Eugene Robinson Asks “Why Does Mitt Romney Want To Be President?”

Filed in National by on January 31, 2012

It’s a good question, and one that hasn’t been answered.  Go read Robinson’s article.

Here are a few snippets:

In the establishment’s best-case scenario, the party is left with Mitt Romney, a candidate whose core message, as far as I can tell, seems to be: “Yes, I made a ton of money. You got a problem with that?”

It is remarkable that the well-orchestrated blitzkrieg to save Florida for Romney was designed solely to raise doubts about Gingrich’s character and electability — rather than convince voters that Romney, on the merits, should be president. It makes you wonder whether the GOP luminaries supporting this guy really believe in him.

[…]

Gingrich, Rick Santorum and Ron Paul have all laid out bold visions — more properly, hallucinations — of where they would take the country. But where is Romney’s shining city on a hill? What’s his “compassionate conservatism,” his “hope and change”? What is it that Mitt Romney, deep in his heart or down in his gut, really believes in?

His closing sentences sums everything up:  “No matter how much he claims otherwise, the fact is that few people are envious of Romney’s business success. We just want to know if that’s all he has to offer.”

Mitt Romney and surrogates are running a campaign whose message consists of “Here’s why you shouldn’t vote for Newt.”  I imagine his campaign against Obama will be more of the same.  What’s missing is why you should vote for Romney.

He’s really going to have to answer that question.

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A stay-at-home mom with an obsession for National politics.

Comments (19)

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  1. pandora says:

    Wow! Wish I had seen this before I posted.

    Here’s a glimpse into a long, but fascinating, article:

    As this narrative has it, Americans are at least comfortable with old, familiar Mitt—heaven knows he’s been running long enough. He may be a bore and a flip-­flopper, but he doesn’t frighten the ­horses. His steady sobriety will win the day once the lunatic Newt has finished blowing himself up. As one prominent Romney surrogate, the Utah congressman Jason Chaffetz, has it, Romney is “the most vetted candidate out there.” Maybe—if you assume there will be no more questions about Bain, the Cayman Islands, the expunged internal records from Romney’s term as governor, or his pre-2010 tax returns. Or about the big dog that has yet to bark, and surely will by October: Romney’s long career as a donor to and lay official of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. But you can also construct an alternative narrative—that the vetting has barely even begun, and that the “Mitt Romney” we’ve been sold since 2008 is a lazy media construct, a fictional creation, or maybe even a hoax.

    For four years now, Republicans have been demonizing Barack Obama for his alleged “otherness”—trashing him as a less-than-real American pushing “anti-colonial,” socialist, and possibly Islamist ideas gleaned from a rogue’s gallery of subversive influences led by his Kenyan father, Saul Alinsky, and the Reverend Jeremiah Wright. And yet Romney is in some ways more exotic and more removed from “real America” than Obama ever was, his gleaming white camouflage notwithstanding. Romney is white, all right, but he’s a white shadow. He can come across like an android who’s been computer-­generated to be the perfect genial candidate. When forced to interact with actual people, he tries hard, but his small talk famously takes the form of guessing a voter’s age or nationality (usually incorrectly) or offering a greeting of “Congratulations!” for no particular reason. Richard Nixon was epically awkward too, but he could pass (in Tom Wicker’s phrase) as “one of us.” Unlike Nixon’s craggy face, or, for that matter, Gingrich’s, Romney’s does not look lived in. His eyes don’t show the mileage of a veteran fighter’s journey through triumphs and hard knocks—the profile that Americans prefer to immaculate perfection in a leader during tough times. Even at Mitt’s most human, he resembles George Hamilton without the self-deprecating humor or the perma-tan.

  2. ek says:

    Mitt would be the Stepford President. Just what corporate America wants.

  3. Que Pasa says:

    Indeed, Romeny is more vetted than Obama.

  4. socialistic ben says:

    We haven’t seem Romey’s birth certificate. He is the son of an illegal, therefor would open our boarders to untold hoards of heathen savages who are riddled with leprosy and the Plague! who knows WHERE Romney was born. I certainly dont! You cant say you do with any degree of certainty. It is up to Mitt Romney (if that is even his real name) to prove he is an American. Until then, we HAVE to assume he is a secret Frenchie who means to undermine america by replacing our ketchup with mayonnaise.

  5. MJ says:

    And we haven’t seen Rmoney’s college transcripts, either. What is he hiding?

    And I’ve heard that his mother is a dead ringer for Angela Landsbury, circa 1962.

  6. socialistic ben says:

    MItt Romney has offered no proof that he doesnt have 6 underage wives… each with no less than 3 children…. in a secret compound in Utah.

  7. Que Pasa says:

    So we’re going to cut open “boarders”? Gross!

    ‘Red Star’ Ben, take a deep breath and sit down, you’re hyperventilating.

    So what! Obama’s dad is a deadringer for a drunken goat herder and his mom, Stan(ley) ‘I-wish-you-were-a-Man’ Dunham, for her child-abusing, Commie-crat father.

  8. pandora says:

    Um… okay. I’d rather this thread stayed on topic. Who is Mitt Romney and why does he want to be President? I can’t answer those questions.

  9. socialistic ben says:

    HAH! that’s awesome. I did misspell, but i said nothing about cut. you dirty liar!

    I think you just called Obama’s dad gay? Dont you know that is a compliment around here? Shoot, someone called me gay the other day…. i now have a new favorite outfit.
    I swear QP, between you and Rusty, this place is getting lousy with performance artists. you arent really selling it as genuine. you have the “ignorant of pretty much everything” down cold. now try and work on your faux-intellectual phrasing. You’re doing well though. Always good for a chuckle.

