Mitt Romney, a gangly 17-year-old, looked neat and businesslike in his dark suit, white shirt, and narrow tie, with a badge on his lapel, as he took a seat at the 1964 Republican convention. He watched his father, George, representing the party’s moderates, exhort the platform committee to adopt an amendment rejecting “extremists.” The effort failed, Barry Goldwater became the nominee and, as Mitt later recalled it, his father “walked out of the Republican convention.”
This week, 48 years later, Romney is walking into his own nominating convention as the Republican Party gathers in Tampa. But the story line has turned upside down. Mitt Romney isn’t the moderate voice seeking to rein in the extreme forces in the GOP; he has become, as he called himself earlier this year, a “severely conservative” man looking to win the complete trust of the dominant right of his party, the Goldwater wing of his day. It is as if winning requires purging a key element of his father’s political legacy. But an examination of the forces behind Romney’s striking shifts on key issues makes it clear it is much more than that.
Comments
I think this piece is informative, and somewhat interesting. The notion of "extremism" however, continues to be a label that only applies to Republicans, and is an epithet from the left wing Boston Globe. There are, of course, varying degrees of conservatism as there are varying degrees of liberalism. But in the Globe, you will never see the extreme of the left wing revealed. And you will never see it so carefully examined on Democrats. NEW PARAGRAPH: One has to wonder if Kranish will write a similar piece on the development of President Obama's hard left views. Will he examine the influence of Reverend Wright, of the William Ayers-Saul Alinsky roots in Chicago politics. That would be very revealing. But since the Globe considers the president to be centrist, it sees no need to examine the history of Obama's views.
Congratulations on a penetrating, thoughtful, excellent article. As someone who grew up at the same time as Mitt, a couple of miles down the road from Mitt, I have a sense that I know about where Mitt came from. I'm afraid I just can't trust him. He'll be nice to your face. He'll give money to the church, and occasionally may even help other people who need help. Even with those gestures there is a sense of it being a calculated behavior to enhance his own image, and not an expression of true engagement with other people. There is a sense that his is a one letter alphabet of "I". It's like he wants to be president because it fits his sense of his place in the world, not because he really cares about anybody else's well being. His is a hyper-individualistic sense of the world. He made money, so everybody can do the same. His family has had troubles, but they took care of them themselves. Never mind the backdrop of racial and economic privilege which started him off in a place that 99% of the population simply could not fathom. He wants to be President to have the crown of glory. His job in that role is to stand back and let individuals be individuals, whatever that means. There is increasing awareness about a subset of people in the world who are instinctively incapable of empathizing with other people and their feelings, who are locked in a solo universe. It's tempting to see Mitt as being one of them.
Don't accuse the Globe of altering reality to support the left. Since the conservatives have shifted the Republican party so far out of the middle ground, reality itself has a liberal bias. Global warming _is_ real. Gay men and women _are_ human beings with rights. President Obama _was_ born in Hawaii. To those with far right-wing views facts feel like propaganda, but they are not propaganda. They are simply the truth.
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To see analysis of the influence of Barack Obama's father on his political beliefs go see the movie "2016: Obama's America" because you won't read anything on that in the Boston Globe.
Left out of this piece is Mitt Romney's patriarchal view of the world. In his camp where he grew up women setting out in the professional world is a no no. Even his speech the other day promising to encourage women entrepreneurs rings hollow. On his own staff at Bain Capital there are about 10 women out of a professional staff of 81. So much for encouraging female entrepreneurship. Also his high and mighty pledge to women leaves out almost all of them. Most women as most men are not entrepreneurs. They are working stiffs. With language like "stooges" for members of labor unions and thinking firemen, police, and teachers are expendable parts of state budgets, we see the real agenda. His life story in the Globe today also forgot to remind people of his cruelty as a young man(18 years old) at his private school, his toting his dog nine hours on a roof, and his awful guidance to women as a Bishop of his church trying to persuade them to make choices not in their best interest. He also started his business life by dealing with a mafia like family from South America. There's probably more but Romney does not care to make much of his life an open book. His tithing even, that his wife counts as generosity, is at the minimum. Further less than 1% of LDS activities goes to help people in their community. It supports missionary work and internal agencies to make sure congregants toe the line. The latter is called "The Members Committee." Even the head of the Mormon Church, Mr. Purdy, claims ignorance of its operations. It seems like a "Skull and Bones Society" embedded in a very rich secretive institution. Behind Mr. Romney's wooden appearance is an ideology that is reminiscent of an era of limited freedoms. I won't vote for him no matter how much they gussy up his biography.
George Romney sounds like he was a fascinating man. In some respects he may have been before his time.
Sadly, I don't know if his time will ever come at the rate we're going.
I'm dying over Romney, but the reason this race is close is because Obama's policys have failed. He can't run on his record! Notice how they can't run on Obamocare, stimulus, jobs, housing, GDP, unemployment or the deficit? Please stop the nonsense blaming everything on Bush. The voters don't believe it. Luckly for him, the Obot media is making this race into a popularity contest. Boston Globe, you want a county like the P.I.G.S? Obama is on track! "Yes, we can!"
Oh Please. Even the Washington Post review says: "D'Souza, who narrates the film with the buttery smoothness of a therapist, intersperses talking-head interviews with footage of himself poring over Obama's memoir "Dreams from My Father," like a psychological detective, while visiting Indonesia, Hawaii and Kenya. As readers of the Forbes article know, the central thesis of "2016" is that Obama's worldview -- his "compass," as D'Souza calls it -- was largely shaped by the anti-colonialist, anti-white and anti-Christian politics of Obama's supposedly radical Kenyan father. Never mind that Obama, growing up, spent precious little time with the man, who for most of his son's early life was estranged from Obama's mother. D'Souza trots out a professional psychologist to speculate on how the senior Obama's absence reinforced his influence, rather than weakened it."
Obamacare: your kids are insured if you are; your pre-existing conditions don't make you ineligible; insurance companies must reveal how much they actually spend on patient care. You telling me that's not a record of achievement? Nonsense!
Stimulus: The nation was bleeding 800,000 jobs PER MONTH when Bush left office. We've had 27 straight months of private sector JOB GROWTH. OK, so 25,000+ per month is not where we need to be, but, yes: that IS a record of achievement.
Housing: slowly, slowly the housing market is recovering, but not like the massive bubble that Un-regulated lending under Bush created. Romney/Ryan want to _eliminate_ the scrutiny and allow a repeat of the disaster of the Bush years. Yes, that is a record of achievement for Obama!
Deficit: growth of the federal government under Obama has _slown_ compared to ... Bush I & II, Reagan, Clinton. In fact, slowest in SIXTY years. And yet, Republicans complain that they could do better... when they have shown nothing but HUGE deficits!
Obama's record of achievement-- saving us from the disaster that Bush and the Republican congress caused. We're not where we want to be, but we have certainly come a long way!
Kate, Thank you for taking the time to reply. Can you tell me when the Globe has done a similar piece on the history of Barack Obama's liberal views? To my knowledge, it never has. Clearly, the roots of Obama's radicalism lie deep in his past. A serious news source would runs parallel exposes on both candidates. By focusing only on Romney, it is revealing its bias.
....... hi !
No one will ever accuse Romney of not knowing which way the wind is blowing, but if he is inaugurated this January, will he then be able to lead rather than flutter in the breeze? I wish I had an answer but all I can come up with is 'I don't know.' At present I am looking at two poor choices, or a protest vote for a third party. It's not a good 'place' to be.
I think there's a point buried in many of your posts, but the belabored L - O - L repetition (LOL will do just fine, btw) is too distracting.