Current political reporting focusing on the horse race, instant polls, and daily messages and gaffes, often misses any sort of historical narrative o put things in perspective, marketing candidates like toothpaste: whitening, prevents cavities, and tastes good too.
Yum, minty fresh.
This ignores the reality of politics involves resolving competing interests; no human society could ever have it all.
Some starry eyed progressives believed election of an African American President would usher in a new era of progressive politics writ large across the land, ignoring the reality of an opposition party committed from day 1 and misusing the filibuster tactic in the US Senate to stop any hint of progress.
They ignore the reactionary elements of the Republican'ts and RepubliKKKans who still fight battles against the New Deal of Franklin Delano Roosevelt.
People miss the reactionary right ward drift of the modern Republican't Party terrified of their lunatic right wing elements and the 14 old, white angry billionaires who fund the trend: the PAC's, foundations, and 501 c3 organizations.
George Romney, Willard's father and historically one of the last of the extinct breed of reasonable Republicans, walked out of the 1964 national convention to protest the capture by conservatives and their plan--which continues to this day--of using racially charged code words to inflame prejudices and influence votes.
Willard, alas, shows no such courage nor convictions.
[A few years earlier, George Romney had been the front runner for the Republican nomination for president. Romney was probably tied with Nelson Rockefeller as the most preferred candidate of the liberal and moderate Republicans, largely from the Midwest and Northeast, who wanted to regain control of the party following the devastating defeat of conservative Barry Goldwater in 1964. A 1966 New Yorker story declared Romney the leading contender for 1968 — so long as someone didn’t come along who would unite the Republican Party’s warring Goldwater and Rockefeller wings. Someone, the article says, like Richard Nixon.
It’s not hard to imagine that the 21-year-old Mitt Romney, freshly returned from his Mormon mission tour abroad shortly after the 1968 election, noticed that his father, a dedicated public servant with a passion for social justice, lost the nation’s top job to a notoriously unprincipled paranoiac whose main qualification for the presidency was an unchecked willingness to do literally anything to reach it. The guy who didn’t believe in anything won.] emphasis added
http://www.salon.com/2012/08/26/george_romney_braver_than_mitt/
1 comment:
Mittens' spiritual father is Bill Bain. I suspect that he regards his own father as a miserable failure.
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