Wednesday, October 10, 2012
Classless
Romney uses the death of a Navy Seal to promote his presidential candidacy, against the wishes of Glen Doherty's family.
Classless.
"On Tuesday, Romney spoke to supporters in Iowa, recalling a chance encounter with a former Navy SEAL while mistakenly attending a Christmas party in San Diego a few years ago.
' I met some remarkable people, one of whom was a former Navy SEAL,' Romney said. 'I just learned a few days ago that he was one of the two former Navy SEALs killed in Benghazi. It broke my heart.'
Romney didn't directly provide Doherty's name, but his campaign later confirmed his identity. He was one of four Americans, including U.S. Ambassador Christopher Stevens, killed during a violent assault on the consulate in Benghazi last month.
Boston's WHDH later reached out to Doherty's mother, Barbara, to get her reaction to Romney's campaign trail anecdote.
"I don't trust Romney. He shouldn't make my son's death part of his political agenda," she told WHDH. "It's wrong to use these brave young men, who wanted freedom for all, to degrade Obama.”
Doherty similarly decried the politicization of her son's death in an interview with the Boston Herald last month.
Glen Doherty's friend, Elf Ellefsen, also spoke with Seattle's KIRO, expressing similar disagreement with Romney's mention of his friend's death.
According to Ellefsen, Doherty found his exchange with Romney to be "insincere and stale."
"Mitt Romney approached him ultimately four times, using this private gathering as a political venture to further his image," Ellefsen told KIRO. "He kept introducing himself as Mitt Romney, a political figure. The same introduction, the same opening line ... [Doherty] said it was pathetic and comical to have the same person come up to you within only a half hour, have this person reintroduce himself to you, having absolutely no idea whatsoever that he just did this 20 minutes ago, and did not even recognize Glen's face."
Romney had again made mention of his meeting with Doherty in the wake of these reports on Wednesday during a town hall event in Ohio."
Makes me throw up a little bit in my mouth.
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6 comments:
No sense of shame. No character.
Some people have a personality deficit that makes it impossible for them to feel genuine sympathy, much less empathy, for those outside a small circle of family and friends. Some even have the deficit within their circle.
Sometimes, when they realize doing so is expected and appropriate, people with this deficit will go through the motions for the sake of appearance. It's not heartfelt because there's no real connection inside them.
Ronald Reagan had this deficit. He could be kind and thoughtful to those around him. He could turn around and be cold and dismissive toward people outside his circle who were hurting terribly. I doubt Reagan ever once in his life looked at a person of a different race or ethnic background who was being discriminated against and said, or felt, "There but for the grace of God go I." I doubt he ever felt genuine remorse about racial bigotry or compassion for people fighting for their civil rights. I doubt Reagan hated them; he simply lacked the capacity to connect with them or feel the frustration and sense of outrage at unreasoning injustice that they felt.
Romney is that way too. His words and deeds scream it. I doubt he's ever had even a momentary twinge of conscience about the possibility some young guy might've been badly injured or killed in Vietnam because privileged, well-connected Mitt Romney could and did opt out of serving in the military with college deferments and an interlude as a missionary in Paris. It wouldn't occur to him to feel anything.
I don't think Romney can relate to some female stranger born into a troubled family in a rough neighborhood who's just been beaten and raped. Same goes for the parents of a soldier killed in the unnecessary Iraq war. He can easily rationalize their situation while staying neatly and icily removed from it personally.
A candidate without Romney's emotional deficit, if he really cared about and admired Doherty, would've called the soldier's parents to express his sorrow and sympathy. If he had wanted to mention their son in his stump speech, he would've asked the parents if they would be comfortable with that. I'm sure that thoughtfulness, that connecting personally with the Dohertys, never occurred to Romney.
You can say it's just selfishness, and that's true as far as it goes. But beyond selfishness, Romney has a hole in his soul. Things like trying to grab some glory-by-association in the aftermath of the death of a soldier acquaintance is just a means to an end for Romney. That it could be hurtful to and resented by the soldier's parents is beyond him. For that, he's as much to be pitied as to be condemned.
Typical Republiscums.
Using the soldier to push their fake patriotism. Bush was great at that.
"Obama lied, people died."
That's all you conservatives have said and done for the past 3 1/2 years: taken the slogans against and criticism of "The President the Republicans Will Never Name," and fling it at Mr. Obama.
You want to do a body count on the people who died during Dubya's 8 years in office--starting with the 3,000+ Americans who lost their lives on 9/11 and then on to Bush's Excellent Adventures in Iraq and Afghanistan--counting Americans, Iraqis, and Afghanis?
This is nothing more than pointing the finger away from 8 years of disaster and trying to pin it on the guy who inherited it from a political party out to sabotage him and the Democrats every chance they got--even to the detriment of the American people.
BTW, does the name Pat Tillman sound familiar? The Republican Bush administration used his death to promote its illegal war in Iraq.
Your link is an example of bureacratic red tap and bungling, not exactly the same thing, even if you try to make it so.
The Obama administration did not use Mr. Smith to further its campaign or anything else.
Come back when you have something more than schoolyard Nyah! Nyah! Nyah! Please.
Well Republicans would know a lot about that, wouldn't they.
Bush's "mushroom cloud" (proven) lie led to over 100,000 deaths.
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