AWKWARD ZOMBIE

People see Romney as a massive asshole.

Rationally, of course he wouldn't try to freeze out a group of his supporters by making sure they couldn't leave a rally.

Emotionally, it seems like something he would do, alright.

I guess I just need to do a little personal research before I buy into that. Admittedly, I don't follow politics that closely, but I don't know the guy personally, so I'm not really in a position to judge his moral character.

It basically means 2 things:

1. Romney has done some pretty assholish things in the past. Things like his 47% speech where he wrote a sizable portion of the voterbase off as "drinking Obama's kool-aid" and not being able to see the truth. He's often characterized by people as a Scrooge-like character, and this seems like something Scrooge would do just because of his indifference to the people who came out to support him.

2. Many people are willing to believe anything that affirms their beliefs, even if it seems ludicrous to other people. If the news came out tomorrow that Obama eats babies, regardless of the credibility of the story and the perceived credibility of the news group that announced that (you'd believe ABC world news before National Inquirer), there will likely be SOME people who will unconditionally believe that story to be true just because they can't stand Obama or want to delegitimize him. This is why people buy into things like the "fake birth certificate" and whether he actually swore on a bible and not a Qu'ran.

The same goes for Romney too. People who can't stand him are more likely to unquestionably believe things like tweets about being forced to stay outside in a rally was part of Romney's evil plan. Because of his track record though, Romney has the added problem of not only pissing off more people who otherwise might not be against him, but also making it harder to tell whether an action is normal for him or not.

Conversely, people FOR either side will try to defend the faults and problems of their sides too. If Romney and Obama both were to be discovered to eat babies (or do something pretty mush universally "bad" like cheddar laundering or fraud), one side would defend the action (usually while condemning the other side) because of some tenuous reason (Romney eats terminally ill babies, Obama eats babies that would be given up to orphanages, Obama's plan for eating babies has a purpose of economic growth rather than Romney's plan of eating for the sake of eating, etc.)

The main point is that some people are dumb and will buy into "facts" that agree with their political/personal beliefs without questioning what really happened, and in this case, a good number of people jumped the gun thinking Romney did this, not only because it seems plausible, given his past, but also because they let their personal feelings cloud their judgement and took the tweets as "fact" even though the people who made the tweets were mistaken and, frankly, not credible sources.

OK, I see what you're saying now.

You definitely raise a good point that people tend to be biased toward their preferred candidate and that it tends to cloud their judgement to the point where far too many people believe anything for anyone that puts the other side down. Heck, I'll admit to being biased. I want Obama out the door come January. But it does bother me that it seems like a lot of people from both parties are getting especially aggressive towards the opposing side. This has been an especially heated election year, probably the most heated I've ever seen.

Quite honestly, I don't care what your political beliefs are, you're going to have your opinion and I'm going to have mine. But this strategy of attacking the opposing candidate over the dumbest things, finding a single hair out of place on the metaphorical head of "the enemy" and using it to make him out to be the scum of the earth, is just getting ridiculous. And that's the point I was trying to make about the tweets, that we're grasping at straws to attack each other at this point, not because of the fact that I prefer Romney(although I don't support him entirely), but because both sides are being complete children about this.

Is it November 7 yet?

As a foreigner, Romney seems completely insane to me.

You are completely entitled to that opinion.

Even here, he's pretty off his rocker for a lot of people.

Generally speaking, when a president is looking to be re-elected, you don't see a strong candidate for the other side, that's the reason we got saddled with Kerry for the Democratic nominee in 2004, and for me, why we have Romney now instead of someone less... Romney. Like McCain (though I doubt he'd be coming back after the 2008 election).

Funnily enough though, Romney was a good candidate for the Republicans in 2008, until Mike Huckabee, knowing he was going down unless he did something, called into question whether Romney's being mormon showed he had "America's values at heart", which absolutely crushed Romney, who ran a fairly decent campaign up until then.

Now, Romney could have been as much of an idiot then, and was planning on running the same political game strategy and whatnot as now, but at least then, it seemed like he had his shit together compared to his opponents, and besides the mormon scare, this election could have happened 4 years ago.

Personally, I don't think the republican party exactly expected him to make it this far. I think they figured that someone, believing this would be an easier year to win than waiting for Obama's second term to end and go after "fresh meat" democrats (which is what some Republicans are undoubtedly planning to do), would come in and beat out all of the people like Gingrich and Santorum, and the 'mormon liability" as some people have referred to Romney. But with Perry shoving his foot down his throat, and all of the expected general incompetence, Romney was basically their best choice.

