Mitt's closing argument: Vote for me or deluded wingnuts will hold their breath until they turn blue
by digby
Via TPM:
Mitt Romney said Friday that if President OBama is re-elected, he still won't be able to work with Congress. He has ignored them, attacked them, blamed them. The debt ceiling will come up again, and shutdown and default will be threatened, chilling the economy. The President was right when he said he can't change Washington from the inside. In this case, you can take him at his word.
So, just like the delicate Wall Street financiers, the poor little GOP Honeybooboos launched their epic, unprecedented obstruction because Obama was a great big meanie. I say give them all a bottle and send them to bed.
Paul Krugman points out that the right is basically blackmailing the American public with more of the same. If Obama wins another term, they can't be respnsible for the purely emotional reaction that will follow:
I’ve seen a growing number of Romney supporters making a quite different argument. Vote for Mr. Romney, they say, because if he loses, Republicans will destroy the economy.
O.K., they don’t quite put it that way. The argument is phrased in terms of “partisan gridlock,” as if both parties were equally extreme. But they aren’t. This is, in reality, all about appeasing the hard men of the Republican Party.
David Frum in endorsing Romney says the same thing. Only Mitt can hold back the barbarians:
The question over his head is not a question about him at all. It's a question about his party — and that question is the same whether Romney wins or loses. The congressional Republicans have shown themselves a destructive and irrational force in American politics. But we won't reform the congressional GOP by re-electing President Obama. If anything, an Obama re-election will not only aggravate the extremism of the congressional GOP, but also empower them: an Obama re-election raises the odds in favor of big sixth-year sweep for the congressional GOP — and very possibly a seventh-year impeachment. A Romney election will at least discourage the congressional GOP from deliberately pushing the US into recession in 2013. Added bonus: a Romney presidency likely means that the congressional GOP will lose seats in 2014, as they deserve.
This has to be one of the most cynical political arguments I've ever seen. But it's the most honest one they've put forward in this election.
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