Mitt Romney!!! part two

Dear Readers,

In case you’re wondering, I still haven’t changed my opinion about Mitt Romney. I think he’s brilliant, brave, responsible, hard working, talented, eloquent, well spoken, well read, good looking, charismatic, faithful, fair, polite, kind, loving, and honest. I love practically everything he says. Actually, I can’t think of anything Mitt Romney has said or done that I don’t like. I agree with him about the military, the economy, social issues, taxes, health care, etc.

Well, sometimes he seems corny. Sometimes he seems like an out of touch old man. I bet he can’t dance very well, and he can’t use slang as well as Obama does, but who cares about street credibility when they’re looking for a President? Some opponents of Mitt Romney might characterize him as a miser who’s only getting involved in government so he and members of his elite billionaires club can hang on to their money, not because he really cares about the common people. I remember during the 2008 campaign, his opponents would often make gibes about how rich Romeny was, and about how much of his personal money Mitt Romney had spent on his own campaign. They would say things like, “I don’t care how many gold bars Mr. Romney drags out of his private coffers to pay for TV ads, he can’t fool the American people.”

But those opponents are sort-of socialists! They want to emphasize class difference. They want to paint anybody with money as the enemy. They want to characterize Romney and people like him as the bourgeois and people like Obama and Sotomayor as the proletariat. Obama is portrayed as a black community organizer in the mean streets of Chicago who was raised by a single mother, and Sotomayor is portrayed as a Latina raised in the Bronx projects. Who could be more genuinely proletariat than those two?

I’m reminded of the AIG bonuses scandal a few months ago. Remember that? Everybody was mad about it, and rightfully so. But the frustrating thing about the AIG bonuses scandal was that everybody was mad at the businesspeople, and not the government. It was as if the media was saying, “Oooo, look at those evil businessmen, sipping martinis at a posh Las Vegas resort, glutting themselves on the labor of the working class! The booze their drinking and the silk suits they’re wearing didn’t come without a cost- those goods the businesspeople are consuming came from the exploited workers of America, they came off the backs of minorities trapped in eternal wage slavery."

But what the media did not emphasize as much was that those AIG bonuses were in the bailout bill that the government passed! So, in essence, the government said, “Here you go, AIG, here’s some money for you from the government. It’s a present from Uncle Sam.” And then AIG people said, “OK, thanks,” and then did what many people do when they get free money from the government- they celebrated.

The media was so bad and people were so angry that the businesspeople of AIG got death threats, and I’m pretty sure a lot of them returned some of the money.

Why wasn’t the public as mad at the government as they were at AIG? Or madder? Why wasn’t the government getting angry letters for giving AIG massive amounts of bailout money? (Surely the government did get some letters and phone calls about the AIG bonuses scandal, but those letters and phone calls weren’t publicized as well.) The government was the real problem with the AIG bonus scandal, in my opinion.

Admittedly, AIG could have been a little more responsible with the bailout money they received, but the government should not have given them the money in the first place. The government should have taken a laissez faire approach the economy, backed off and let the free market system work. If AIG was so irresponsible with money, they would have failed. A few people would have lost their jobs, and a few people would have lost money in the short term, but it would have been better in the long run to let AIG fail.

Things would have been better if the government had established an environment in which the free market capitalist system could flourish. If that type of business-friendly environment was established, other companies would have arisen and done a better job than AIG did. What many conservatives and I are advocating is basically social Darwinism for business. The strong businesses survive, and the weak businesses die. That’s natural. That’s healthy. The way I see it, all the government should do when it comes to the economy is things like provide a common currency, enforce laws, and provide a small amount of regulation for things like hazardous working conditions and child labor laws. But the government shouldn’t be “running the economy” by nationalizing banks and auto companies and such.

OK, back to Mitt Romney, my hero.

I like him so much and I want him to run for President in 2012 and I’ll vote for him, and maybe I’ll even put a Mitt Romney bumper-sticker on my car and on my bicycle.

(I wonder if the high school I work for would be bothered by political bumperstickers being on cars in the faculty parking lot. I wonder if I end up living within a Home Owner’s Association, the HOA people would hassle me for wanting to put a Mitt Romney sign in my front yard. Hmmm…)

But I do think it’s important to put Mitt Romney’s name out there, and that’s why I’d like to have Mitt Romney bumperstickers, posters, T-shirts, Frisbees, etc., to help promulgate Mitt Romney’s name throughout the Earth, and to help him become our Commander in Chief on January 20th, 2013.

