On My Mind

The Next President

August 25th, 2012 by Julie Silver

As an economist by degree, a mother, a Jew, a lesbian and a former Massachusetts resident, it is beyond clear to me that Mitt Romney is in no way a better alternative to what we have in place right now to become the next president.  This is also clear to the GOP as well.  Remember that practically every one of those Republican candidates at one time or another led throughout the primaries and that the party still doesn’t rally around him except as a way to express their disdain for the Trespasser In Chief.

So let’s put aside the fact that Romney was a bully as a kid, and surprise! He’s a bully as an adult.

The next president will likely seat two supreme court justices

The next president must be open-minded, experienced and meet face to face with foreign leaders.

The next president will make decisions on taxes.  Romney has promised to keep in place the Bush tax cuts that have so devastated this country and have made the rich isolated, self-serving and protective of their wealth and unwilling to part with any of it no matter how this country is sinking into financial ruin. Along with two unpaid for wars, extending those tax cuts will continue to lead us faster and further towards economic collapse.  Romney is a flip-flopper and a liar and it’s clear he’s not going to go back on the promise to keep taxes low for the rich and high for the rest of the country. So long, middle class, it’s been good to know ya. And how about a transvaginal ultrasound for the road?

The next president will have to serve as a leader and inspiration to the new, growing majority in this country who are non-white, as well as the majority of non-males, all who have been historically marginalized and demonized by power driven elected officials and their constituents. As a direct result of their racist, sexist, divisive policies, they SUFFER DISPROPORTIONATELY MORE, earn less than their white male counterparts and are rarely represented in this country.

The next President cannot be gaffe prone and brazenly inaccurate in front of people who too often appear to celebrate their own ignorance. He must raise the level of discussion and not blow with the wind as Romney has demonstrated he does with great consistency. The next President must have some kind of a connection to the middle class–which at this point Romney does not–and at the very least APPEAR to care about the poorest and most vulnerable in our midst—which he also does not. He often becomes tongue-tied and laughs nervously around these topics—huge red flags.

As a woman and a lover of Torah, I’m disgusted that the GOP vows to eliminate Planned Parenthood on biblical principles and will, for example, require a woman to carry a fetus conceived through rape to term. There are 31 states in this country that allow visitation and custody arrangements for RAPISTS.  Did the Democrats invent these laws and prohibitions?  Romney has said he’d be “delighted” to reverse Roe v. Wade. The money our government spends on Planned Parenthood is beyond worth the health benefits and economic freedoms it brings to men, women and their families.

The GOP endorses an extremist platform that affirms rape is, at best, inevitable (just relax and enjoy it) and at worst, just another way to become pregnant (the “miracle babies” conceived through rape). They back up this belief by publicly stating as fact the most inaccurate, out of touch and insulting things about women’s bodies and healthcare, throwing gasoline onto the fire of insults and victimization women and girls suffer on a daily basis. Planned Parenthood services, mammograms, abortions, contraception, healthcare must remain available to every woman in this country who has been in one way or another sold down the river, raped, beaten, sexualized, victimized, objectified and shit upon as a result of the insatiability of a few powerful men.  Women who vote for  republicans at this time and with this platform staring at them in the face are being raped along with the rest of us. Of course, legitimately.

And do we need to mention the amount of money we spend on our nationalist endeavors which history will most assuredly show have been complete folly?

Are we kind to the strangers, to the “others” in our midst? The potential VP Ryan has drawn up a budget that doesn’t lower the debt and Romney has called it “marvelous”.  Does it encourage anyone to feed the hungry, help the poor, or house the homeless as the bible these men choose to follow verbatim when it suits them instructs us so lovingly to do?  The middle class can no longer help the poor in this country. If that fact doesn’t cause us heartache, what will?  Policies that help people do for themselves and get government out of the way are ideal. We all want less government, but policies that discourage the middle class from helping, even privately, the poor are criminal.

As a married lesbian, I can’t pay taxes to a Romney/Ryan government that enthusiastically endorses a platform that leaves my wife and me without as much as a civil union and tosses us around like a political football. I have children so I too can become a “mama bear” when it comes to their perceived value in this country and how society is encouraged by its elected representatives to define them.  Will it be with kindness, tolerance and acceptance?  We have evidence that under the GOP it won’t.  They have said and done as much.  Do they think that the numbers of LGBT families that wish to be part of the fabric of this society are shrinking? Or do they possibly believe they can insult, bully, and “pray us away”? They have been doing so and have promised to continue on this hateful path.

The truth is we know almost nothing of what Romney plans to do once he gets the keys to the castle and what we do know about him is beyond frightening. I’m on board with Obama for at least another four years because I agree with him on most issues and because I think he is doing the best he can with this do-nothing congress. In my opinion, Romney is the problem, not the solution. Before Obama took a breath as president, the GOP vowed to make him a one term president and they have played obstruction politics at every opportunity, showing they care more about their power, and position more than they care about the promise of this country and its people. They do not want the president to succeed and they never did.

We are calling out for better, both from and for ourselves, weeping in our exile from prosperity and healing in large part because the richest among us are desperately clinging to life and will do anything to get this half black non-American Muslim out of the white house. It’s personal for sure. But as an educated economist, a believer in science, a woman, a lesbian, a mother, a Jew and a human being whose sole duty on earth is to repair the shattered fragments of this world, lift up the fallen and free the captive, I will not rest until Obama can get back to his good work and Mitt Romney and his perfectly lovely wife go quietly back to wherever they came from.  I don’t need to see a birth certificate to prove where that is.  Just go back there.