Mitt Romney is often his own worst enemy

The Salt Lake Tribune ^ | 1-11/08 | RB Scott

[colorcountry]

BOSTON - Several months ago, W. Mitt Romney said presciently that he had only himself to fear.

Despite his millions, the picture-perfect family and an overpowering campaign organization, Romney becomes his own worst nightmare every time he dishes half-truths and exaggerations and dissembles about his religious and political views, pointlessly trying to persuade the so-called Christian Right that he is one of them.

If it continues, he may not win his party's nomination. The irony, which his halting marches through Iowa and New Hampshire underscored is this: No Republican candidate is better qualified, organized or energized to take on the Democrats.

Substantive general election debates between Romney and either Barack Obama or Hillary Clinton are exactly what the American electorate wants and needs. It could happen if Romney would stop with the intellectual pandering that only suggests he may have lost track of the consistent personal convictions he once had, ones necessary to be the world's reliable "go to" guy.

Unlike his inspirational father, whose candidacy imploded over a single, truthfully fervent, if ill-considered broadside ("When I came back from Vietnam, I'd just had the greatest brainwashing that anybody can get."), Mitt's protracted scuttling of his own campaign is excruciating and bone-headed.

Romney mangled his father's stellar civil rights legacy by exaggerating George's relationship with Martin Luther King. Instead of apologizing, he set his flacks to parsing and spinning.

Romney's inability to empathize with common folk is longstanding. As an LDS stake president, he was kind, though often impatient and patronizing, with members who didn't measure up. Once, he joked that a church-sponsored social group for older single adults he championed was a club for "quitters and losers."

Instead of the noblesse oblige expected of one so well-born, recall his bumbling as he praised a New Hampshire baker by evoking memories of a similar bakery "near my father's summer home." Or, the unintentional one-upping he gave the proud father of a daughter at Michigan State: "My brother's on the board of trustees."

When Mitt finally threw his hat in the political ring nearly 15 years ago, friends assumed the acorn had fallen near the stalwart oak. The son would be smart, kind and perhaps slightly cagier than the old man. The son would talk proudly about his principled dad who recognized that Martin Luther King stood for the right. He would rhapsodize about the '64 GOP convention in San Francisco when his proud father rose indignantly and stalked out, a visually arresting slap at the heavy-handed soldiers of the radical right.

One would expect that no son-of-George would ever allow one of the more guileless members of his campaign team to take the fall for its misbegotten attempt to involve LDS Church leaders in its efforts to secure support from BYU-affiliated business school groups. But Mitt did.

One would think no heir-to-George would pin blame on his eldest son for the illegal immigrants working in the family garden. But Mitt did. No loyal husband would gracelessly roll his own wife under the bus ("Her contributions are for her and not for me. Her positions are not terrible [sic] relevant to my campaign.") to dodge accountability for his own previous support for Planned Parenthood.

Would anyone think less of Romney if, instead, he had responded with indignation? He might have said, but didn't: "No member of my team should discuss fundraising schemes with an apostle of my church." Or, "I should have canned that lawn service myself long ago." Or, "Planned Parenthood funds many programs worth supporting that have nothing to do with abortion."

The question of the moment is this: Have his recent limited successes in Iowa and New Hampshire given the tin man new heart and fresh courage? At long last, will the moderate independent thinker who was an early supporter of the nonpartisan Concord Coalition that promoted fiscally sound and socially responsible public policies, the real Mitt Romney, finally stand-up?

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* RB SCOTT is a founding editor of People magazine and writer for Life magazines. He has followed Mitt Romney's political career since 1993.

[JohnnyZ]

I really think that Independents are his worst enemy.

It's true that Mitt is very, very unpopular with independents. There's no way he could win a general election.

[Colofornian]

"Forget everything that I have said, or what President Brigham Young or George Q. Cannon or whomsoever has said in days past that is contrary to the present revelation. We spoke with a limited understanding and without the light and knowledge that now has come into the world. We get our truth and our light line upon line and precept upon precept. We have now had added a new flood of intelligence and light on this particular subject, and it erases all the darkness and all the views and all the thoughts of the past. They don’t matter any more." - Bruce R McConkie about the 1978 Revelation.

"Don't pay attention to that man behind the curtain," booms the voice amidst smoke & thunder.