It’s important to get Mitt Romney’s name out there because name recognition counts for so much. It’s crazy. I heard about this test that some psychologists did a while back where they got people to participate in a mock election. The psychologists exposed the mock voters to one name a lot, let’s say Jeremy B. Watson, and then they had the participants go into private voting booth. They were given a ballot with a bunch of fake names, and you know who won the mock election? Jeremy B. Watson!

Isn’t that crazy?

The participants in the study knew nothing about any of the candidate’s platforms or experience, but they just voted for the name they recognized. I wish I had a reference for that study. I think it’s real, but I could have just made the whole thing up. (Reality is funny that way, you know?) But regardless of whether the psychological experiment is true or not, it still illustrates a true principle; that is, that people are more comfortable with names they are familiar with.

I think name recognition was a huge factor in the race between John McCain and Mitt Romney during the Republican primaries. John McCain has been around for a long time, so people recognize his name a lot more than Mitt Romney’s. But now that Mitt Romney has one presidential campaign under his belt, and has received a lot of publicity, I think he has a better chance of winning in 2012. And he’s doing all the right things to do a great job in the 2012 presidential campaign. Mitt’s still involved in politics, getting letters to the editor published, writing another book, appearing on TV, touring the country to spread conservative values and trying to get Republicans elected in the 2010 elections.

Oh, wait, there might be one small thing that I don’t agree with Mitt Romney about, and that’s education. I think he’s one of those people who thinks that schools should be run like businesses and I think he’s gung-ho about No Child Left Behind and standardized testing. I, on the other hand, think NCLB and standardized testing can sometimes get bogged down in bureaucracy. Also, education guru Alfie Kohn has some convincing arguments and evidence about how standardized testing can get in the way of real learning.

However, I do endorse the idea of school vouchers. And I like the freedom that charter schools, parochial schools, home schooling, and private schools offer to parents and students. I believe that parents and students should be free to choose what schools they go to. (They should be free to choose their schools within reason, though. Schools shouldn’t be required to go pick up students who live hours away in a different school district, just because a student would prefer going to a different school.)

I firmly believe that raising a child is the parent’s responsibility, and not the state’s responsibility. And maybe my opinions about standardized testing and No Child Left Behind will change when I become a teacher and I work for a while. I don’t know.

But NCLB and standardized testing are the only issues that Mitt Romney and I disagree about. Those are very small issues. Compared to the bigger issues, like national security and the economy, the exact manner in which a public education is administered doesn’t make much of a difference. Isn’t it great that out of all the things that Mitt Romney has done and said, that I’m aware of, there’s only that one teensy-weensy thing we don’t agree on?

Mitt Romney for President!

I really think Romney will run in 2012, and I really think he’ll win. I think the only way he won’t win is if Obama and his propaganda machine persuade the masses into thinking that Obama is doing a wonderful job, and that they will be better off under the Obama administration and a Congress controlled by Democrats than they would be if Mitt Romney was in charge.

I also want to say though, that lately I’ve taken an interest in some of the more radical conservative politicians. For example, I really like Ted Nugent and Sheriff Mack. They’re awesome. And I also sort of like Ron Paul. But those people say and do some extreme things, and it’s probably best for my reputation and for my possible future political career that I distance myself from people like that. Of course I still like Mitt Romney the best, and not just because I think he actually has a shot of becoming President, unlike Ted Nugent, Sheriff Mack and Ron Paul.

I like Mitt the best because when I hear Mitt Romney speak, when I read his words, or even when I look at a picture of Mitt Romney, it restores my faith in politics and my faith in America. He just seems so wholesome, and I trust him. What he says makes sense to me, on a logical and on a spiritual level. I don’t think he’s a slimy politician who takes bribes or who will behave irresponsibly once he gets in power.

I believe that Mitt Romney is the real deal. I believe Mitt Romney is a good member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, and as a fellow member of that church, I know that means a lot. I believe that’s he’s involved in politics for pure reasons. He wants to make the country better. He wants more comfort and prosperity and liberty for all Americans. And Mitt’s incredibly American! He’s stereotypically American! He’s as American as Johnny Appleseed and Paul Bunyan.

It’s hard to have a hero these days who comes from the nasty world of politics, but I think I found a hero, and that hero is named Mitt Romney.

Sincerely,
Telemoonfa