By State Representative, Leon D. Young
Leon D. Young
The eventual outcome of the 2012 presidential election was still unknown at the time when this article was written. But, one thing has been blatantly obvious during this long, meandrous slog for the White House, Mitt Romney and his Republican cohorts will go to any lengths to steal this election.
One has to look no further than the intentional lies and downright deceptions of Romney’s campaign ads during the closing stretch of this race, to understand my point. In a desperate attempt to garner the support of the electorate in Ohio, one of Romney’s TV ads asserted that President Obama’s bailout of the auto industry actually saved jobs for Chinese workers.
Rather than admit the obvious falsehood of this claim, candidate Romney, subsequently, stated at a rally in Ohio that Chrysler, which owns Jeep, “is thinking of moving all production to China .” This created a considerable backlash. A spokesman for General Motors (GM) quickly refuted the ad’s voracity and added this is “politics at its cynical best.”
In truth, Jeep production will not be moved from the United States to China . Moreover, Chrysler has invested more than $1.7 billion to produce the successor of the Jeep Liberty and hire about 1,100 new workers in this country by 2013.
In another false and misleading campaign advertisement, Romney accuses the president of “gutting” the work requirement for individuals receiving government assistance (welfare). The ad, “Can’t Afford Another Term,” attacks an Obama administration directive that allows individual states – which have received a waiver from the Health and Human Services Department – to experiment with changes to their federally-funded welfare- to-work programs.
The intent, according to the directive, is to “challenge states to engage in a new round of innovation that seeks to find more effective mechanisms for helping families succeed in employment.” But it also requires a 20% increase in the number of people moving from welfare to work in exchange for more flexibility granted by the waiver.
Some might argue that these types of candidate “distortions” are merely “part and parcel” of American politics and political campaigns. To which, I respectfully beg to differ. In my view, this proclivity to distort the facts speaks directly to one’s character or, better yet, lack of it.
In 2008, while at a campaign event, then presidential candidate, John McCain, encountered a supporter who referred to Barack Obama as being a Muslim. Rather than simply ignoring this ridiculous rant, McCain took the time to set the record straight, by explaining to this woman that her assertion was utterly false.
This speaks volumes about the character of John McCain. Mitt Romney, on the other hand, is an individual completely void of character – who would never contradict a supporter in defense of an opponent. Mr. Romney lives by one political credo: say and do whatever it takes to get elected.