Letters to the Editor
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One word
DOUCHEBAG.
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It's not so much that his sons aren't serving.
I'm career air force but have told my teenage sons the only uniformed services they are allowed to join are coast guard, public health service, or NOAA...at least until somebody besides a neocon is in the whitehouse at which point I'd be honored to swear them in.
But for Romney, or anyother chickenhawk candidate, to make a statement like this in response to that question shows he is completely bereft of shame or irony.
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These things being equal....
Does that mean any Romney supporters in Iraq are now allowed to come home, as long as they ride around Iowa for his campaign?
I see a sudden burst of support for Romney among our troops in the immediate future!
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it would have been better if Romney had said
that one of his sons was a fire fighter, a paramedic or a cop
as it is, Romney is beginning to sound like a lightweight version of George W. Bush
And That Is Not A Compliment!
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Just wondering . . .
Romney's kids deserve a pass on this - Romney took his cue from President Feeb, who used his decision to work on a political campaign to excuse both his loss of flight clearance for failure to take a physical and his walking away from the Air National Guard. If the man trying to be Commander-in-Chief is allowed to rely on this excuse, can we really withhold it from a candidate's **kids**?
On a completely different subject, and not that it would matter to Conservatists, but out of curiosity is anyone ever going to ask Mitt Romney about the racist passages in the Book of Mormon or the history (until recently) of rascism being part of the Church dogma?
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wait a minute!
Not long ago he he explained how his sons had performed service in their own right by traveling around badgering unsuspecting victims about thier religion.
What's next, they're serving their country by having sex and producing the soldiers of tomorrow?
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Just when I think Romney couldn't sound any dumber...
He raises the bar.
I did not believe there was any headroom left for this, but I am ready to fault myself for a lack of imagination.
We are living in desperate times.
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And yet, the military still votes largely Republican
You'd think that, by now, the military vote would constitute low-hanging fruit for any Democratic candidate. But it's not. And you want to know why? Because the progressives in this country still won't reach out to servicemembers and vets, have a meaningful dialogue with them, and really hear what they have to say. While left-wing dialogue about the military has undoubtedly improved since the Vietnam era (and believe me, there are still a LOT of hard feelings over that within the ranks), and people on the left are starting to show genuine sympathy for servicemembers with inadequate body armor, vets with inadequate health care, from what I've seen just on the Salon.com discussion boards, the left wing still largely views the military and its members in largely one-dimensional terms. I still hear condescending remarks from my friends like, "Oh, I could never have succeeded in the military, I don't take directions well." You still see half-baked analyses from otherwise very competent bloggers when it comes to military issues. And to the extent Democrats paint servicemembers and veterans as "victims" of an incompetent administration, a failed health care system, social inequality, that tends to really rankle the vets and leave them cold, because they don't buy into the cult of victimhood nor do they like to consider themselves victims. This is part of the warrior ethos and it dies hard.
This is a source of neverending frustration for me as a former Army officer. I was involved with "DC Veterans for Kerry" during the 2004 elections, and virtually everyone in the group was by the end of it discouraged or even angered by the way the Democratic party failed utterly to make full use of our talents. Even with a combat vet like Kerry running, the Democratic leadership still thought of us as little more than an opportunity for a photo op. Well, we're not just a bunch of old men standing around in goofy American Legion garrison caps waiting to get our pictures taken. We're a thoughtful and experienced bunch with a lot to offer and could give the Democratic party some serious gravitas on national security issues. The Democratic party is starting to shift, ever so slowly, now that we have people in Congress like Joe Sestak and Jim Webb, but we still have a long way to go.
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After reading the *excellent* comment from Dash...
...I had a HUGE flash of déjà vu. Everyone recall the flap over Dubya's, shall we say, INCOMPLETE National Guard service in 1972 and 1973? The issue that was never quite resolved, but did sink Dan Rather's career at CBS?
Part of this issue revolved around Dubya campaigning for Winton Blount, who was then running for the Senate from Alabama. While the record is incomplete, it definitely involved campaigning for the former Postmaster General instead of fulfilling his own already minimal duties in the National Guard.
See this to refresh any foggy memories:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_W._Bush_military_service_controversy
As the French say, the more things change, the more they stay the same. Mitt Romney is the new Dubya!
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Can't hit the chickenhawks too hard...
And in case there's one person left who hasn't seen this:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gFGit_tZDqs
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The rest of the exchange
Romney’s kids don’t have to serve in the military to be good people doing good for the community, so that’s not even what this is about.
Helping daddy get elected isn’t serving the country…it’s helping daddy.
Asked if she was satisfied by Romney's answer, the questioner, 41-year-old Rachel Griffiths of Milan, Ill. said: "Of course not. He told me the way his sons are showing support for the military of our nation is to buy a Winnebago and tour across Iowa and help him get elected."
Thank you, Rachel Griffiths, for the smack down of the day.
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re: the military vote
And yet, the military still votes largely Republican ..
I'm calling bullshit on this particular piece of conventional wisdom. I have yet to be shown the evidence that the active duty military is more Republican than any other segment of the U.S. population.