Mitt Romney reminds me of a lobster, one with a really hard shell. Like a lobster, you have claw away and get your hands messy until you get to the juicy meat, or in Romney's case, the specifics of his vision to lead the country if he were elected President. It might sound silly, but Romney is the type of lobster you'd get at Red Lobster, not the freshly caught ones by the Maine seashore.
Romney wonders why he can't get the American people to be united around him. But the RNC's efforts couldn't have been more disorganized and lackluster. From Chris Christie's self-serving speech, to Paul Ryan's factual errors, to the resurrection of McCain and Condoleezza Rice, to Clint Eastwood speaking to an "invisible Obama," the Republicans' pitch to the American people couldn't have been more confusing. When Fox News goes out of its way to blast Paul Ryan and Christie for their blatant lies and cancels an interview with Sarah Palin, you know that the Republicans are in a big mess. If you're going to criticize the president, then at least get your facts right!
Even after Romney's acceptance speech, it's hard to figure out what he really stands for and who the real Mitt Romney is. He loves to bash Obama (often erroneously) but he has yet to release specific, detail-oriented strategies to get Americans back to work or to deal with this country's several other domestic and foreign policy-related problems. Romney can't expect to be so vague and expect the American people to buy into this system, especially when he's around a month away from the presidential debates. After three days of the RNC, there's surely a lot of passion to defeat Obama, but I don't sense a lot of passion to elect Romney. Every politician asked to speak at the conventions seemed much more focused on setting themselves up for 2016 rather than uniting under Romney's message.
It's hard to believe in a presidential candidate who's so eager to please the entire GOP, a contender who can't relate to the American people. Ann Romney can make the case she'd like to, but we're not electing a candidate based on whether he's a good husband. It's hard to believe in a candidate who says that his greatest love of America is its diversity, yet would make acquiring American citizenship a lot more difficult for illegal immigrants. It's hard to vote for a candidate whose ignorance on the Middle East and stance on the use of nuclear weapons is the main focus of his efforts to improve America's perception in the global community. It's hard to support a candidate without any federal economic experience who says he'll add 12 million jobs, but won't say how he'll successfully do so. It's hard to believe in a candidate who says he's a strong advocate of women's right's, but who wants to cut Planned Parenthood and cut access to birth control by allowing employers to deny health coverage to their employees because of a "moral" belief. It's hard to have faith in a candidate who says he'll fix a broken education system, but instead has made it clear that he'd cut off student federal grants significantly and whose budget plans would result in the firing of thousands of teachers. It's hard to believe in a president who says he's a true American, yet resorts to "jokes" about the Obama birth status, won't release his tax returns for more than the last two years, and has much of his money in offshore tax havens. And finally, it's hard to have faith in a presidential contender who wants to repeal the federal health care overhaul that was extremely similar to health care legislation when he was Governor.
Barack Obama is far from a perfect President, but it's a lot easier to believe in a guy who stands by his beliefs and has developed a vision that inspires Americans to be greater than we are. Romney and Ryan can continue to distort truths and play it safe, but it won't win them the election. Mitt is a small lobster about to be boiled in a huge pot, and he has to expect that President Obama has the shell cracker in his hands and the bib around his neck, ready to dig in.