With his "47 percent" scandal taking a serious toll on his campaign, Mitt Romney is now investing quite a bit of effort into demonstrating empathy. It's evident in his new, minute-long campaign ad -- the one in which he talks directly into the camera and refers to the middle class as "them" instead of "you" -- and it was clear in an interview with NBC News late yesterday.
For those who can't watch clips online, Romney said, "Don't forget, I got everybody in my state insured. One hundred percent of the kids in our state had health insurance. I don't think there's anything that shows more empathy and care about the people of this country than that kind of record."
Hmm. For two years, Romney has gone to almost-comical lengths to avoid mentioning his Massachusetts health-care reform law -- as of this morning, the health-care page on his website still includes zero references to his only meaningful accomplishment in public office -- but now that there's a video in which Romney is seen trashing half the population as lazy parasites, "Romneycare" is suddenly relevant again.
But the new argument is not without flaw. Romney's Massachusetts law is, the argument goes, proof of empathy and concern for families. But this is the same Romney that's eager to destroy the Affordable Care Act -- which was modeled after Romney's law -- which would in turn take coverage and benefits away from millions of working families.
This is an issue Romney seems to struggle to understand, but there's nothing compassionate about arguing in effect, "That great thing I did as governor? Yeah, I promise to do the opposite as president."
Indeed, the argument really falls apart when one realizes that Romney's comments to NBC News came immediately after an event in which the Republican candidate condemned "Obamacare" as an example of everything that's wrong with President Obama's vision of government.
Romney has said more than once he considered his state law a model for the nation, and Obama took him up on the idea. If elected, Romney intends to undo what he said he wanted to do, while pointing to the law he no longer wants to emulate as proof of his "empathy."
Is he being empathetic or just pathetic?
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Willard has had one JOB for 6 years..His pursuit of the Presidency!!!
..And just 40 days out he has DISCOVERED more than the 1%....He is neither compassionate nor conservative..But a vacuous liar of colossal ego maniacal proportions !!!! Hollow to the core!
Not only a job but I bet he has a few blisters on his rear from all those one -eighties he keeps doing.
Giving the keys to the kingdom to a sociopath is a fools game. Unfortunately we have an abundance of fools from the trickle-down ignorance preached at home and from the pulpits. That these people are so blind they vote against their own future, is a sign from their god that it is time for another flood.
I know that it seems unlikely right now, but at some point most of these people are going to figure out that they've been played by the Republican Party. When that happens, the GOP will need all the Heavenly assistance it can get.
I wish you were right mpguy, but 300+ years of Southern history, of the idiots doubling, then tripling, then quadrupling down on support for Ol' Massa leaves some room for doubt of your optimism.
and the beat goes on...
One would think that if you were running for president for nearly a decade, you'd be not just well-informed, but have developed consistent themes for what the government should and should not do. He has gone all this time without doing basic homework. Perhaps, because of his privileged background, he has been able to get away with this kind of mental laziness. How did he actually get two degrees from Harvard? Really.
$$$$$$$$$$$
Did he actually get two degrees from Harvard? Show us the transcripts Willard!
I have done more homework for a first round job interview than Mitt has done on his own beliefs & campaign!
I think Romneycare proves that he is generous...when it is politically advantageous to be so.
His tithing to the church proves he's generous...when he's expected to be lest he get excommunicated from his church.
He does the right thing...WHEN HE HAS TO. Not because he wants to, but because he gets something else out of it, and that something else is not a warm fuzzy feeling, nor is it admission into Heaven.
Romney is all calculation, no compassion. The fact that once in while he calculates that he does something compassionate is not indicative that he's a compassionate fellow.
At the risk of invoking Godwin's law, there's an old saying: "Even Hitler had a dog."
For all of Hitler's faults and general evil, I haven't heard that he mistreated his dog.
I have noticed this as well. Plus, the stories you hear of his compassion and generosity all involve people he knows -- people in his church, people he works with, family members. But if he has no personal connection to someone, he can't seem to relate at all.
Well this isnt a matter of being kind. Romneycare was a money decision; keeping people out of the expensive emergency rooms which drives up hospital care costs for insurance companies. Insuring them all sounds kind, but it is the only way to get something like that to work, to drive costs down. The side effect was healthcare for all.
Often you only hear about a celebrated persons charitable side on their passing . Frank Sinatra was not someone who struck a hair-shirt piety , but was devoted to being an effective anonymous giving human . There is something a bit saccharine about talking about ones self same sweetness .
It would be interesting to hear from people who have been on the receiving end of his "generosity."
