The Republican National Convention is over with overwhelming evidence confirming Barney Franks' aphorism, We're not perfect but they're nuts. Now we have only to see just how imperfect the Democrats can be.
In listening to the various speeches, I conclude that Presidential candidate Romney is a big picture kind of guy, extolling generalities about motherhood and floral arrangements, while uttering not one word about foreign wars and commandering in chief. It seems Paul Ryan is the detail guy and we were entertained by his fact-free diatribe about deficits and government reform that even Fox News found duplicitous on several counts.
And Clint Eastwood summarized the Republican case against the President in the most emblematic manner: performance art whereby an angry old white guy argues with an imaginary Obama.
You would think the Republicans would be pursuing my vote, but they are not. They spoke of nothing that would benefit me over the status quo, in fact, Paul Ryan wants to keep Medicare on its apparently unsustainable path for another ten years, spending at increasing rates, until 2 years before I enter the rolls, and then it gets lopped off by $700 billion. He's not looking for my vote.
The Romney/Ryan ticket is a construction of the political process, with monied interests from a few donors able to finance a candidate with a huge warchest. Nobody else on the Republican side could have possibly competed in this race over the long haul, so we have a ticket that represents a small minority that have wealth and can buy a presidency.
The wealthy have torn up the social contract and the Democrats have been asleep at the wheel when they should have been nurturing our social safety nets. Instead we have endless war, tax cuts, debt, poor wage growth, and GDP fueled only by more borrowing. We don't really do anything anymore.
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