The Republican National Convention concludes tonight with former Gov. Mitt Romney’s speech officially accepting the Republican nomination for president of the United States. As the convention approached, most pundits agreed he and his surrogates had two missions: reintroduce Romney and get back to the “real issues.”
Reintroducing Romney was never going to be a problem – it’s been going on for 20 years. Lest we forget, Romney the Bain capitalist begat Romney the socially moderate senate candidate; begat Romney the Olympic savior; begat Romney the pro-health care mandate governor; begat Romney the pro-life crusader; begat our current candidate, Mitt-ster Fix-it Romney, future repealer of Obamacare. None of the incarnations are particularly authentic, so frankly I’ll believe what he says tonight no more or less than what he said last week.
Getting back to the “real issues” will, and should, be a tougher sell. The real issues, by the way, are jobs and the economy, incidentally the topics on which Romney polls the best compared to President Obama. The other things in the news, like “forcible rape”, immigration, and same-sex marriage? According to team Romney, those are just “distractions.”
While it may be an upgrade from “wedge issue”, I’ll thank whatever incarnation or Romney is introduced tonight not to consider my freedom to marry a distraction. I think it’s worth some serious focus. Ditto for a woman’s right to control her own reproductive health and the opportunity for DREAMers to continue to contribute to America. The Republican Party seems to agree with me, having deemed these issues important enough to have included planks in their draft platform against same-sex marriage, banning abortion without exceptions for rape and incest and opposing any form of amnesty in favor of self-deportation.
To provide some distance from these less popular stances, Republicans have pointed out that President Obama hasn’t achieved everything in the 2008 Democratic platform, notably the closing of the Guantanamo Bay detention facility and comprehensive immigration reform. That’s true, but there’s a big difference between not being able to achieve your platform goals and pretending you won’t try. President Obama wanted to fulfill those goals, but he was stopped by Democratic infighting and Republican obstruction. Had Congress passed bills on immigration reform, President Obama would have signed them.
Just like a President Romney would sign bills discriminating against the LGBT community or prohibiting abortion and Republicans in Congress will pass them given a chance. In some cases, House Republicans have already passed such resolutions, only to be blocked by the Senate and President Obama.
If Romney really wants an election about the economy, he could achieve it tonight by saying: “To ensure I have a mandate for my fiscal policies, I will continue all of President Obama’s policies on the rights of women, immigrants, and members of the LGBT community.” Unfortunately, that probably wouldn’t convince middle class social conservatives to dump an incumbent president who has presided over 12 straight quarters of GDP growth and 29 months of private sector job growth.
Instead, you’ll probably hear a series of economic statistics, followed by Romney reintroducing himself as Reagan 2012, asking, “Are you better off than you were four years ago?” Since 2009, members of the LGBT community have better protection from hate crimes, the freedom to serve in the military and a rapidly fading Defense of Marriage Act. Those aren’t distractions. They’re tangible results. And they’re an awful lot more than the vague economic plan of a candidate whose party would take it all back. v