True generosity isn't transactional. It's unconditional, and doesn't involve creating an obligation or some kind of advantage over someone else. It also doesn't stem from the giver's desire to feel better about oneself or to demonstrate how much better he/she is than the recipient.
That's why I'd like to know how these people felt after being the object of Mitt's actions.
Contributions to the Mormon church are not charity because it is used for missionary work, buildings and so on. There is no charity going on in the traditional sense. Bill Maher has made this point many times.
If you don't count testing the potency of the suicide capsules on Blondi, then no he didn't.
What Romney did with health care in Massachusetts was not about empathy for the uninsured but more like, if you can afford to pay, then you should be paying and not have others pay your way.
Today, he's stuck in a box on the far right with no way to get out. He's going to loose.
What bothered me most about his statement to NBC yesterday was that it didn't mesh with what I've read about what spurred him to tackle healthcare reform as Governor. He didn't run for office with that as a goal. He wasn't inspired to do it because someone was denied necessary healthcare. No, as I remember from reading some in-depth profiles from when he was Govenor, one of his business friends mentioned the problems arising for hospitals because so many people were uninsured. Romney didn't latch on to the issue because of empathy for citizens, but because it was a problem for businesses, and it was the kind of problem he liked to solve.
Ted Kennedy
Being compassionate, I am offering to donate another anchor to Mitt's sinking yacht.
The election process has fundamentally changed and Mr. Romney is far behind the times.
In the past- actually not too long ago- you could deliver specific messages to specific groups and be reasonably assured that, outside of a few easily dismissed reporters, the two wouldn't meet.
Now with twitter, video cameras in cell phones, social media and those pesky inter-tube things what you say to one group now carries over to everybody else.
And Mr. Romney just hasn't caught on to that.
Hard to win running a 20th century campaign strategy in a 21st century reality.
Frankly, I'm waiting for the guy to come out finally for Single Payer. It's his only chance.
that wouldn't surprise me. I have always been for single payer and thought that was the blown part of the affordable care act.
It's all about givers and takers.
In Massachusetts, Mitt could satisfy his business friends by eliminating the problem of uncompensated care in the ER. And satisfy liberals by establishing coverage for everyone. That made him a moderate in a left-leaning state.
But in the country as a whole, the ACA forces people in "taker" states (see the red states on political maps) to buy their own dadgum insurance if they can afford it. That's why they hate it. Despite all their noise about self-reliance, they want to not pay for insurance and then get free health care at the ER (gummint-paid) when they need it.
And these are the people--the red-state "takers"--that Mitt had to appeal to in order to get the nomination and his campaign funds. And that's who he's talking to when he says he will kill the ACA.
Can Romey open his mouth with lying through his teeth? Romney now seems ready to take 100% credit for the MA health reform law, when as governor, he vetoed eight provisions that were important to implementing to the law (and which were thankfully overridden by the Democratic legislature). There's always an asterisk* when it comes to Romney.
I am at a loss to recall any instance whereby a prominent politician completely disavowls (depending on the week and which way the political wind is blowing) their single most crowning achievement in their career march to the White House. A total flip-flop.
If there is such a person, please remind me.
Amazing isn't it! The most important thing he has ever done and probably will ever do and he denies it.
Apologies that my comment relates to a different TRMS topic, but I can find no other way to share feedback about the final clip on the Sept 25 show "America suffers for Romney's failure to engage Obama on drones."
I have been waiting for Rachel to address this horrific issue of Obama's policy while giving it the kind of attention and excellent context she gives to so many issues that reveal the corruption of the Republican Party. It is so disappointing that even though Rachel describes Obama's policy as "hair raising" and briefly gives some of the facts of what Obama is doing, the clear frame of this piece is how Romney is failing America.
I know Rachel follows Glen Greenwald's work from Salon, and now at the Guardian, and I assume that she has seen his recent analysis of the same new study from the NYU School of Law and Stanford University Law School that she cites in her clip. I urge everyone to go to this link: http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2012/sep/25/study-obama-drone-deaths to read his analysis of what Obama's policy on drones is, how clearly immoral it is, and the clear danger it poses - not just to those it kills and terrorizes - but also to the US in terms of feeding the kind of blow-back that progressives used to talk about when Bush-Cheny were leading the violence against Muslim countries.
Just one example Greenwald highlights in the report is its confirmation that US drones have been used for secondary strikes -- meaning targeting those going to rescue the injured, and those attending funerals. Greenwald includes this quote from the study, "
"Secondary strikes have discouraged average civilians from coming to one another's rescue, and even inhibited the provision of emergency medical assistance from humanitarian workers."
Again, I urge followers of TRMS to follow the link to Greenwald's analysis of this document and Obama's policy.