I'm really actually shocked that someone (especially Gingrich) didn't try pulling the mormon card again, and the election so far has shied away from that fact, not because it's something that reasonably "matters" in this, but because of how much of a deal it's been in American politics (most politicians, especially presidents, have been "acceptable" protestant christians, not catholics or mormons), even back in 2008 (remember the Obama's a Muslim scare?).

It's really a bit odd. Not that I'd expect Obama to run an ad smearing Romney for being a mormon, but I'd figure the news would be on the "controversy" or that SOMEONE would make a big deal out of it.

So in that sense, I'm a bit pleased with this election for not going that way.

All the same though, tomorrow is going to be a nightmare, and the day after will be worse when people react to whichever candidate's losing. Hopefully there won't be any recounts or scandals going on, or there's going to be problems.

Yeah, pretty much the biggest problems Republicans face this year is that we can't all get behind one candidate. Personally, none of our choices greatly appealed to me. I think Obama will probably get most of, if not all the swing states because of that.

I distinctly remember Romney having some rally about coal or coal miners and their jobs and having a group of miners up on the stage with him during the rally. Now the company that the miners work for said that they would not be paid while attending the rally, BUT attendance was mandatory. Now I'm sure Romney and his people were aware of the fact. Any decent person would have pressed that they should be paid, or be allowed to decide if they wanted to attend or not. Heck even attempting to compensate them for taking away their time and pay. It's very similar to what Paul Ryan attempted to do with the dish washing photo op. He wanted to have a "Joe the Plumber" type deal of showcasing that the miners represent the American people and that he wants to represent them. Honestly he didn't do a very good job of that.

Personally, I kinda feel like no matter what, we're gonna have a decent enough president. I mean, I don't like Romney. He's basically this weird, shitty wildcard, nobody knows what he actually wants because he's constantly contradicted himself, he kinda seems to make shit up on the fly. As a person, I really sort of totally hate him and everything he currently says he stands for which may or may not change and I kinda hate that too.

BUUUUUUUTT

On the other hand, he pulled the Winter Olympics of whateverthefuckyearican'tremember out of the trash spectacularly well, the ONE THING he did in Massachusetts (romneycare) was basically the best thing ever, and he's a very successful businessman in general. Yeah I don't really agree with him, but he's not gonna plunge the country into extreme poverty. In fact, he did Romneycare specifically BECAUSE it was the best thing for the state objectively. He didn't put his personal beliefs into it so much as it was him seeing a need and filling it. I can kinda trust that he'd take the same approach to the presidency.

I do like Obama more, and the only reason he's basically done really little is due to the Republican party basically going directly against him with anything he tries to do. If they hadn't reacted like children, Obama might have gotten a lot done. He only got things done near the end here because he had to bully his way through. Which is kinda shitty that he had to do that. He's not had a chance to actually do much, and I feel like people look at the track record and not the reason and say he's shit when really it's not his fault. Not to mention we're actually getting out of the recession now, and such a dramatic change in presidency may* fuck that up.

Either way, I don't feel as if this election is gonna be really important. I mean, Obama V McCain? Yeah that was a big deal. Gore V Bush? Pretty big deal. Obama V Romney? Getting played up, but not that big of a deal.


Still kinda rustled that I fucked up and can't vote though, because you know still state senate and props and shit I no longer have a say in for four years.

*may may may may may may may may may so much may

Honestly though if somebody's going to vote (or would vote if they could) for Romney i'm kind of really disgusted and uncomfortable with them because wow fuck you for being okay with a president who will deny basic rights to several people I care for.

Because Romney might have policies that they agree on more?
I'm not supporting Romney but to say people who are voting republican today disgust you then you're probably gonna be miffed at some adults you know.

Yes I am completely miffed at them.

Hey buddy my mom voted Romney them's fightin' words.

Anyway yeah my mother came in to gloat that she was gonna vote for romney and started talking hard about how obama takes our cheddar and junk. I asked her what Romney's plan was and I did not get a straight answer.
People these days will do anything they're told to.

Luckily I live in Canada so just about everybody I know wouldn't vote Romney, and if somebody I know would, I haven't heard of it yet.