Op-Ed: Mitt Romney negatives pile up as he delivers empty speeches anew

The litany of negatives surrounding Mitt Romney continue to pile up - from profiting off of 9/11 to having "binders full of women" - while he continues to trot out empty speeches short on substance. Time and again he does not give details of his plans.

New misdoings are routinely added and we now hear he's refusing to withdraw support of a GOP Indiana senate candidate who recently said women who are raped and impregnated from that rape, have had that tragic and terrifying crime visited upon them because it's God's will; further, Richard Mourdock says that they should not be permitted an abortion. Mitt Romney has declined to take ads with him and Mourdock off the air and is refusing to answer reporters' questions about Mourdock. We also hear Romney lied under oath to help a rich friend cheat an ex-wife. Staples founder Tom Stemberg low-balled his ex-wife but Romney testified the $2.48 a share she sold at was a good price, despite the company having gone public at $22.50 a share less than a year after Stemberg's ex sold out. As a corollary to this story, Romney and his company, Bain Capital, profited to the tune of around $13 million on Staples stocks; he didn't sell at $2.48. Romney: Empty campaign speeches And then we have his latest speech. There were pronouncements saying a big economic speech was coming in Ames, Iowa on Friday. And after it was all over, report after report suggests what it turned out to be was simply another talking-point filled attack of Obama (11 of his 20 minutes pontificating on that) and an empty offering of promises for improving the economy, again lacking in specifics on how he intends to do it without raising taxes on the middle-class. Riddled with inaccuracies he has been repeating throughout the campaign, the big speech was a major let-down. He essentially repeated the tactic he used in the final two presidential debates (both of which the polls show that Americans say he lost): criticize and pontificate but don't pin yourself down with specifics. It's the Sarah Palin method of campaigning. That Romney is more glib while employing it, doesn't make it any more palatable. Republican plan: Ignore the bad and talk, talk, talk This is how Republicans play politics now - simply refuse to talk of the negatives and make a lot of headline-grabbing announcements without offering specifics. From the dog on the roof incident, the attack on a gay student to outsourcing jobs and dismissing 47 percent of his country as self-proclaimed victims not worthy of fighting for, Romney's modus operandi is to ignore the nasty questions and throw out more spin. Both sides in most campaigns are capable of playing this game but Mitt Romney and his team are masters at it. And when it comes to the U.S. presidential races there has never before been so much need for it because never before has a candidate had so many negatives to sweep under the proverbial rug. Coupling all the negatives with his refusal to detail what he will actually do should he attain office - women beware, tax payers beware, voters beware - it makes Republican Mitt Romney a scarier proposition by the day.