With the devastation whipping through the Eastern seaboard of the US, commentators have been waxing on how neither party is looking to politicise the response. However, this is simply not the case. Watching Romney speak at an Ohio relief rally, you could hear him spinning his own narrative into the effort to give help to people.
In a rambling analogy in a rambling speech, he said "If we all clear our own aisles" then the relief effort will be successful, bringing a message of self-sufficiency into a disaster-aid context. Whether tomorrow he will try to use a similar message, that everyone should clear their own drive ways, put out their own fires, save their own families and not concern themselves with their neighbours, I cannot possibly say. Mitt Romney has proved one thing during the course of this campaign; what he says one moment has absolutely no baring on what he says the next.
Another thing that form does show is that he will not shy from attempting to score the cheapest political points with the flimsiest of justifications, and has absolutely no sensitivity towards taste or moment. Look at his attack on the Cairo embassy for a press release: Romney called a press conference, the day after three embassy staff were killed, to criticise other embassy staff, while their embassy was being mobbed by riots. All as a cheap way of attempting to call Obama an appeaser.
It was possibly the most craven act of politicising I have ever witnessed. It is certainly among the most tasteless examples of campaign rhetoric there have ever been.
Those commentators who are saying that Sandy is not being politicised are wishing their own reality. The truth is, Mitt Romney will find a way of using this to his advantage, will attack the President's response whether that response is the height of competence or not. Romney only sees the end and does not care about the means.
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