Weekend Football Scrimmage in Ohio Leaves Obama Over Romney 1-0

Last updated on July 18th, 2023 at 11:18 am

Fall is coming and football is upon us. Mitt Romney got into the spirit on Saturday while campaigning in Cincinnati. telling the crowd that it’s time for America to “get a new coach.” What better time to tell some more lies than the opening of college football season? After all, the Republican mantra has become, “it’s always a good day for a lie!”

Claiming that Obama has not kept many of his promises (a lie, and something you can check here for yourself), Romney went right for the throat: jobs.

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“One of the promises [Obama] made was he was going to create more jobs, and today, 23 million people are out of work or stopped looking for work or underemployed.”

Never mind that the Republican-controlled House has obstructed job creation steadfastly for two years. Even openly admitted why they are doing it.

“Let me tell you, if you have a coach that’s 0-23 million, you say it’s time to get a new coach. It’s time for America to see a winning season again and we’re going to bring it to them.”

Speaking to a crowd of over 3,000, Barack Obama answered yesterday with a football metaphor of his own:

“After the convention Governor Romney came here to Ohio and he said he’s going to be the coach that leads America to a winning season. The problem is everybody’s already seen his economic playbook. We know what’s in it.”

Haven’t we ever?

The president went on to further develop his metaphor, attacking the Republican lie about being anti-tax:

“On first down, he hikes taxes by nearly 2,000 dollars on the average family with kids in order to pay for a massive tax cut for millionaires. That’s on first down. Sounds like unnecessary roughness to me.”

You can check your taxes under Obama vs. Romney here. Just enter your annual income, filing status and dependents here and see what a Romney presidency will do to you. Sure, the Republicans call the Obama tax caclulator “a joke” but as even mainstream media outlet ABCNews admits, the calculator is, “based on the study from the Tax Policy Center, a nonpartisan joint venture of the Urban Institute and the Brookings Institution based in Washington, D.C.”

You might take note here that the TPC study (which you can read here for yourself) says,

Our major conclusion is that a revenue-neutral individual income tax change that incorporates the features Governor Romney has proposed – including reducing marginal tax rates substantially, eliminating the individual alternative minimum tax (AMT) and maintaining all tax breaks for saving and investment – would provide large tax cuts to high-income households, and increase the tax burdens on middle- and/or lower-income taxpayers.

Next the president pointed to the threat posed by the Romney-Ryan ticket to our environment, workers rights, and healtchare:

“On second down he calls an audible and undoes reforms that are there to prevent another financial crisis and bank bailout. He wants to get rid of rules that are there to protect our air and our water and workers rights and protections to make sure healthcare is there for you when you get sick.”

And of course, the truth about Medicare:

“And then on third down, he calls for a “Hail Mary,’ ending Medicare as we know it by giving seniors a voucher that leaves them to pay any attritional cost out of their pocket.
“There’s a flag on the play, loss of up to an additional $6,400 a year for the same benefits you get now,” he continued. “That’s their playbook. That’s their economic plan. And I’ve got one piece of advice for you about the Romney-Ryan game plan Ohio, punt it away. It won’t work. It won’t win the game. You don’t need that coach. That’s a losing season.”

If Romney wants to make this campaign about job creation and un-kept promises, Democrats would do well to ask Romney to point to a single job creation bill from the House. And as the president reminded the state in which one out of every eight jobs has to do with the auto industry, it was Barack Obama who saved the auto industry – not his rival, the man who likes to profit off bankruptcies. Romney had said, Obama reminded Ohioans, “you could kiss the American auto industry goodbye.”

Speaking to a union hall crowd near a General Motors Co. plant, Vice President Joe Biden pushed the same message: “But for the sacrifices you all made and the courage of the President of the United States, all those GM plants would be closed, here and all across the country.”

The Toledo Blade reports that “The auto workers at the UAW hall were celebrating the announcement last week that General Motors will invest $220 million in the Lords- town plant and a facility near Cleveland — news Mr. Biden offered as evidence of continued improvement.

That’s $220 million General Motors wouldnot now be investing if Romney had had his way and the company had gone bankrupt. It’s no wonder some union members in Biden’s audience were wearing UAW that said: “You had our back. Now we got yours.”

And that is a message the Obama campaign has to keep pushing: it was Bush that got us into this mess under his Republican administration, and that for the past four years the Republicans have declined to approve any job creation plan and now claim they will dig us out of the mess Bush created by returning us to the policies that created the mess.

That’s Team Obama 1, Team Romney 0. Oh, and if omens count for anything, on Saturday, Paul Ryan’s alma mater, Miami University of Ohio. lost resoundingly to Ohio State University 56 to 10.

Hrafnkell Haraldsson

Hrafnkell Haraldsson, a social liberal with leanings toward centrist politics has degrees in history and philosophy. His interests include, besides history and philosophy, human rights issues, freedom of choice, religion, and the precarious dichotomy of freedom of speech and intolerance. He brings a slightly different perspective to his writing, being that he is neither a follower of an Abrahamic faith nor an atheist but a polytheist, a modern-day Heathen who follows the customs and traditions of his Norse ancestors. He maintains his own blog, A Heathen’s Day, which deals with Heathen and Pagan matters, and Mos Maiorum Foundation www.mosmaiorum.org, dedicated to ethnic religion. He has also contributed to NewsJunkiePost, GodsOwnParty and Pagan+Politics.