THE ROVING
EYE USS Romney goes
Titanic Pepe Escobar
Willard "Mitt" Romney comfortably sees
himself as the chief executive officer of a US$1
billion enterprise - the Republican Party election
campaign that should place him as the next
President of the United States (POTUS). Meanwhile,
current POTUS Barack Obama is increasingly
convinced he just needs to deploy a secret weapon
to clinch re-election.
That weapon is Mitt
Romney.
USS Romney is like one of
those state-of-the art aircraft carriers parked
somewhere between the Persian Gulf and the Indian
Ocean. The problem is, at winter and the November
presidential election approaches Washington, it
has hit not only one iceberg, but a climate
changeful of icebergs. And this while the orchestra
on board merrily keeps
playing Baby, It's Cold Outside to the
$50,000-a-plate plutocrats who have not yet
abandoned the sinking ship.
To think that
the latest iceberg inflation developed over only
two news cycles; there will be plenty more before
the week - not to mention month - is over. That's
even before the first presidential debate in early
October.
Let them eat
whoppers It all started with a detailed
mosaic sketched by Politico
on how USS Romney started sinking.
Notorious episodes in the soap include Mitt's
Olympic fiasco in London; his Tampa, Florida,
consecration obscured by Clint Eastwood's empty
chair; and his cynical appropriation of the
Benghazi killing of the US ambassador to Libya.
Blame is widely attributed by Mitt's "aides,
advisers and friends" to the designated staff
scapegoat, Mitt's top strategist/manager/ad
director Stuart Stevens.
This from a
self-described successful CEO who in his stump
speech insists all the US needs is - a CEO. If his
leadership of the billion-dollar USS Romney
is any indication, people had better start
fighting now for the remaining lifeboats.
Then came the "47% incident" - at the core
of the fundraiser video released by Mother
Jones detailing what Mitt really thinks about
Obama's voters, as told to a roomful of plutocrat
donors.
Once again, the money quote:
There are 47% of the people who will
vote for the president no matter what. All
right, there are 47% who are with him, who are
dependent upon government, who believe that they
are victims, who believe the government has a
responsibility to care for them, who believe
that they are entitled to health care, to food,
to housing, to you-name-it. That that's an
entitlement. And the government should give it
to them. And they will vote for this president
no matter what ... These are people who pay no
income tax.
He'll never have the guts
to say it in prime time, but for Mitt nearly half
of the US is a nation of hopeless, immoral
moochers (that's what his $50,000-a-plate fellow
plutocrats wanted to hear anyway). Even The
New York Times had to admit that at least as a
deployer of class warfare, Mitt may be a force to
reckon with.
Predictably, Mitt's not
"elegant" - his own word - candid camera moment
unleashed a deluge of excruciatingly detailed fact
checking, as this
sample attests.
But nobody pointed out
that whether or not Mitt's 47% stand the test of
reality, there are at least 46% of US voters who
will vote Republican no matter what. The candidate
may be "Dubya" or the billionaire tax-dodging USS
Romney; it doesn't matter. Just ask Karl
Rove. Or read Craig Unger's recently published
Boss Rove (Scribner).
The US is
bitterly polarized - beyond repair. That leaves
roughly 7% of independents, or undecided, or swing
voters, to be courted by both parties. To believe
that USS Romney has managed to seduce this
crowd after his latest utterances and the
surfacing of the fundraiser-video tell-all is to
believe in Iraq's weapons of mass destruction
(wait; make it Iran's weapons of mass
destruction).
As for POTUS, he played it
cool. It took him just a visit to David
Letterman to finish off USS Romney with
some strategically placed rhetorical Hellfires.
Is there life on Mars? The $1
billion USS Romney operation is based on a
set of premises infested with Martian craters -
amplified from cyberspace to outer space by the
right-wing echo chambers. It boils down to Obama
can't win because he's too black, too "liberal",
too "socialist", too detached, too intellectual
and too unpopular. People don't want his
"socialism". He will be defeated by the economy.
And moreover his US foreign policy is wimpy.
Imagine USS Romney setting US
foreign policy. Mitt's neocon advisers'
prescription is give hell to both Russia and
China, and bomb Iran; that will restore America's
superpower status.
