Serial Bad Judgement

Here we go again. I've written many times about Romney's judgement, questioning whether he had what it took to be president. Time and time again, he's provoked the subject. He likes to fire people, corporations = people, the Olympics/foreign tour debacle, the recent Libyan embassy fiasco -- the list is seemingly endless.

And now we have this 47%-of-Americans-are-slacker-grifters video to further beg the serious question. I mean really, is this guy a complete idiot? Forget his pedigree because we all know a person or two in our lives who are from wealth, graduated from an Ivy League college and yet are not the sharpest tool in the shed. Recall GW went to Yale and Harvard.

But in this day and age, when everyone has cell phones with record capability, any shrewd, sensible, smart candidate knows not to say such things, even if they truly believe it. It's just too risky and dumb.

So again, what does this say about Romney's judgement, his ability to make good decisions? Imagine him in the White House. Many bad outcomes can result from rash, poor decisions and "inelegant wording." It's shocking but Mitt's clueless arrogance is making GW look like Churchill in comparison.

All of this said, I don't think it's a Dean-Scream moment. Romney's not going to completely tank in the polls. Unfortunately, there remains a sizable block of voters who will vote GOP no matter what Romney says or does, not to mention many of those voters likely agree with what he said in the video.

However, it will hurt at the margin and in this election that's all that matters. Romney himself admitted this fact, saying he needed just 50.1% (or more) of the vote. Translation: he only needs to win over the fence-sitters, the undecided, the few votes up for grabs. And yet the dolt stupidly makes these comments, in the process likely losing enough votes at the margin to significantly turn the race. I say with this latest screw-up, the polls will go from about 51-45 favoring Obama to 52-44, which in this election is a huge move.

Lastly, needless to say the 47% mentioned by Romney all have good reasons for not paying income taxes, whether it be they're elderly/retired, poor, a student, etc. But I ask Mitt, what about the profitable corporations not paying their fair share? According to a recent study of 280 Fortune 500 companies, all profitable, 40% of them paid a corporate tax rate below 17.5% (compare to the actual corporate tax rate of 35%), and 30 or 11% paid zero taxes, zilch, none.

These are huge, strong corporations, not the elderly or low-income workers. And remember, according to Mitt, corporations are people too. Well then Mitt, what about those 30 companies (people) that paid zero taxes? I suppose they're grifters and free-loaders, right?