THE CONUNDRUM
Mitt Romney looks like the kind of guy who would steal money off your granny in order to buy himself caviar. Not only that, he IS the kind of guy who would steal money off your granny in order to buy himself caviar. So, after Republicans had chosen this Gordon Gekko wannabe as their Presidential nominee, you would expect them to put forward someone a bit more humane for Vice-president. Surely they would choose someone who can at least do a passable impression of being a member of the human species?
Not a bit of it! For their VP pick, the Republicans have chosen a dorky android by the name of Paul Ryan, an Ayn Rand fan who looks like the kind of guy who has spent his entire life sucking up to people who would steal money off your granny. In fact, Ryan HAS spent his entire life sucking up to such people, doing everything he can to reduce their taxes. Paul Ryan is the Smithers to Mitt Romney's Montgomery Burns.
What do Mitt and Paul propose to do if they are elected? They barely even try to disguise the fact that their sole aim is to defend the interests of the mega-wealthy while screwing over the middle class, and everyone else as well. Mitt and Paul want to reduce taxes on rich people while simultaneously reducing spending on health, pensions, welfare, education, infrastructure and everything else - except military expenditure, of course. That might sound like a caricature of what they are proposing. But no ... that is actually what they are openly saying they will do.
Have the US Republicans lost their marbles? Why has this happened? How has this happened? Why!? How!?
THE EXPLANATION
There is, in fact, a simple explanation for all this. Mitt Romney, as we all know, is a monumentally weird and unlikable person. Remember, this is a man who once drove all the way to Canada with the family dog strapped to the roof of his car. When the terrified dog had an attack of diarrhoea, an unperturbed Mitt pulled over at the next petrol station, hosed down the dog, put him back on the roof of the car, and then cheerfully continued on his trip. That's the kind of man we are dealing with here. Mitt, who has made a fortune asset-stripping companies and then putting all his profits in the Cayman islands and Switzerland, won't release his tax returns - because then everyone would see the extent of his tax evasion, and his greedy financial shenanigans.
So, in the race for the US Presidency Mitt only has one advantage over Barack Obama - he has vastly more money to spend, thanks to the support he has from a series of his mega-rich gazillionaire chums, who are pouring hundreds of millions of dollars into pro-Romney Super-PACs. Mitt's only hope is that he can spend Obama into the ground. But in order for this to happen, poor old Mitt has to energise his base (i.e. the gazillionaires) and that means doing exactly what they tell him to do. And what they told him to do was to select Paul Ryan as his VP nominee, because Paul Ryan's name is synonymous with wanting to reduce taxes on the mega-wealthy while simultaneously reducing spending on everything else.
What we have here is a naked, brazen attempt to finally turn the US into an outright plutocracy, by perpetrating a war against its general population. Mitt and Paul want to complete the work started by George W Bush (remember him? Shudder). It would be a sad outcome for what has been the world's greatest democracy.
Will Mitt and Paul succeed? Only time will tell.
But I'm inclined to think that not even Americans will tolerate this.
