Jon Huntsman Picks Up Toys, Goes Home; Romney Hands Out Cash
Monday, January 16, 2012 at 12:30PM
Jon Hunstman, the Republican president candidate who could never shake that "Obama hired me to be Ambassador to China," moderate conservative stink off himself, dropped out of the GOP race today. Huntsman, naturally, endorsed the man who he most resembled without all the complications of being a horrible phony -- Mittens Romney.
Mittens, known for his robotic qualities and pathological inconsistencies was somewhere in South Carolina giving a poor black woman $60 in cash. It was a perfect storm of annoyances -- from the optics of a black person getting an actual "hand-out," to reinforcing the ideology that occasional donations from Daddy Warbucks should take care of our poor and not a strong social safety net built on our tax dollars, to reinforcing the belief that all poor, begging people are black people.
There's nothing not to find irritating. Right down to the woman saying God told her to go to Romney when reporters asked her about.
From ABC:
“I was on the highway praying and said, ‘God just show me how to get [my] lights on,’ and I pulled up to a stop sign and his bus was there,” said Williams, who has been unemployed since last October. “And then God said, ‘Follow the bus,’ and I followed the bus to the airport.”
According to Williams, she followed the campaign bus to the Columbia airport on Wednesday, the same day Romney was arriving from New Hampshire. When Romney wasn’t on the bus, aides told her to go to the rally scheduled in Columbia later that day. When she showed up, Romney found her to say hello and pulled over South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley to say “hello” too.
“He was kind to me and he made Gov. Haley come see about me,” Williams said. “He stopped doing everything.”
Williams, who would not specify how much money Romney gave her, said also that South Carolina Treasurer Curtis Loftis paid her light bill on Thursday. A spokesman for Loftis, one of Romney’s major endorses in the state, confirmed to ABC News that he paid Williams’ bill. While Loftis didn’t know the amount of the bill, he confirmed that he gave her $150.
“God didn’t tell me to go to nobody else, he told me to pray for Romney,” said Williams, when asked why she has decided to support Romney. “I listened to the Lord.”
Williams said she has been volunteering at Romney’s Columbia headquarters since meeting his bus last week.
But the biggest reason why this is annoying is this is not a workable solution to the millions of Americans, not just black people, who are unemployed, have struggled to find work and have bills due. We cannot all simply write Mitt Romney and shout "Make it rain." Helping one woman is nice. But she's not the only one and this opens up the floodgates to people pulling all sorts of stunts to get Mittens to open his wallet and shower us with wads of cash. Naturally, Mittens cannot physically give every broke person in America bill money and eventually he will have to deal with the bad optics (and press) of the first broke person who dumps their problems on Romney and he doesn't hand over the dough.
This is a pretty big contrast from when Obama would hold townhalls and someone would say their house was being foreclosed on and Obama would have his people work with local officials to find a workable solution using the rule of law and a combination of local community programs and/or state/federal assistance programs. Because cash is nice, but using the programs we actually have in place to help people help themselves is better.
But Romney will give you cash! Not a lot of cash though. But CASH! Because who doesn't like a handful of $20 instead of something that might actually help you get back on your feet like a job? Although, simply bribing people with cash into voting for him is a strategy.
Not that great of one, but a strategy all the same. Maybe Huntsman should have tried that?
Reader Comments (2)
I don’t want to be disrespectful to her or her situation, but why did she do that in front of all America to see? That image solidified everything the Republicans have shouted for the past few weeks, "not giving hand-outs to Blacks……" See, the Republicans told you so!
On the other hand, if God actually told her to follow that bus, then maybe I need to be prayin’ for a Billionaire on a bus myself! Half a million would set me up just right!
Justice
I need a new roof after Hurricane Irene, when is Mittens coming to DC? Can he manage to get a roofer to do mine for free? Maybe he can get some Hispanic roofers to do it for me and it will be a real multicultural lovefest!
I'll be waiting with a real cute outfit and everything.