Why I Didn’t Vote for Mitt Romney

To my Republican friends and acquaintances:

I recognize that you’re less than thrilled about the 2012 presidential election results. President Barack Obama was re-elected, and your champion Gov. Mitt Romney lost.

With all the Monday-morning quarterbacking about Tuesday’s election, I thought I would put in my 2 cents.

First, some ideology background: I have been a decline-to-state voter since 1988. I consider myself a slightly left-leaning moderate. I don’t always vote a straight Democratic/liberal ticket. (For instance, I voted “No” on California Proposition 37, the Genetically Engineered Food Act, because there were too many loopholes.)

Here are the reasons why I didn’t cast my ballot for Willard “Mitt” Romney:

1. Gov. Romney appeared desperate and aggressive while on the campaign trail. During the presidential debates, he not only talked over Obama, but the moderators. He launched his campaign with ads that attacked his opponent but rarely introduced Romney and his issue positions to the electorate.
2. Instead of directly answering a question about pay parity for women during the second debate, Romney spoke of efforts to find qualified, executive-level females by searching through “binders of women.” Seriously?!
3. The Republican Party had a worthy challenger in former Utah. Gov. Jon Huntsman. He’s a moderate Republican who was Obama’s U.S. ambassador to China until 2011. While I didn’t agree with all his political views, they were clearer than Romney’s. And Huntsman appeared willing to reach out to Congressional Democrats. However, the Tea Party wasn’t having someone who wasn’t conservative enough in its view.
4. I was unsure of which Mitt Romney the nation was going to get: the one who reached across the aisle as governor of Massachusetts or the one who dismisses 47 percent of the nation.
5. Romney’s running mate was U.S. Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Wisconsin), who brought along his plans to turn Medicare into a voucher system for people my age and younger. While my four older siblings would have regular Medicare, I would have to hunt for a physician with my “vouchers,” which may have kept their value while health care costs spiraled upward. I was not having that.
6. I got tired of hearing from the Romney campaign about how programs like Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security were “entitlements” on the table for chopping. I’ve been paying taxes for 30 years toward those programs, and I consider my taxes to be an investment in them.
7. Finally, Romney needed to back away from Planned Parenthood, which provides health care to women unable to afford health insurance, and PBS, which airs many worthwhile programs, including “Sesame Street.” Hands off Big Bird!

I’m a single, childless working woman with a mortgage and bills to pay, as most Americans do. I don’t want handouts. I do, however, want to see a return in my investments.

Writing Diva

“Occupy” a Voting Booth

Open letter to members of the Occupy Wall Street movement:

Over the past two years, you have occupied Wall Street, New York’s Central Park, the streets of Oakland, California, Cesar Chavez Plaza in downtown Sacramento, California, and universities across the United States. Your website states that your “people-powered movement” is fighting against “the corrosive power of major banks and multinational corporations over the democratic process, and the role of Wall Street in creating an economic collapse that has caused the greatest recession in generations.”

Here’s another way to fight back: Occupy a voting booth.

As you are well aware, Election Day is this Tuesday, November 6. This will be the last day this election season to make your collective voice heard. If you march in the streets or take over a park but don’t vote, then your movement is nothing but hot air. This momentous general election will determine whether we go forward or return to the policies that caused the Great Recession. No adult eligible to vote can afford not to cast a ballot.

I mailed my completed ballot October 11. I’ve made my choice. Now, it’s time for you to make your choice. But if you do nothing, I will regard your movement the way I would freshly made dog poop and walk away.

Just sayin’.

Writing Diva