Romney’s secret weapon: Lyme disease!

How many times have you said, “if only we had a president who made Lyme Disease his number one priority?”Yeah, me neither.
But that’s not stopping Mitt Romney from doing a mailing in northern Virginia claiming that it’s time America got a president who will ensure “real action,” and “do more,” on Lyme Disease.  (The real action mostly involves tort reform, because doctors, Romney says, are afraid to treat Lyme Disease because of lawsuits.  Huh.)
Lyme Disease?
Yup. And a friend just sent me the mailer.  After you review the mailer, read on, because this issue gets interesting – Romney is yet again inserting himself into a controversy he knows nothing about, in order to find “an opportunity” in the suffering of others.



I googled the issue and it seems Tim Murphy at Mother Jones also stumbled upon the mailing. He offered two interesting points. The first, that Lyme Disease is actually getting worse because of climate change, something Romney is now denying. Oops. So President Ryan, and his climate change denialists, would actually be worse for Lyme Disease. Romney was right, there is something the President can do to fight the spread of Lyme Disease!
But there’s more. As Murphy reports, Romney is actually inserting himself into a dispute in the medical community, something about which he knows absolutely nothing.

As it turns out, Romney is actually injecting himself into an intense dispute within the medical community, pitting the International Lyme and Associated Diseases Society (ILADS) against the Infectious Diseases Society of America (IDSA). IDSA believes there is “no convincing biological evidence” that Lyme is a chronic infection, while ILADS thinks there are flaws with the current testing system. Wolf and Smith have aligned themselves with ILADS, which is reflected in their bill and other public statements.

Why would Romney do this? The same reason he called Israel Prime Minister Netanyahu to talk Iran only hours after President Obama and Netanyahu spoke to talk Iran. And the same that Romney injected himself into the Libya/Egypt crisis before we even knew that our ambassador was the one who was murdered, along with three hours.
Mitt Romney thinks the suffering of others, such as the assassination of an American ambassador, as a political “opportunity,” and he’s been looking for such an “opportunity” for months now.
Romney doesn’t care whether he knows anything about the conflict. He doesn’t even really care whether the conflict is resolved, as he admitted in the now-infamous 47% video about the Middle East. But not caring about resolving the conflict in the Middle East didn’t stop Romney from phoning Netanyahu to inject himself into the conflict.
The contradiction makes sense once you realize that Romney’s goal isn’t to help the country solve problems. His goal is to become president, and to use the nation’s suffering to propel him there, the same way Reagan used the Iran hostage crisis in 1980 (and Romney admits it in the 47% video).
So who cares if the repugican presidential candidate undercuts the President in the middle of a national security crisis, or whether he undercuts the medical community in the middle of a health crisis. Mitt Romney isn’t about solving the national security problems, or the health problems, of the American people.  Mitt Romney is about solving the campaign problems of Mitt Romney.