Editor, Manteca Bulletin,

After being rejected by NJ Gov. Chris Christie upon a request for a joint helicopter tour of the devastation in New Jersey as Gov. Christie did with President Obama (after which the Gov. repeatedly praised Obama and FEMA, singling out the President’s handling of the crisis and his “outstanding leadership”), and after telling everyone he was suspending all campaign activities in support of the victims of Hurricane Sandy including a “victory” rally in Dayton, Ohio, on Tuesday, the Romney Campaign scrambled to at least seem somewhat relevant.

Their big idea was to “fake it”. Now “faking it” is not a new tactic for Romney, he has been doing it from day one, from the claim of his representing 100% of the people in public while writing-off 47% of the people behind closed doors to his claim of supporting women’s rights while picking Paul Ryan, the “Life begins at conception” guy, as his running mate.

The big idea in this case was to hold a new rally and call it a “relief” rally. Never mind that the rally would be held in the very same venue, at the very same time and the very same day as their “victory” rally, and never mind that they would still run the same video they used at the GOP Convention which attempted to show Romney as the Party “savior”.

Now here was their pathetic plan: First go out to the local Wal-Mart and purchase $5,000 worth of various canned goods, granola bars, peanut butter, that kind of thing. Load them all onto a truck and run them down to the rally, piling up the goodies at the entrance to the rally, then announcing to the people in line that they would have to “donate” relief supplies such as canned goods to gain entrance to the rally, which would then be given to the Red Cross. Knowing there had not been enough time to pass this critical information to the prospective attendees, anyone showing up without “donations” was told to “just grab something” from the pile at the entrance. Then they were told to enter the rally and hand over the “donations” to Romney for a photo op. Romney would then say “thank you” and hand the “donations” over to someone and they in turn would load them onto a truck.

During his rally speech, Romney thanked everyone for their “donations”, telling everyone the collected “relief supplies” would be trucked down to New Jersey and delivered to an un-named Red Cross location for redistribution. Never mind that on the Red Cross website they describe “donations” as cash only. Things such as canned goods are a logistical nightmare and they would not accept such “donations”.

Romney then went on to describe how he would have handled the clean up. Now remember he has said he would abolish FEMA and let the States handle their own crisis using their own private contractors, which if you think about it, would be quite a feat considering their entire infrastructure was just washed out to sea.

Now we are only a few days away from election day and you have a choice, you can vote for the guy who is already doing the job, apparently very well according to one of the most influential and prominent Republicans in the Party, Chris Christie, or you can vote for the guy who has just been faking it all along.

Larry Baca

Manteca

Nov. 1, 2012