The left still doesn't get it!

Michael Tomasky writes for The Daily Beast, and his egregiously pro-Obama point of view is about as extreme as they come. And a column he wrote dated Monday entitled “Get It Done, Mr. President!” (also appearing in Newsweek really shows how deceived the pro-Obama left really is. They formed an image of Mitt Romney that they just can't shake, despite the fact that the American people have seen that the image they have been trying to put over on us is simply wrong. For example, in speaking of the Denver debate that Obama blew so gloriously, Tomasky refers to Romney as “reversing many key positions without Obama ever calling him on it.” But in fact, Romney was not reversing his key positions — what was the case is that Obama had tried to make us believe Romney had taken certain positions, against the truth. This business of the “$5 trillion tax cut,” for example, just was never a Romney proposal, but in fact a Democratic think tank's take on Romney's proposed tax policy, assuming a part of it went through but not the whole. So when Obama tried to make the claim that Romney had proposed such a plan, Romney truly and accurately said he never had done so, yet Obama repeated this claim three more times after Romney corrected him the first time — and Romney had to correct him again and again! So the one time that Obama tried to “call him on” a supposed “reversal,” he failed because it was not really a reversal at all! So much for “reversing many key positions without Obama ever calling him on it.”

The thing that amazes me is that these people actually believe that Romney has called for the things they accuse him of calling for. If they ever read what Romney has said, rather than their own interpretations of what he said, perhaps they might figure out the truth.

But then, I want them to fall for their own self-deceptions. That way, they will not be able to make a believable case to the American people, who ever since that Denver debate have come to see Romney as what he is: an honest and honorable man, far more of both than the President is, and more worthy of the Presidency than the man who has that position now. And when Barack Obama skulks back home to Chicago on January 20th, the country will be in the hands, for the first time in years, of a capable man in the White House.

Probably the best reason to support Romney

Much of the reason I've been supporting Mitt Romney for the Presidency is a negative one — that the alternative is Barack Obama, who is one of the worst presidents this country has seen. Only Jimmy Carter, of those presidents whose terms of office have been within my lifetime, has been worse, I believe. But the best reason to support Romney is a positive one. He can unite people of both parties to forge a consensus.

George W. Bush said he was “a uniter, not a divider,” but as Governor of Texas, the Democrats he had worked with were conservative enough that he was unprepared to find, when he came to Washington, that the Democrats there were of such a different stripe that he was not able to find common ground with them. President Obama used different words, but in his 2004 keynote at the Democratic convention, when he said “I say to them tonight, there is not a liberal America and a conservative America — there is the United States of America,” he seemed to offer to many the promise of uniting us. However, as President he has not governed in a way consistent with this rhetoric. He has pushed through a healthcare bill with no support from a single Republican Senator, and only one Republican vote in the House of Representatives. He has made “recess appointments” when the Senate has just broken for a weekend, so he would not get them rejected in the Senate. He has done exactly the opposite of what a unifying, consensus-building President would be expected to do.

By contrast, we have the record of Mitt Romney as Governor of Massachusetts — a state which, unlike George W. Bush's Texas, has Democrats who are as liberal as any in the country, and yet where, facing an 87% Democratic legislature, he managed to get substantial parts of his program enacted. The Des Moines Register, which has endorsed Democrats in most recent elections (in fact, has endorsed only one Republican from 1964 to 2008) and endorsed Obama in 2008, endorsed Mitt Romney, saying: “Romney succeeded as governor in Massachusetts where he faced Democratic majorities in the legislature. If elected, he would have an opportunity to renew the effort.” As Emily Miller of The Washington Times points out,

President Obama has burned bridges by ramming through legislation like the stimulus and Obamacare without bothering to consult Republicans. That’s not how Mr. Romney would operate. “I know there are good Democrats who love America just like we do,” he told supporters in Celina, Ohio, Sunday. “I want to reach across the aisle to them, work together, put the interests of the people ahead of the politicians.”

He noted that as a GOP governor of a deep blue state, he worked with a legislature that was 87 percent Democrat. He still managed to decrease spending and cut taxes 19 times. “We were able to balance our budget. The $3 billion budget gap in our first year became a $2 billion rainy day fund,” Mr. Romney explained to cheering crowds. “We did that together, Republicans and Democrats. And we’ve got to do that in Washington.”

The Obama campaign is trying its best to deny this bipartisan record. “The American people can’t trust a word Mitt Romney says, especially when he claims he’d work across the aisle as president,” said campaign spokesman Danny Kanner. “As governor, he refused to work with Democrats in the legislature.”

Not so, according to the Bay State’s former Democratic House majority leader. “The governor did work with the legislature,” James Vallee told The Washington Times in an interview Monday. “There were issues of difference, but I had a very productive relationship with the Romney administration. They reached out to legislatures and did an effective job working with us.”

Mr. Vallee, who left the legislature in June and is now a lawyer at Nixon, Peabody, believes Mr. Romney would be most effective with a bipartisan cabinet and team. “If he says he’s going to reach across the aisle, I think he will,” he said.

That's the best reason to support Mitt Romney for the Presidency this year.