I have grown increasingly mystified that a presidential candidate we know so little about is so close to winning our highest office. The much-derided Etch-a-Sketch strategy has actually worked. What began as a bad joke about a candidate without any substantial chance of victory has now turned into a path to the White House.
I’m not sure whom to blame: the voters? The media? President Obama? All share some of the fault for not calling Romney out for his inconsistency. Perhaps as a nation, we have all failed to hold Mitt Romney accountable. We don’t know who he is or what he believes because we’ve never forced him to tell us. Every time he opportunistically re-creates his own platform or policy, he gets away with it.
We do know who Indiana Senate candidate Richard Mourdock is. The Romney-Ryan-endorsed Mourdock has added to the litany of outrageous and offensively backward positions that make up the Republican War on Women. But where is Gov. Romney? The former pro-choice moderate, who all but adopted a Todd Akin-like stance on “personhood” before asking Akin to drop out of his Missouri Senate race after his rape gaffe, is trying to have it both ways—disagreeing with Mourdock’s beliefs while still supporting him.
It should be the obligation of every voter to find out what Romney really believes on this issue. He has a choice. If he doesn’t agree with Richard Mourdock, he needs to rescind his endorsement. He needs to ask Mourdock to stop using his likeness in campaign ads to promote views that he disagrees with. He needs to denounce Mourdock.
If Romney does not take any of these steps, it should be clear to every voter that he cannot be relied upon—that his positions are truly meaningless—that he has no core convictions he deems worthy of fighting for.
American voters are supposed to appreciate straight talk. Mitt Romney makes a mockery of this core notion of American politics.
