
Then they get specific. "Why aren't you worried about the gigantic deficit we're passing on to our grandchildren?"
I do worry about it. I also worry that the Republicans are going to run it up more, since that's what they always blithely do whenever they get the chance. And I worry about stuff our grandchildren might have to deal with that the Republicans ignore, like global warming. Another Wall Street collapse vs. Wall Street becoming a coral reef—which one do you think is going to do those grandkids more harm?
"And Romney will finally get tough on China," they add. I don't believe it. Plus I don't think China is going to pay attention to anyone trying to get tough on them, unless it's Walmart. When Sam throws down on them, then they'll know they're being toughed-on.
But mostly, I'm not voting for Mitt because of the company he keeps. Consider this roster of Romney supporters:
There's Jon Hubbard of Arkansas, who argues that slavery benefited the slaves because their descendants ended up in America. Putting this in personal terms, if I were kidnapped by aliens and forced to work in some interstellar coal mine and eventually some of my descendants grew up to pilot flying saucers and conquer the remainder of the galaxy, or invent new musical forms that became popular throughout the universe (of course, many would still have to work the coal mine) I could see it being beneficial to them. But not to me. Apparently, I don't have the foresight to be a Republican.
Or Bob Kingsbury, of New Hampshire, who claims attending kindergarten causes kids to become sociopaths. I resent him because I thought my lifetime of deviant behavior was my own idea, not a product of my educational background.
Or Stacey Campfield, of Tennessee, who offers the theory that if homosexuality is forbidden to be mentioned in Tennessee public schools, fewer Tennesseans will grow up to be gay. I think it will just seem that way because gays will leave Tennessee as soon as they are old enough to crawl, walk or bicycle across the state line.
Or the Republican members of the Kentucky State Legislature, who are upset because high school students there are being tested on their knowledge of evolution and not also of the Biblical account of creation, just so they can pass some namby-pamby national science standard.
To the right of those august gentleman stands Jack Wu, who actually attends the Westboro Baptist Church, who would regard the above advocates as complete candyasses, because he believes that only the Bible should be taught in schools and Darwin utterly forbidden.
This, of course, is the position of Muslim loonies re education. Except that they favor the Quran, a book which resembles the Bible in its embrace of ancient strictures but lacks the charm of the Old Testament's cobbled-together legends, which brings me to the congruence of belief between my personal favorite Republican, Charlie Fuqua, also of Arkansas, who thinks that snotty kids ought to be shot, to the Taliban, which actually shoots snotty kids.
If Charlie lived in Afghanistan, he'd be hiding a bomb under his robes right now, ready to toss it at school full of children for trying to teach girls to read.
I'm not saying if Mitt was in Afghanistan, he'd embrace all the principles of the Taliban. He wouldn't. He seems far too nice a guy for that.
But he'd still want to be their leader.