Why I’m voting for Romney and not Obama.

I think everyone knows I’m fairly opinionated and I do indeed have an opinion on the coming election and this is it. I’m going to vote for Romney and not Obama and I have reasons for both.

Firstly I will start with why I am not voting for Obama, because that will set up why I am voting for Romney a little better.

But even before that: I will explain something about the President. The President make two kinds of choices: Hard ones and really hard ones. Where the options are: Terrible Thing A and Terrible Thing B , or Unsure Thing A or Unsure Thing B. This is simply because if a solution to whatever crazy problem has hit their desk was easy then someone would have solved it before it hit their desk so they could take credit for it. So the President makes bad decisions simply because he cannot make good ones. However, HOWEVER, the President does get to make some moves on his own and make his own direction in some ways. Typically these initiatives are few and far between and depend highly on the makeup of Congress at the time. In summation, in my opinion, I judge the President on those things where he champions “doing something” before what-ever-it-is-he’s-doing-something-about brings down the walls, and then on the decisions he makes when presented with two bad options.

For Obama it comes down to the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act and then the Tax Deficit. In most other things he’s basically continued on down the path that was set for him. The wars continued and pull out plans were followed, pretty much how it had been planned (considering he kept Gates as his Secretary of Defense this should not be shocking). Remember folks, we’re still in Afghanistan. The bailout was started at the very end of the Bush administration and continued unabated during Obama’s administration. The Patriot Act is still in full effect, getting re-approved every year by Congress. Guantanamo Bay is still open and prisoners are still tried there. Change is indeed not something Obama really pulled off, except for that one thing: The health care law. And here’s my problem with the health care law: it did nothing to alleviate the cost of healthcare and instead entrenched the insurance industry making it a mandated part of everyone’s lives. It in fact has done the exact opposite of what it was supposed to do, which was to make healthcare affordable for everyone. Instead, it has just made it so everyone must have insurance or they pay a tax penalty. It ensured the existence of the Insurance Companies as middlemen between you and your healthcare provider for the rest of time, or until the law is repealed or replaced. That to me is stupid. I’m sorry, but it is stupid. I think a much better solution could have been found which was centered around you and your healthcare provider but that was the horse Obama backed. And not only did he back it, but he pretty much blew all of his, and the other Democrat’s in Congress’, political clout and favors to pass it into law. Again, blowing all your political leverage on that law looks pretty stupid from both a “the law is bad” perspective and a “it’s a bad political move”, simply because it resulted in the loss of the House to the Republicans. So again, we come back to stupid. Now I’m not saying Obama is a stupid man, but he made a stupid call and it was too stupid of a call.

The other thing was the Tax Deficit. That blindsided Obama. I’m sorry, but it did. His original budget for that year, the year where the government almost shut down like 10 times cause they kept almost not raising the debt ceiling, was basically the same budget from the year before. The man, or more likely his advisers  for some reason, seemed to have no clue that the massive number of new Republicans in the house were going to push for lowering the deficit. So yeah, again, stupid.

So that’s why I’m not going to vote for Obama.

Now to Romney. Romney is a politician. As a couple people have pointed out his policies during his tenure as Governor of Massachusetts were fairly liberal. He flip-flopped on pretty much all of those policies during his current campaign for the Presidency. He’s also lied while talking, sometimes on camera or in front of a microphone. Well duh. I’m sorry if you don’t understand how Primaries work and if you don’t understand what a candidate has to do to win the Presidency against an incumbent after winning his party’s primary. If you don’t, mainly what you have to do is lie a whole lot. To be honest, Romney hasn’t lied as much as most politicians that have been in his position in the past, simply because he always has a camera on him…always. So yeah, I don’t really care about all that because it’s the same crap from every candidate ever in that position. What I do care about is his performance as governor of Massachusetts. His performance as governor was basically what the people of Massachusetts wanted, which for an elected politician, is a check mark in the good box. Not only that, but he was a Governor for many years, and not a 1 term Senator who never ran anything from an Executive perspective.

So for me the option comes down to this. Obama, who will have to claw and fight with the Republican House to get anything done, and he has already proved that he will blow his political clout on stupid laws and will likely abuse his lame duck status…because all presidents abuse their lame duck status (Clinton was particularly bad about it in my opinion). Or Romney, who will actually be able to work with both side of the aisle, simply because of what he did while he was Governor, which was interestingly similar to the things Obama did while he has been President. His term will likely have vastly more success in passing legislation and in fixing problems than Obama’s last term was or next term would be. And on top of that Romney has proven that he will do what his electorate wants him to do.

And just to be clear, I’m not a huge Romney fan, but when your options are incompetence and marginal ability, you have to take the marginal ability. Just my opinion, but to me the choice is pretty easy to see.

This entry was posted in Rants, Uncle Pat's Rants and tagged , , , . Bookmark the permalink.

One Response to Why I’m voting for Romney and not Obama.

  1. Nojh says:

    The only problem with this decision process is that I can’t support the national republican party at the moment. I just can’t. It is full of the extreme right, who I personally feel will likely run this country into a new civil war. Romney, for all his experience, is the push over guy. He does what the people around him want him to do. He’s proven that to me. And I don’t want the people who are against civil liberties based upon (some) religious doctrine, are for treating large corporations as if they were more important than a human being, and many other views that actually anger me. Romney is a figurehead for his party and it is his party that I can’t support.

Comments are closed.