of it.  There is something about hours cooped up in the confined and uncomfortable space of an airplane that causes my brain to downshift and my ass to hurt.  I’ve also found that spending a week on the shore of Lake Huron, confining my TV viewing to old movies and swimming everyday also unravels the tightly wound spool of gibberish normally haunting my brain like inter-planetary white noise.   It calms me down and excretes the daily toxins – like someone is sucking the snake bite that threatens to render me comatose.

 So anyway, I was in this semi-blissful state when I went to the mail box to retrieve our daily assortment of largely commercial correspondence.  I grabbed the fistful of brightly colored envelopes with all manner of inducements - subtle and brazen and stupid - and walked back to the house, where I proceeded to absently sort through them before tossing the whole useless pile into the recycling when one in particular caught my eye.   There amidst the coupons for discount manicures and cheap oil changes was a letter – all red, white and blue – from Mr. Mitt Romney, candidate for president.  And it was addressed to me…!

As loyal readers of this hyper-ventilating series of rants know all too well, I am not in Mitt’s demographic, to say the least.  I believe I have made it clear that I think he is a dorky sock-puppet candidate lacking even one original idea, propped up by a bunch of desperate and treacherous bastards who should all be in jail and leading a coalition of greed-heads, delusional religious fanatics and low IQ, mouth-breathing racists.   Clearly Mitt’s fund raising apparatus mistook me for somebody else.   That became obvious as I read his pitiful, patronizing and disingenuous series of clichéd republican talking points, anchored by this stunning paragraph that I may well frame and hang in my office;

 “You are one of our Party’s most prominent members and I would be honored if you would join my team as a major contributor.  Your maximum $5,000 contribution will signal your support for my candidacy and help elect a fiscally conservative Republican with real-world business experience.” 

Geez, once I stopped retching I could just feel the old adrenalin squirt directly into my blood stream until I thought my eyes might pop right out of my vibrating skull.  Seriously, Mitt, I don’t know where to start.  So consider this an open letter in response to your plaintive yet completely devious and phony appeal to the fascists and the tragically ignorant.   

Dear Mitt; Thank you so much for taking the time to send me your heartfelt plea for money, but I think I am going to pass.  I have it on good authority that you and the rest of your swinish cabal raised 100 million dollars in July and since I couldn’t really shake loose much more than $20 bucks I am sure you guys will be OK without it and I’m sure it would just get lost in one of the “small-bill” bags that get tossed in the corner for you to use to pay for scotch and thousand dollar hookers.  That’s American as hell and it’s tempting but not this time. 

And I am a little uneasy with some of aspects of your campaign, to be blunt. 

Your “fuck the doomed” approach to dealing with the unemployed and those less fortunate citizens not born with a thousand dollar Italian tassel loafer in their mouth seems overly harsh to me.  Not everyone who is poor is a shiftless freeloader who is getting what they deserve – a little empathy goes a long way.  And as your more fervent religious supporters may be able to help you understand, there is that whole New Testament thing you may want to brush up on.   Sure, sure; Joe Smith isn’t in there talking to angels.  Still, it does contain a few worthy passages you might find useful.

In your letter you say that you want to “rebuild the foundation of the American economy based on the principles of free enterprise, hard work and innovation” but my understanding of your business experience is that it consists largely of taking advantage of struggling companies by stripping them clean of any valuable assets like a plague of locusts, and shipping their employment overseas.   And forgive me if I hear a little bit of republican fire-up-the-base code in that statement; free enterprise, as opposed to socialism, hard work as opposed to lazy-ass minority welfare cheats and innovation, just to pander to the rich propeller-heads of Silicon Valley.

Then there is your whole-hearted and idiotic embrace of the bug-eyed neo-con denizens of the Bush White House basement to design your foreign policy, which consists primarily of parking an aircraft carrier in the nearest body of water and bombing the shit out of any country that won’t play ball with the moneyed interests of “our party”.   If you had been paying attention at all during the last 10 years you may have noticed that jingoistic belligerence as foreign policy leaves a lot to be desired and there is more to achieving peace in the Middle East than having closeted circle jerks with Netanyahu. 

Two of your “day one” policies also make me queasy; you say you will “begin to eliminate the overregulation that us smothering business growth” and, at the same time, “initiate comprehensive market-driven energy policies to encourage development of American resources”.  That sounds suspiciously like you and your East Texas pals want to start punching wells all over the place, water and air quality and public safety be damned as long as they can turn a quick buck.   I mean really; who wants god damn wind mills cluttering up the landscape and those stupid little electric cars and hybrids.  The only people who drive those are Birkenstock-wearing ex-hippies who probably have a glove box full of pot, right?

But my biggest problem with you and your traitorous allies in congress and across the country is you’re a bunch of stone cold liars.  Your latest advertisement, regarding the Obama administration’s welfare policy is so blatantly false it makes my head hurt.  The porcine little miscreant, Karl Rove, is probably sitting in a bath tub full of warm mayonnaise giggling madly as he fanaticizes about the new republican century – a disturbing image to be sure.  But you guys aren’t going to get away with it.  PT Barnum may have been partially correct when he said there’s a sucker born every minute – if this wasn’t true, Rush Blowhard would be just another pill-popping fat guy loser living in a van down by the river.   But the corollary has also long been held to be just as true – you can’t fool all of the people all of the time. 

So despite the compelling “Please rush” stamp on your return envelope, I won’t be contributing to your sleazy little enterprise, not now and not ever.   If my worst nightmare comes true and you do get elected to “restore America’s greatness", god help us all.

Your pal,

The Barking Dog at the Back Fence