Rachel Maddow regularly offers her viewers some of the best analysis can context for stories that have to do with challenging the deep corruption of the Republican party. But to borrow her frame, America suffers when she almost only reserves her incisive analysis to reveal how broken the Republican Party is in the lead up to this election.
Rachel reveals that she is aware of the danger of Obama's policy in this story about drones, but can we really doubt that if it were Bush or Romney's policy instead of Obama's that this story would receive the same level of analysis and context?
I really hope that you read this little comment Rachel, and that you read Greenwald's piece carefully and that you recognize that, although, like you I would rather Obama wins' this election, failing to alert the country to what Obama has done in foreign policy is a dangerous game.
As Greenwald often asks, even if you believe that Obama is a good man and therefore won't abuse the power he has explicitly taken to kill anyone he deems to be a terrorist without need to supply evidence for that designation, progressives need to understand that this policy will outlast Obama. If we don't want the next Bush/Cheney-like Republican administration to have this power, we have to protest this power now. We lose the ability to challenge it later, if we said it was OK for our guy.
I sincerely hope Rachel Maddow will consider inviting Greenwald on her show again and give this issue the deep and excellent analysis she does to other topics that challenge Republicans.
+1 for the truth about drones.
Also, how about a report about the Chris Hedges lawsuit against the Obama administration and the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA).
I know the election is important. But these are important topics that need more press.
I want a Romney t-shirt that says 'so many poor, so little spit'
The DNC rebuttal using Romney's own words is more effective. Romney lost what little credibility he had, he can't get it back.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZnR_BcvkuzY&feature=player_embedded
Mitt Romney released a new ad to try and recover after dismissing half of America, but Mitt Romney's words speak for themselves
Mitt Romney: Those People
This becomes confusing.... Mr. Romney claims his MA Health Care Law demonstrates his compassion, but believes it should not be a federal law and each state should decide. Then he attacks President Obama for allowing states to decide how to run the welfare/work requirements (which came about due to requests by individual state governors).
As some commenters above cite the possible less than compassionate reasoning behind his MA Health care law, I think that Mr. Romney hasn't really got a clue of what compassion means when it comes people outside his family, friends and business associates....
Compassion - The ability to be rewarded for something you hold in disdain
The rain from Bain falls mainly on the Bainintes
And he is promising to eliminate a virtually identical plan at the national level.
Very empathetic indeed.
Worst candidate ever.
Well not only did he do that but he said, as presicent, he would repeal AND replace obamacare. So if should be taken care of at the state level, as a federal official, why would you replace it?
"Even Hitler had a dog." And he didn't make him ride on the roof!
I think the story of the Romney campaign's failure should be titled "Seamus' revenge."
Empathy? If I remember from the Sotomayor confirmation hearings, empathy is a liberal wuss trait. Shake-shake-shake that Etch-a-Sketch.
Romney is just all over the place. He's taken every position on just about every issue and spends all of his time reacting to attacks from the president's campaign. Only hours after insisting he'll repeal Obamacare, he says he only wants to "improve" it. All the back and forth has to make voters wonder what does this man really think? Romney is running a HORRIBLE campaign, the worst I've ever seen. Why would he expect voters to believe his presidency wouldn't be the same?
If all of you get your wish of 4 more years- remember the election day forever. You will be personally responsible for changing the face of America forever. With spending out of control and no end in site, we will go bankrupt. It is a mathematical certainty. Our interest on our debt is already 20% of our GDP. It will only get worse under this president. If this historical spending doesn't stop we are all going to see a different America. Doesn't that scare you or are you in denial about our problems.
Ah thank you, I was waiting for the daily visit of one of you idiots to come over and pee on the fire hydrants. Thanks for the demonstration of how stupid stupid has to be to be one of you dimwitted morons. Oh, and by the way, none of your "facts" are, you know, actual facts. You need to spend less time with Limpdick and more time with Google.
Denial?? Black pot...meet black kettle!!!!!!!!!!!
DittoheadNation...please choke on those fat brown turds you call cigars!
Rush already has his about half way down his gullet...should be mixing with the Oxy any moment now.....
Then he can whine some more about all the persecution that the Right faces every single day....WAAA Boohooohooo he needs his blanky....
While walking above others it is common to occasionally get tripped up by those too far beneath you to be bothered with?
Be nice to people on your way up because you meet them on your way down - Jimmy Durante
TCinLA- liberals are suppose to have bleeding hearts right? Nice rebuttal. All I can tell you is to wait and see.
hey,you can tell he's mr empathy, 'cause his shirt's unbuttoned at the collar and he's not wearing a tie