Under ordinary circumstances, I do not become involved in Republican politics at any level.  However in this year of 2011, the entertainment value of the Republican primary season is totally compelling.  Among other things, there is Herman Cain who strikes me as a professional comedian.  Cain is capable of stating a position and contradicting it before the sentence is put to rest with a period.
On the other hand, Rick Perry, the Governor of the great state of Texas, is troubled by having debates and recently he forgot the third item in a list of three agencies that he would do away with once he became President.  There is Mrs. Bachmann, the representative from northern Minnesota, who seems to be invited to the debates as a matter of courtesy and also as a matter of self entertainment.  Then there is the former senator from Pennsylvania named Rick Santorum, who was defeated a few years ago for retaining his job in the Senate, and is invited to the debates, again largely as a matter of courtesy.  Finally, there is John Huntsman, the former Governor of Utah as well as the former Ambassador to China, who to my mind makes the most sense of any of them.  But he is largely ignored.  So that brings us to Mitt Romney, whose given name is Willard.
Mitt is the former Governor of the great state of Massachusetts.  During his time there, Mitt Romney approved universal health care for the people of the state of Massachusetts.  It has been in effect for four or five years and has largely drawn praise.  As a matter of fact, Barack Obama more or less copied the Massachusetts plan, which was authored in large part by Mitt Romney.  I should think that this is a matter calling for great praise, that a Democrat is copying a proposal for universal health care produced by a Republican.  But that is not the case.
If you are attuned to the debates taking place among the Republican contenders for the Presidency, you must now be aware that Romney has been accused of flip flopping.  Things that he was ardently in favor of have now become anathema to him, starting with his own health care proposal.  Romney now says that his first act if he gains the Presidency will be to repeal universal health care.  I blame this largely on the effects of Mr. Romney’s terrible slump.  When a baseball player fails to get a hit for several times at bat, we ordinarily term that “a slump.”  The same thing has happened to Mr. Romney, which is marked not only by his flip flops but also by any attempt to rally the Republican troops behind his cause.  But I am an outsider here.  I merely observe the debates and the progress of the primary season on the Republican side with great amusement.
In the elections that took place in November of this year, Mr. Romney suffered two horrendous mistakes.  In the first place, Mr. Romney backed the Governor of Ohio, John Kasich, in his attempt to strip bargaining rights for union workers in that state.   The proposition was that state workers, nurses, firemen, policemen, et al. would have no say – no say – in determining their working conditions.  This is one of the proposals put forward by the Governor of Ohio that Mitt Romney backed 110%.  Well, the day after the election results were determined, it is clear that the citizens of the state of Ohio don’t wish for any such thing to happen.  That proposal had a resounding defeat.  So Mr. Romney’s slump continues unabated.
Now in a second case in point which contributes to Romney’s slump, there was a ballot measure in Mississippi which I have described in an earlier essay in this mailing.  Essentially it would establish the new principle that if any fertilized egg, the process of human conception, were destroyed, it would be the equal of murder.  This is serious business.  In effect, it would establish a new cruel principle that any abortion would be the equal of murder.   When the votes were counted in the recent elections, the proposition to amend the state constitution lost by a vote of 58 to 42%.  Even the residents of Mississippi, who are not distinguished by their brilliance, saw through this and rejected it.
But not Mitt Romney.   The day before the vote was taken, Mitt Romney told the press that he was for it, “absolutely.”  I tend to rest my case when the citizens of Mississippi are smarter than Mitt Romney.  And this was in a Republican primary.  When the great former Governor of Massachusetts endorses a proposition “absolutely” and it meets with defeat at the hands of the Mississippi voters, we know that Romney is in one hell of a slump.
My own view, which is widely known to readers of Ezra’s Essays, is that a woman should at all times retain control over her body.  It seems to me that religious and political authorities pile on women simply because they are weaker and have less earning power.  On top of that, they bear the children.  In summary, I hold with the view that every woman has the right to control her body.  And that the efforts of politicians in this case to declare a fertilized egg that is aborted as murder is nuts.  A similar view is held with religious authorities, some of whom claim to achieve superior status by their celibacy.  When their rulings conflict with my view that a woman has complete control over her body, I hold with my view.
Well, as you can see, Mitt Romney’s slump left him in a tie with the former pizza king, Herman Cain, for the leadership in the Republican sweepstakes to challenge the President.  My guess is that Mr. Cain had his moment in the sun and will soon fade from view.  All of this leaves Mitt Romney, flip flopper par excellence, at the head of the pack.  If, as now seems probable, sometime in the coming year Mr. Romney succeeds to the role of challenging the President, I will follow that race with great interest.  But in the meantime, I am following the Republican primaries, particularly the debates, with great interest because of their entertainment value.
If Romney eventually does become the Republican challenger to Barack Obama, I will be delighted to hear Willard Romney why he said “absolutely” on the question of whether a murder warrant ought to be issued for every abortion in the great state of Mississippi.  That will be a very interesting development and I am awaiting it with bated breath.
 
E. E. CARR
November 14, 2011
Essay 597
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Kevin’s commentaries:
You know, I kinda miss the circus that was the Republican primaries. A little bit. In any event it is clear that he is still slumping, and after being thoroughly beaten in 2012 I doubt he will be seeking reelection in 2016.  The 47% thing was really the nail in that coffin, but it shouldn’t have been. The moment he started declaring his own policies as awful should have been a huge red flag for everyone. It all turned out okay, though.