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May 23, 2013
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 Bitter Primary Reveals the Real RomneyPosted on Jan 12, 2012By Joe Conason For Mitt Romney, Tuesday night’s triumph in the New Hampshire primary offered a tempting opportunity to gloat. Such unattractive conduct is no longer surprising from the Republican front-runner, who is enduring the gradual disclosure of his personality. The hot Romney video of the moment displays him telling the Nashua, N.H., Chamber of Commerce: “I like being able to fire people who provide services to me,” and went viral not because of its specific context, which wasn’t particularly damning, but because the public perceives the remark as a distillation of elite heartlessness. Every decent person who has had to fire someone knows that doing so—under almost any circumstances—is unpleasant, difficult and frequently wrenching. To boast that you “like to fire people” after observing years of economic pain among the jobless suggests a deep defect that, to most Americans, may disqualify Romney from the presidency. Of course, that quote could have been a peculiar gaffe or a meaningless slip, but it wasn’t. There is no shortage of evidence, emanating mostly from his own mouth, that privilege, arrogance and entitlement are major features of Romney’s character. Sometimes the telltale comment has the additional frisson of weirdness, like his offer to bet “$10,000” that Rick Perry couldn’t prove Romney had said the Massachusetts health care reform should be a national model in a book he had written—or his more recent boast that he had forced the late Ted Kennedy to “take out a mortgage on his house” to defeat Romney in their 1994 Senate race. That quip about the Kennedy mortgage came during the final days of the New Hampshire primary campaign, during which Romney also recalled his father George telling him not to enter politics if he would need to win in order to “pay off a mortgage”—which seemed to mean that only those wealthy enough not to worry about family expenses should seek public service. Advertisement The issue of Bain Capital and Romney’s role there has exposed a degree of arrogance, as he tries to portray his company’s ruthless, single-minded and often destructive quest for super-profits as a noble effort to support American employment. Only a fool would believe the inventive claim that under his stewardship, Bain created a net 100,000 jobs, but Romney evidently takes us all for fools. In the same vein, his disgusting assault on the patriotism of Jon Huntsman, a man Romney has known all his life, betrayed a sense that he can deceive stupid voters into believing a patent untruth. And then there are his phony professions that he understands hardship and sacrifice, that he worked his way up, that he suffered privation and insecurity—which demonstrate only that he believes he can appropriate the experience of others to serve himself. This may truly be the ultimate in entitled behavior. No doubt we will be seeing more of the real Mitt as the campaign wears on. By the end nobody will be able to say that, in his own way, he didn’t try to warn us.
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By Devon J. Noll, MPA, January 12, 2012 at 10:29 am Link to this comment
(Unregistered commenter)
I grew up with people like Mitt Romney, and as I watched him make his victory speech in NH, I recognized the same arrogance that I saw growing up. Which is why I suppose, I find the tendency of the media to refer to Democrats as “elitist” so maddening. Mitt Romney is the living embodiment of elitist, as are the likes of Eric Cantor and Rand Paul and other millionaires and billionaires in Congress.
If you watch Romney’s body language, there is a sense that one is watching someone of nobility walking around on a stage, preening for the mobs who adore them. There is very little humility in sight and certainly there is a sense that he is pandering to the crowd, telling them only what they want to hear, without actually being honest about his intentions. This is why he comes across as flip-flopping so much - he is a phony in his respect for the crowds. Just like very king ever born.
When you have a nation which elects people based on their looks (as we have done in the last 30 years)and their money (which will happen more in 2012 than ever before), you get nations that quickly dissolve into dictatorships because those leaders think that they are better than those that they govern. It level of arrogance is very clearly a mark of the GOP politicians, from Romney to Gingrich, from Perry to Santorum and Huntsman. They are the true elitists and yet they are never called out on this claim that they are “just one of the guys, the guy you want to have a beer with”. If these guys, any of them, ever drank beer, it was imported and it was never chugged!
It is time for us to be looking for a candidate that actually has lived not just the life of the wealthy, but also the life of the poor. Who has lost everything in order to understand that people need more than fine words written by others or good looks or money to govern. We need someone who puts our nation’s welfare and its people’s welfare first, not corporate welfare. We thought we had that in President Obama, but instead of Roosevelt, we got Clinton Redux and all that goes with it.
We need bold plans and we need someone who will be honest and strong and will fight for us. Please go to http://www.weeeevoteamerica2012.org and to YouTube under Devon Noll, and watch the videos as I put them up, go to the links and support my campaign or the find the campaign links on the website for your state and run yourself for Congress and state legislatures.
Control of Congress is what is really needed, and then whoever is in the White House becomes irrelevant. The GOP knows this, that is why despite all the GOP theatrics on the campaign trail, their real money will go into the local elections for Congress. If we ignore this, we all lose. Stand up to the GOP and Blue Dog Dems in 2012, and send to Congress Independent, Non-Affiliated (INA) or real Progressives like Elizabeth Warren or Alan Grayson, not Pelosi and her pack. Then hold them accountable to make this nation better through continued pressure for bold new bills to create bold new programs to put this country back on track.