  10. socialistic ben says:

    He’s w2… and not the tax form. (as if Mitt Romney has ever SEEN a W2.)
    He is running for president because he wants to do what daddy never did. More loser sons of (comparatively) “good” republicans. It’s a serious Oedipus complex. Romney’s position is, and has always been, what will get him the most votes.

  11. Geezer says:

    If you want to know why Mitt Romney is running, research the roots of his religion (google White Horse prophecy and see what comes up).

    People are going to learn a lot about Mormonism in the coming months, and I don’t think they’ll like much of what they learn. In short, it has every earmark of a cult — secret ceremonies (only Mormons can attend a Mormon wedding, for example), a church hierarchy that rewards donations with promotion, a vast business empire controlled by a small group of “elders,” etc.

    Mitt Romney is a church official of a rank that’s about equivalent to a Roman Catholic cardinal. Why isn’t that ever mentioned? We heard constantly that Mike Huckabee was a Baptist minister, a far lower position in a far less hierarchical organization.

  12. socialistic ben says:

    I dont know how i feel about using religious intolerance to defeat a conservative. The true bleeding heart in me wants to defend his extreme minority faith. Id rather he suffer an embarrassing loss because he has no idea, no spine, no convictions, and made millions by ruing the lives of people who worked for a living

  13. Geezer says:

    Yes, so would I. But then, I’m intolerant to almost all religions, so it’s not like I’m singling him out. I just think people should know that the church is run like a business, and that taking over the government has been part of its theology since its charlatan founder, Joseph Smith. Indeed, the religion’s stated goal was to turn the US into a theocracy. They’ve distanced themselves from that publicly, but I seriously doubt they’ve given up on it privately. I’m not going to help it happen.

  14. SussexAnon says:

    It is a pretty good question. The other three do have bold visions.

    I wonder if Mitt will pivot back to the middle after he gets the nomination. Running on his “moderate” governorship of Massachusetts. Trying to have it both ways on Romney/Obamacare, etc.

    His religion is pretty far down on the list of why Mitt should not be president.

    His biggest problem is not “why does he want to be president” its “why would anyone believe a word he says even if he told me”

  15. rustydils says:

    Why does Mitt Romney want to be President? This was sent to me by my brother. I hope you don’t mind me sharing it here.

    Jeff Dils updated his status: “Worth Reading For Those Of My Friends That Are Registered To Vote, Which Would Be All Of My Friends! On Romney’s character…. Sometimes, this facet of Romney’s personality isn’t so subtle. In July 1996, the 14-year-old daughter of Robert Gay, a partner at Bain Capital, had disappeared. She had attended a rave party in New York City and gotten high on ecstasy. Three days later, her distraught father had no idea where she was. Romney took immediate action. He closed down the entire firm and asked all 30 partners and employees to fly to New York to help find Gay’s daughter. Romney set up a command center at the LaGuardia Marriott and hired a private detective firm to assist with the search. He established a toll-free number for tips, coordinating the effort with the NYPD, and went through his Rolodex and called everyone Bain did business with in New York, and asked them to help find his friend’s missing daughter. Romney’s accountants at Price Waterhouse Cooper put up posters on street poles, while cashiers at a pharmacy owned by Bain put fliers in the bag of every shopper. Romney and the other Bain employees scoured every part of New York and talked with everyone they could – prostitutes, drug addicts – anyone. That day, their hunt made the evening news, which featured photos of the girl and the Bain employees searching for her. As a result, a teenage boy phoned in, asked if there was a reward, and then hung up abruptly. The NYPD traced the call to a home in New Jersey, where they found the girl in the basement, shivering and experiencing withdrawal symptoms from a massive ecstasy dose. Doctors later said the girl might not have survived another day. Romney’s former partner credits Mitt Romney with saving his daughter’s life, saying, “It was the most amazing thing, and I’ll never forget this to the day I die.” So, here’s my epiphany: Mitt Romney simply can’t help himself. He sees a problem, and his mind immediately sets to work solving it, sometimes consciously, and sometimes not-so-consciously. He doesn’t do it for self-aggrandizement, or for personal gain. He does it because that’s just how he’s wired. Many people are unaware of the fact that when Romney was asked by his old employer, Bill Bain, to come back to Bain & Company as CEO to rescue the firm from bankruptcy, Romney left Bain Capital to work at Bain & Company for an annual salary of one dollar. When Romney went to the rescue of the 2002 Salt Lake Olympics, he accepted no salary for three years, and wouldn’t use an expense account. He also accepted no salary as Governor of Massachusetts. Character counts!! (and yes…that’s worth reading again!)”

  16. DE Idealist says:

    “He sees a problem, and his mind immediately sets to work solving it…”

    Yea, like the time he tied his dog to the roof of his car for a 12 hour drive and it got sick.

    From the Boston Globe-

    “As the rest of the boys joined in the howls of disgust, Romney coolly pulled off the highway and into a service station. There he borrowed a hose, washed down Seamus and the car, then hopped back onto the highway. It was a tiny preview of a trait he would grow famous for in business: emotion-free crisis management.”

    What a great guy.

  17. SussexAnon says:

    Anyone wish to fact check this internet lore of Mitt Romney?

    Sending everyone to NYC to find the missing girl? Sounds like a tall tale to me.

  18. pandora says:

    I remember reading about this several years ago. Nice story, but not a reason as to why he wants to be President.

  19. Truth Teller says:

    Off Shore accounts are UN American therefore they are called Benedict Arnold accounts. Mittens if elected would be the puppet president with lots of strings attached