(Astrology Explored) Mitt Romney stated to supporters that Obama won the election because he gave “extraordinary” gifts to portions of the electorate.
Romney: “What the president’s campaign did was focus on certain members of his base coalition, give them extraordinary financial gifts from the government, and then work very aggressively to turn them out to vote, and that strategy worked.”
Romney’s campaign manager, Matt Rhoades, listed a few specifics: “Whether it was free contraceptives for 18 to 29 year-old women, DREAM Act waivers, student loan interest rate cuts for college students, and other initiatives geared toward energizing their coalition. They succeeded.”
Romney: ” It’s a proven political strategy, which is give a bunch of money to a group and, guess what, they’ll vote for you. … Immigration we can solve, but the giving away free stuff is a hard thing to compete with.
As usual, Mitt Romney gets it wrong.
One would think that he would have learned something over the 47% debacle, but because of his privileged background he can’t get over that “poor people” didn’t relate to him or his message.
He is so out of touch with the realities of the economics of the average American he thinks that a middle class income is $250,000 per year, and that the median household income is $50,000 but he speculates that the Hispanic average household income is much less, though he didn’t have the figure on hand.
Here is an except of a paper I wrote on the status of the middle class:
. . . the dividing line between poverty and middle class is around $39,000 per year. U. S. Department of Labor statistics (2011) shows us that the annual mean wage is $45, 230. However, the statistics also show (Appendix A) that 75% of American jobs are below this average mean wage, with 58% of all jobs below $39,000 dividing line between middle class and poverty. That leaves only 25% of all jobs at a self-sufficiency wage. A self-sufficiency wage is what one adult needs to earn to support herself and two children covering the basics, i.e. food, shelter, child care, health care. (Center for Women’s Welfare, no date). While the self-sufficiency wage varies from economic region to economic region and by family composition, it is clear that in America today, 75% of the available jobs will not buy you a middle class income.
I’ll say again. 75% of the available jobs will not buy you a middle class income.
This is the real crisis of America, the one that both political parties fail to state openly but which most of America keenly feel. If the Republicans bemoan the fact that the electorate reelected Obama because “they want stuff” it is because they need it.
The only people who have received extraordinary gifts from the government are upper income Americans who saw their tax rate dropped from 70% to 28% in the 1980’s. The rest of us have been scratching in the dirt for crumbs ever since.
What would an astrologer tell you about the Republican party’s state of affairs?
Chris Brennan wrote an exhaustive piece about why Romney would loose the election based on an ancient predictive technique. He wrote:
His most challenging periods will generally be the mutable signs, especially Pisces, because of the presence of the malefic that is contrary to the sect in that sign, Mars. Virgo periods may be just as challenging because Romney’s Mercury is retrograde and in the sign of its fall, Pisces, and also especially due to the opposition from Mars in Virgo.
That was based on the technique the Zodiacal Releasing from the Lot of Spirit. Interestingly this same information is present in another form in the chart of the Republican Party. Here we see the progressed Moon in Virgo for the GOP opposite its Natal Neptune. (yellow strip on chart below) The progressed moon talks about the events as an individuals’ life evolve. The moon talks about the public and how you identify with it. In the sign of Virgo there is a tendency to focus on the faults of others as obstacles to success. The opposition to Neptune, the planet of delusions, feeds this fuzzy logic. “If only the poor people stopped wanting things, everything would be OK.” To add fuel to the fire, the progressed moon is in the last quarter phase to the Natal Moon. Frederique Boele wrote about this phase eloquently:
“The Last Quarter can therefore be as painful as birth; we have to leave the womb, wake up form a long sleep and face who we are, alone and separate. This crisis can also be compared to the sobering experience of having to retire, when we all of a sudden find we are no longer part of a collective and have lost our public, social or corporate identity.”
Certainly, the GOP has lost the public in its rhetoric that denigrates the working poor to no good effect. Mitt Romney is not the man that lost them the election. Mitt Romney was the perfect reflection of the attitudes of the GOP, and it is those attitudes that lost them the election.
When the next election comes around in 2016 the progressed moon of the GOP will be in consensus building and partnership oriented Libra. The Republicans will have a new public face, one that is more appealing than the present one. Whether or not they will take that election is anybodies guess. However, since this progressed moon will be in stress aspect (inconjunct) to its natal Uranus, that election will be a wild ride.
Photo published under a Creative Commons License from Flickr User donkeyhotey
