There are many reasons I’m voting Democrat this election but prime among them is that Mitt Romney has no core, no soul, no integrity. There are many words that you would never apply to him after his several years of unsuccessful campaigning, but chief among them are the words “courageous,” “consistent,” “principled,” “honest,” and least of all “caring.”

Instead you can see him lie every day, blandly smiling and glad-handing the crowds as he puts another baldfaced whopper across. You have to wonder if he’s chuckling inside and thinking, “I wonder how many of these hapless rubes bought that one.”

There’s nothing worse than frat boy weasels who lie to your face knowing that they are lying, knowing full well that you see through their lie. It doesn’t matter if they are trying to sell a junker off a used car lot or running for president, most people can smell them coming — but others seem defenseless against their toothsome grins. Anytime that Mitt has seemed to say something solid on the campaign trail, the next day he sends his staff out to walk it back, since he seems not to have the spine required to retract it in person, or to stand for something specific himself.

Maybe you’ve been willing to accept the lies because Romney’s a “member of the GOP team,” or because you hate our current President — but politics is not a sport, and you need to be bigger than just a rooter for your team. The US can’t afford another second generation elitist sliming their way into office, not here, not now, as the economy is just recovering from the worst recession since the great depression. We don’t need more of the same deregulation, the same laissez faire, “who cares about all those bad loans” attitudes at the helm. We certainly don’t need a president who has so little faith in our country that he off-shores most of his money made after years of off-shoring our jobs and dumping insolvent and Bain debt-saddled companies into bankruptcy.

Almost worse than Romney are the people who would come into power with himWe don’t need a president who thinks 47 percent of us don’t matter, because the president is elected to serve everyone, not just the people who financed their campaign or who voted for them.

Almost worse than Romney are the people who would come into power with him, as the reactionary fundamentalist wing of the party is in full control of the GOP right now. With Mitt, we would get people from the clash of civilizations crowd (like John Bolton), who won’t rest until they get us into another world economy-wrecking war. Anti-science blustering blowhards for the oil companies and religious right, like Joe Barton and Todd Akin, are clinging tightly to his coat tails, and we sure don’t need “strict Bible constructionists” on the Supreme Court either.

We really can’t afford another anti-science administration — the world is changing much too fast and our children’s futures are entirely dependent our ability to adapt and foster new technologies. Mitt would bring a whole crowd of reactionary Luddites with him.

I can’t vote for Mitt as well because of his stance on gay marriage, I can’t vote for him because of his stance against women’s rights, I can’t vote for him because of all the misogynist cavemen that he would bring with him were he to win. And I can’t vote for him because there’s a chance that the Senate could flip this year, and I think we need checks and balances. The GOP in full control of all branches of government is the prime ingredient in a recipe for future disasters.

Most of all, I can’t vote for Mitt because there’s nothing behind the bluster and puff: he’s just a spoiled pile of meringue whipped together from bile and the last century’s GOP bumper stickers.