Arguably quite a few
plutocrats and a significant portion of the
industrial-military-security-media complex want
war on Iran; USS Romney enthusiast Bibi
Netanyahu, Israel's prime minister, knows it
better than most. And that's why Bibi is actually
more driven to unleash regime change in
Washington than in Tehran.
In the event of
an Obama 2.0 though, war may be finally off the
table. There's always the possibility of an Obama
"Nixon moment"; a momentous trip, an overall deal
with Tehran. What won't change is that Baghdad
will continue to solidify its ties with Tehran. In
Egypt, the Muslim Brotherhood (MB) will continue
to expertly juggle the US, Saudi Arabia and Qatar
to extract benefits and at least be able to feed
its people. The MB may even take over Jordan.
Having learned the lesson of being in bed
with Salafi-jihadis in Libya, Obama 2.0 may have
to find a modus vivendi with a surviving
Bashar al-Assad regime. Syria won't be balkanized.
Turkey won't invade. Ankara will have to be more
inclusive vis-a-vis its own Kurds; it will have
been alarmed by the recent autonomy of Syrian
Kurds. Meanwhile, in Libya, Western energy majors
will consolidate their plunder of oil and gas - as
long as militia hell does not interfere.
Obama 2.0 will do all it can to avoid a
Saigon moment in Afghanistan. But that may be
inevitable - and sooner than late 2014. The
Taliban will be back in power somewhat, directly
or indirectly. Pipelineistan will never see the
light of TAPI (the
Turkmenistan-Afghanistan-Pakistan-India gas
pipeline); but it will see IP (the Iran-Pakistan
gas pipeline), and maybe even an IPC (an extension
to Western China).
China will increase its
buying of oil and gas in yuan - and not
petrodollars. Russia under Putin 2.0 will be in
the ascendancy not only in Central Asia, but also
in Europe. No USS Romney intimidation and
bombing would be able to alter this very probably
course of history. It - and the deafening
right-wing echo chambers - will be left wallowing
in Islamophobia and blaming everything on the
"Soviets" and "communist China".
It's
Karl Rove or bust Back to the 47%: USS
Romney's plutocratic base will always
believe that he was "on message" - no matter what
happens; they despise most Americans anyway. But
when one examines a smattering of US polls, the
inevitable conclusion is that only 30% or so of
voters believe in the interwoven right-wing myths
concerning Obama's unelectability.
So it's
down to "arithmetic" - as The Almighty Bubba
(former president Bill Clinton) indelibly pressed
at his Charlotte apotheosis. Intrade's
percentage chance of a Obama win in November is
now at 67.9% - and rising. Nate Silver, arguably
America's most credible pollster, is
currently aiming at 74.8%.
The bottom
line: the USS Romney is a post-modern
Titanic. Unless Karl "turd blossom" Rove
can come up with the definitive October surprise.
So CEO Mitt had better start looking for
alternative career opportunities.
Qatar's
Al Noor Holdings will bankroll a $450 million
Prophet Muhammad movie trilogy to erase the memory
of that protested-to-death YouTube video. Instead
of a shady Egyptian Copt and former porno flick
director, the producer will be Barry Osborne of
Matrix fame. And the prime ideological
consultant is Al-Jazeera star Sheikh Yusuf
al-Qaradawi, the ideological leader of the MB, who
will guarantee full respect of sharia law - which
includes the non-representation of the Prophet
(holograms, anyone?).
Perhaps an
unemployed Mitt should delocalize and consider
lobbying the emir of Qatar for a casting call.
Pepe Escobar is the author of
Globalistan: How the Globalized World is
Dissolving into Liquid War (Nimble Books, 2007)
and Red Zone Blues: A Snapshot of Baghdad
During the Surge. His new book, just out, is
Obama Does Globalistan (Nimble Books,
2009). He may be reached at
pepeasia@yahoo.com.
(Copyright 2012 Asia
Times Online (Holdings) Ltd. All rights reserved.
Please contact us about sales, syndication and
republishing.)
Head
Office: Unit B, 16/F, Li Dong Building, No. 9 Li Yuen Street East,
Central, Hong Kong Thailand Bureau:
11/13 Petchkasem Road, Hua Hin, Prachuab Kirikhan, Thailand 77110
