When Rick Santorum suspended his bid for the GOP Presidential nomination earlier this month what seemed inevitable finally came to pass; Mitt Romney became the presumptive GOP nominee.
Yet, with virtually no viable challengers left in the race Romney’s road to the Republican convention in Tampa, Florida seems to only get bumpier.
The GOP’s conservative base still doesn’t trust Romney and there is no empirical evidence they will fully coalesce around him in November. Those who endorse Romney’s candidacy seem to only do so begrudgingly. And for the last 10 days every prospective 2012 Republican candidate for vice-president from Florida (Marco Rubio, Jeb Bush) to Ohio (Rob Portman) is falling over themselves to deflect all “veep” talk attributed to them.
After his victory in New Hampshire in February Romney floated his hypothesis for the resistance to his ascendency.
Romney said President Obama is, “a leader who divides us with the bitter politics of envy.”
In other words, everybody’s hating on Mitt Romney because he’s rich simple and plain.
When a reporter asked Romney to clarify his assertion President Obama – and presumably all those who oppose him for that matter – are all simply guzzling Mitt “haterade,” Romney dug in his heels.
“You know, I think it’s about envy. I think it’s about class warfare,” Romney argued. “When you have a president encouraging the idea of dividing America based on 99 percent versus one percent, and those people who have been most successful will be in the one percent, you have opened up a wave of approach in this country which is entirely inconsistent with the concept of one nation under God,” Romney added.
Further, Romney suggested the only proper place to talk about wealth distribution, tax policy and Mitt’s money is in the privacy of “quiet rooms.”
The truth is nobody inherently hates Romney just because he’s rich; on the contrary the person who seems to be most uptight about Mitt Romney’s money is, Mitt Romney; at least talking about it. He has struggled mightily for years when he has had to discuss his vast wealth.
The reality is most people – on the right and the left – who don’t like Mitt Romney don’t like him because they don’t believe him…ever.
Romney is perhaps as well known for his frequent and prodigious flip-flops during his political career as he is for being the architect of universal healthcare for Massachusetts.
When a politician is charged with a flip-flop or that he or she misspoke or was less than forthcoming they are essentially being charged with lying.
And let’s be clear, ALL politicians lie; Democrats, Republicans, Independents all of them. In their world political expediency and veracity are often incongruous.
But, I’ve never witnessed a politician – on the national stage at least – lie with more ferocity than Willard Mitt Romney.
At the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) in February Romney emphatically declared, “I was a severely conservative Republican governor.”
Severely conservative…
Romney’s foreboding tone made it seem like he had been infected with a particularly virulent disease when he was governor of Massachusetts; as if he likened conservatism with malaria or Ebola.
But, maybe it just came off that way for Romney because, well, he was lying.
Before he became the 70th governor of Massachusetts, Romney ran to the left (!) of the late Ted Kennedy, “the liberal lion of the Senate,” on some issues.
“Look, I was an independent during the time of Reagan-Bush. I’m not trying to take us back to Reagan-Bush,” Romney exclaimed in 1994 before he offered a bit of ironic foreshadowing. “Ultimately, this is a campaign about change.”
When he ran for governor of Massachusetts in 2003 he described himself as, “not a partisan Republican,” but a “moderate” with “progressive” views.
That’s hardly the language of a “severely conservative Republican governor.”
And of course Romney delivered universal healthcare for Massachusetts – “Romneycare” – the unquestioned father of “Obamacare.” That nexus has been an endless reservoir of conservative consternation aimed at Romney and has been the bane – pardon the pun – of his political career.
Fast forward to 2012 past the litany of Romney’s infamous flip-flops connected to abortion, the second amendment and immigration to February 2012.
When Romney was asked if he supported the controversial contraception measure known as the Blunt amendment, Romney replied: “I’m not for the bill.” Then, he was even more specific about the issue. “The idea of presidential candidates getting into questions about contraception within a relationship between a man and a woman, husband and wife, I’m not going there,” Romney said in Ohio.
Literally, about an hour later Romney called into a conservative radio show in Boston and gleefully proclaimed, “Of course, I support the Blunt amendment…I thought he was talking about some state law that prevented people from getting contraception.”
Incredible…
Just this week Romney jumped on President Obama’s bandwagon on the issue of not allowing student loan interest rates to rise on July 1. But, about six weeks ago Romney told a high school senior at a town hall meeting, “it would be popular for me to stand up and say I’m going to give you government money to pay for your college, but I’m not going to promise that.”
This is who Mitt Romney is, whoever he needs to be whenever he needs to be it. And in the age of Youtube, that’s a precarious place to be.