And, do not be fooled by good looks or fancy phrases, the Mitt Romneys of this world have a great deal of power, and they are dangerous because they do not look at you or me as human. We are just units of labor and units of consumption - numbers with no real humanity. That is their arrogance and that is what being an elite means. Do not be fooled by them - they would be kings by divine right!
Report thisBy race_to_the_bottom, January 12, 2012 at 8:13 am Link to this comment
Everyone needs to see this absolutely devastating video. Almost a full half hour (!) exposé of Mitt Romney’s life as a corporate raider by a PAC supporting Newt Gingrich.
http://www.winningourfuture.com/
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BLWnB9FGmWE
Report thisBy George Luce, January 12, 2012 at 7:57 am Link to this comment
(Unregistered commenter)
Actually, according to my research, former University of Oklahoma coach, Barry Switzer is credited with the remark about being born on third base. He said it in an interview in 1986. Witty pundit, Jim Hightower also used it in reference to the whole Bush family, perre et fille. Video clips show Ann Richards using the phrase, but I’m unable to find an attribution crediting Molly Ivins, although I can “hear” her saying it in her wonderful Texas twang.
Report thisBy balkas, January 12, 2012 at 7:30 am Link to this comment
what romney had said, usa had said not so much in words but in deeds.
Report thisso-called far and religious right is just more truthful than not so far
right.
that is why i like romney better than obama. and if romney get’s elected,
expect the same worsening that would have happened if obama
continued in office.
whatever, expect only worsening! thus, the shocks you’d go thru would
not shock as much! thanks
By oddsox, January 12, 2012 at 6:28 am Link to this comment
Watch for those who quote Romney’s “like to fire” line to leave out the “being able to” part, just as my Joisey friend, ITW has.
The critical difference being Romney’s statement was about having options.
Choices born of competition in the marketplace.
In this case, Romney likes not being forced to accept, government-mandated health insurance.
Taken out of it true context, the statement has been twisted for the political benefit of his opponents. Watch for columnists like Joe Conason to miss the context as well.
Romney’s quote in full context:
“I want individuals to have their own insurance. That means the insurance company will have an incentive to keep you healthy. It also means if? you don’t like what they do, you can fire them. I like being able to fire people who provide services to me.”
“If someone doesn’t give me the good service that I need, I want to say I’m going to go get someone else to provide that service to me.”
But lest we become distracted, the real issue for this election will be not be which base Romney was born upon (any more than it will be about Obama’s place of birth).
It’ll be about Jobs.
Report thisBy Inherit The Wind, January 12, 2012 at 5:07 am Link to this comment
I must admit that while I didn’t think much of Mitt Romney a few months ago, just as one of the few sane competitors on the GOP side, as more and more is revealed, we see him as a heartless, ruthless, unfeeling, selfish hypocrite, with a vicious streak.
He LIKES to fire people when he thinks they don’t perform. As Conason points out, ANY decent person hates firing people, even when they richly deserve it. My dad had a small business and he wouldn’t sleep the night before he had to fire someone. I’ve had to do it as well—you are terribly disrupting someone else’s life, and even when you KNOW they have to be fired, deserve to be fired, and you cannot stand the person, it’s still the rottenest, most awful thing I ever had to do as a manager. When interviewed for another job, I was asked what I liked least about my previous job and that was my answer: Firing someone.
But Mitt Romney LIKES to fire people. Yeah, he tried to temper it with “only bad people who don’t perform” but it still reveals an elitism that never, EVER could imagine or empathize with the victim of his “like”.
It now comes out, as a Mormon bishop, he told a young, unmarried woman with one child and pregnant with her second, that if she didn’t give him up for adoption she would be excommunicated!
And let’s not forget him forgetting about the dog strapped to the roof of his car as he merrily drove down the highway for hours. Forget your dog???? I can’t imagine Obama forgetting Bo, or George W. Bush forgetting that nasty little Scotty he had.
(BTW, it was Molly Ivins, not Ann Richards who coined the third-base description of GWB)
Report thisBy thebottom99pct, January 12, 2012 at 1:36 am Link to this comment
(Unregistered commenter)
It is civil war within the Republican party.
What does it all say about conservatives and capitalism?
In a searing critique Wednesday, MSNBC Host and former Republican
Congressman Joe Scarborough lashed out at the hypocrisy of his own party over
the past “horrifying decade.”
Scarborough’s laundry list of grievances is shocking in its candor, outlining how
Republican leadership has failed the conservative cause.
But “Morning Joe” may have missed the larger point on a major issue that
continues to outrage millions of Americans.
Watch the clip here: http://thebottom99percent.com/morning-joes-joe-
Report thisscarborough-a-dismal-decade/