Friday 19 October 2012

USP

Dilbert creator Scott Adams has been somewhat persona non grata around a lot of liberal blogs for a while now, mainly because he (as oppose to his strip) tends to combine thoughtless sexism with angry rants about no-one else being smart enough to understand his thoughtless sexism is actually super-smart for serious.

So now he's come out in support of Mitt Romney, he's under a lot of incoming fire once again.  I don't intend to pile on, since others can do so rather better, and in any case I don't really care; reactionary prick says prickish things; whatever forever.

I did just want to highlight exactly what Adams is saying here; he won't vote for Obama because of his drug policies, and instead he'll vote for Romney because although he says has the same policy, he might not really mean it.

I suppose there's a weird logic in that.  If you're determined enough to be a single issue voter, and neither candidate says they're on your side, you may as well choose the guy who's most likely to be lying to you.  One would think that might demonstrate conclusively that single issue voting is a mug's game, but then I'm not as smart as Scott Adams keeps telling me he is.

This does mean though that Romney has gotten at least somewhere with the only remaining approach left: "Vote Romney, because the bits you don't like are the ones I'm lying about anyway!".

Remember when Al Gore got two of his trips to disaster areas mixed up and everyone said it proved he was a congential deceiver not fit for the presidency?  We've come a long way, baby.  There is not a day goes by that I'm not amazed Bob Somerby hasn't drunk himself to death already.

2 comments:

Tomsk said...

As far as I understand his position (from several posts), he appears to think that Romney will be the ultimate pragmatist as president and is currently just saying whatever it takes to get elected. I can believe that up to a point but I think he underestimates just how far his advisers and Republicans in congress would pull him to the right in practice.

SpaceSquid said...

I agree regarding the right wing drift, but the more fundamental problem in this case is Adams insisting that the definition of pragmatism is fighting against both parties and decades of entrenched public opinion for no tangible political gain.