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Today, I looked at Mitt Romney’s website. He has an ‘Issues Watch’ section that list several items. Here they are, summarized and editorialized in the order they appear on that webpage.
Strategy for a Stronger America: This issue is addressed in the form of a 68-page PDF download! Granted, all of page 4 consists of a large picture of himself speaking in front of an American flag so large, that fewer than half it’s stripes can be seen. Regardless, this is going to be a long post. To make it a little easier, I’ll break it up into two parts.
Chapter One is a speech Romney gave to the Conservative Political Action Conference in May of this year, and it immediately got me seething. I’m trying to keep in mind that his audience is purely conservative given in a year when he needs to win over the Republican core, but still, I loathe his politics. He’s a God-and-Country conservative who believes that non-religious citizens, homosexuals, and even many single parents aren’t ‘strong’ Americans. Most telling is this line, “The American people are the source of our strength: hard working, educated, skilled, family-oriented, willing to sacrifice for their family and their country, God-fearing, freedom-loving American people.” Lines like this reveal why conservatives of Romney’s stripe feel justified in disenfranchising minorities and the poor; they don’t contribute to making America ‘strong’.
The rest of the document is split up into ten “Challenges” interspersed with more of Romney’s comments from speaking engagements. From here on out, I’ll focus only on the “Challenges” in this document. If others would be willing to read the other sections and comment on them, I’d be very appreciative.
Challege #1 is “Keeping Americans Safe at Home and Abroad”. One full page is dedicated to complaining about the military cuts that occurred after the Cold War. Instead of recognizing the sound reasoning for this, he treats it like it was a mistake (he, of course, blames Clinton despite the fact that congress was Republican at the time). He wants to increase the size of the military by 100,000 troops and increase military spending to 4% GDP! The only reason to want such a large army is to be able to conduct preemptive, foreign wars. His response to this “challenge” is code for “Let’s invade Iran next.” He also wants to consolidate the power of our civilian defense institutions (the CIA, DHS, FBI, etc.) and streamline the chain of command. Presumably, he, as president, would be at the top of this command chain. This is just continuation of Bush’s policy of building an imperial presidency that has already a mockery of the balance of powers set up in the US Constitution.