Mitt Gets Worse: One Negative Ad Campaign We Hope Goes Viral

‘MITT GETS WORSE’ PROJECT WARNS OF ROMNEY’S ANTI-LGBT RECORD | Modeled as satire on the anti-bullying “It Gets Better” project, American Bridge 21st Century and Courage Campaign Super PAC have launched the “Mitt Gets Worse” campaign. In testimonials, various activists explain how harmful Mitt Romney’s anti-LGBT positions are and how much worse he would make the U.S. for LGBT people if he were president.

Mitt Romney has already gone on record as an enemy of the poor and disenfranchised. He has bumbled his way through African American voters to the point that being considered a "friend" is now out of the question. Now a group of LGBT activists want you to know that Romney's reign would be one of setbacks, if not one of terror. And they've started what could be one of the most creative series of anti-Romney ads to date.

If you take a look at the wikipedia entry for Mitt Romney's stance on LGBT issues, it paints a portrait of a man whose entire career as governor and Presidential candidate is obsessed with flip-flopping as the political wind blows:

In July 2011, Romney refused to sign a pledge opposing gay marriage, a pledge that was being circulated by "The Family Leader", a conservative Christian group in Iowa.[232] On August 4, 2011, a month later, Romney publicly denounced same-sex marriage by signing the 2012 Presidential Pledge sponsored by the National Organization for Marriage.[233]

And as governor of Massachusetts, Romney also attempted to eliminate much needed services for LGBT youth - some of them homeless youth.


Flip-Flop, The Cave In

The portrait of a man who cares only about winning and mouthing the right words to the right group (albeit unsuccessfully at times) formed years ago, so it is no surprise that vultures are circling a dying "moderate". The pressure put upon Romney to curry favor with the Christian Right due to his Mormonism is almost tactile: you can feel the forces of Tony Perkins, Bryan Fischer*, Pat Robertson, James Dobson and their ilk at work, devouring any semblance of tolerance. And they will not be satisfied until Romney states (as he did with Obama's Affordable Care Act in an address to the NAACP), that he will push through a constitutional amendment banning gay marriage, ban gays from the military and repeal every single advance in gay rights for the past thirty years. And for all his posturing as a moderate "friend" of gays and lesbians, ENDA (Employment Non-Discrimination Act) will become a distant memory if the Christian Right manipulates him. He may have supported gay adoption in the past, but the Christian Right will certainly have none of that.

5 Percent Is 5 Percent

Demographics and studies have shown that over 5% of the U.S. population is gay.** To Romney and his campaign, however, we have seen that even higher percentages (e.g. the number of people living below the poverty line) mean little: the bottom line is in the number of votes and if it takes disenfranchising 5% of the population to placate 16 million Southern Baptists, then so be it.

You know he will: Romney gives off the aroma of one ready to placate at all costs.

Whither Matt Rhoades?

As with the Bain Capital brouhaha, Romney's campaign manager, Matt Rhoades, has had his hands full in delivering spin, weak responses and veiled threats resulting from Romney's checkered past and flip-flops. How Rhoades will handle any response to Mitt Gets Worse is anybody's guess: ignoring it would be a big mistake, trying to present Romney as a "friend" would anger social conservatives, and going totally to the Right would only add to the long list of people he is willing to disenfranchise and sacrifice.

From The Huffington Post editorial by Rick Jacobs of the Courage Campaign (750,000 members):

Unfortunately for millions of LGBT people in this country, we know the Mitt we'll get. He's the Mitt that is moving in the wrong direction (as our Facebook Timeline shows) away from history, not towards it. For millions like us, Mitt Gets Worse. And if elected, the country will get worse.

Below is one of the first Mitt Gets Worse spots - a very, very powerful indictment of a man to whom winning is everything and consideration goes to the highest bidder. The testimonials are most disturbing and certainly provocative. Think about joining the Mitt Gets Worse campaign. It may be the one negative ad campaign in this mess of an election that needs to go viral.




*Fischer infamously delivered a bitch slap to Romney: demanding that he get rid of Richard Grenell, crowing that Romney took his advice (although Renell resigned), then saying that Romney was too weak to be President if he caved in to the demands of someone like Fischer.

** Despite what the Right contends: 1.5 to 2%