(What we forget about that movie, the Wizard of Oz, is that the Wizard was a fraud...he wasn't who he said at all! He intimidated people into spiritual battles. He gave unearned degrees of education; he gave metals of no value; and then when he was needed the most at the end, he took off!) Let us NOT forget that for LDS, apostles (like McConkie) and prophets are interchangeable. And secondly, "apostles" like McConkie told BYU students in the early 80s NOT to seek a "special relationship" with Jesus Christ.

Has the LDS Church ever retracted McConkie's writings or talks? (None officially) Has the LDS Church ever claimed any of his teachings were heresy? (No)

[BlueMoose]

this is just more of the back door campaign.

[BlueMoose]

And secondly, “apostles” like McConkie told BYU students in the early 80s NOT to seek a “special relationship” with Jesus Christ.

[BlueMoose]

Just more of the same.

[BlueMoose]

And secondly, “apostles” like McConkie told BYU students in the early 80s NOT to seek a “special relationship” with Jesus Christ.

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WOW

[EverOnward]

RB Scott is full of himself. A little google shows that although he considers himself as a "not particularly devout mormon," he rambles on at length as if he's an authority of the church he purports to be estranged from.

See:

http://www.themuss.net/catchingmitt/

He's evidently part of the Sunstone crowd. Anyone familiar with them knows they're kooked out liberal mormons that are half-way ashamed they are. They consider themselves great intellects, yet like cows they chew the same old cud: attacking the church from within on various points inconsistent with their liberal views. They were the libbers back in in the ERA days who wore black arm bands to church and used Sonia Johnson like a puppet to parrot their pro-ERA, anti-Mormon bilge.

Another google shows they're still in business attempting to be elitist, intellectual snobs who think they know more than the Prophet, the Pope and 1,000 ministers combined.

[Domandred]

And secondly, "apostles" like McConkie told BYU students in the early 80s NOT to seek a "special relationship" with Jesus Christ.

The speech that came from was "Our Relationship with the Lord" - March 2 1982

You might actually read the whole thing to understand what he was saying instead of taking words out of context.

[Radix]

Romney got to be a great man by living a great life.

Romney got to be Governor here by nuances, and by the good fortune that his opponent back then was a freaking mentally challenged sacrificial lamb.

Romney compromised a lot in his deal with the Devil to become Governor of Massachusetts. At the time, I was elated, that he out politicized the politicians.

Most of the Massachusetts Legislature rascals were unwilling to give up their safe seats, and so mentally challenged but big boobed Shannon O’Brien got the Democrat Party nod that year, and Mitt romped.

Mitt was targeted by the scum over at Be-A-Con Hill by the entrenched political machine, and the local media from day one as Governor. An office for which he refused any salary.

I wish that I had the time or interest to indulge the ignorant out here who would stick a knife into the heart of a man who has proved in every area of his life that he is decent and competent.

Well, some of his campaign comments are troubling when viewed in the light of critics who tolerate hypocrisy unbounded by career politicians, but hold this man here to a standard unseen before in my surveillance of prior campaigns.

I like Hunter and Thompson a lot, but Mitt is not less of a conservative despite the BS that has been spewed out here concerning him over the last year and more.

[BlueMoose]

And secondly, “apostles” like McConkie told BYU students in the early 80s NOT to seek a “special relationship” with Jesus Christ.

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tHANK yOU > as i thought this is not what was said. Again some are not truthful.

[P-Marlowe]

Romney is the Chameleon Candidate.

I got this picture of him standing near a wall.

[TheLion]

I hate to rain on the Romney hate parade but this is one of the dumbest articles I have ever read. This clown must support Huckabee or Fred.

[BlueMoose]

“Romney, a Mormon, also trails Huckabee, an evangelical, in devoutly Christian South Carolina.”

Ah, so according to the “Tribune Style Guide”: “Mormons” are not “Christians.” The Trib returns to its anti-Mormon roots!

[BlueMoose]

” I suspect that the worst case scenario for the Tribune is a presidential race in which Romney goes up against whoever the Democrats nominate. A man of substance who earned his way to millions, who is intelligent, does not demagogue and rabble rouse, does not try to provoke factionalism and jealousy, and who has a record of integrity and unselfish public service, Romney would be a stark contrast to anyone the Democrats are likely to nominate.”

From Tribs Comments.