Romney is a scary figure. Remember he helped nix in-state tuition for DREAMERS in Massechussetts. He has announced some of the most virulent anti-immigration ideas - battling to sound worse than Rudy Guiliani. This week the New Yorker published a very descriptive article on Romney's background - makes you wonder what he's made of.
Yesterday he mis-spoke Barack Obama's name - called him the name of someone known as America's arch enemy. I just don't believe this was a Freudian slip (posted below New Yorker article)
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The New Yorker
The Political Scene
The Mission
Mitt Romney’s strategies for success.
by Ryan Lizza
October 29, 2007
..Romney’s transition from the boardroom to the campaign trail has been clumsy ... According to “Turnaround,” at Bain Capital, the investment firm that Romney headed, the partners suspected that their boss fostered a cutthroat competitive environment in order to motivate them. When he greets voters, this competitiveness often surfaces as posturing; chitchat turns into one-upmanship. After a voter at the New Hampshire diner told Romney, “My daughter goes to Michigan State,” he replied, “Oh, does she, really? My brother’s on the board of Michigan State.” When another patron said that she was from Illinois, Romney told her, “I won the straw poll at the Illinois Republican convention!” Romney’s most seemingly innocuous comments can be head-scratchers. Later that afternoon, standing next to a local supporter who had escorted him to several Derry businesses, Romney told reporters, “Now I understand why I’m going to be gaining a couple of pounds with him, because we’ve eaten everywhere we’ve gone, almost.” Romney, a fitness buff who is shown jogging in a recent campaign ad, had about half a frappe at the diner (he threw the rest away) and a cookie at a bakery—nothing at an Italian restaurant, a feed store, a scrapbook shop, or a hardware store.
Whatever gene causes hyper-competitive perfectionists always to go one step beyond their adversaries, or anyone else, Romney has it. Republican candidates inevitably criticize, with some accuracy, Democratic proposals on health care or taxes as being closer to the way things are done in Europe. Earlier in the day, before a crowd of New Hampshire college students, Romney said that the policies of Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, and John Edwards were similar to those of a Communist dictatorship. Their ideas, he said pointedly, “didn’t work for the Soviet Union...”
...Romney is a sixth-generation Mormon”—what scholars call a DNA Mormon. “His ancestors were some of the very first converts...”
Romney’s ancestors had important roles at every turning point in the Mormons’ dramatic nineteenth-century history. Mormonism was founded in western New York, in 1830, by Joseph Smith, after he claimed to have been visited by an angel who directed him to gold plates with inscriptions, which he “translated” into the Book of Mormon. In the eighteen-forties, Romney’s forefathers were present in Nauvoo, Illinois, a settlement established by Smith. After Smith’s murder, in 1844, which forced many persecuted Mormons to move westward, it was Mitt Romney’s great-great-grandfather who first explored the mountain pass leading down to the Salt Lake Valley, according to “Turnaround.” When, in the eighteen-nineties, the federal government cracked down on polygamy, again scattering Mormon families, Romney’s great-grandfather, who had five wives, was among those who fled to Mexico, where Romney’s father, George, was born, in 1907...
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Romney trips over his tongue
They say Osama, he says Obama -- but don't look for him to call the whole thing off.
By TOP OF THE TICKET, DON FREDERICK AND ANDREW MALCOLM
October 28, 2007
Los Angeles Times
So, Mitt Romney is in South Carolina talking to a Chamber of Commerce meeting about terrorism, which Republicans tend to do a lot more than Democrats. He was apparently referring to a recent audiotape, allegedly of Osama bin Laden calling on jihadists to assemble for the main fight in Iraq.
"Actually," Romney said, "just look at what Osam -- Barack Obama -- said yesterday. Barack Obama calling on radicals, jihadists of all different types, to come together in Iraq. That is the battlefield."
Romney spokesman Kevin Madden immediately admitted the mistake: "He misspoke. He was referring to the audiotape of Osama bin Laden and misspoke. It was just a mix-up."
Mix-ups are also opposition opportunities. Obama campaign spokesman Bill Burton said, "Apparently, Mitt Romney can switch names just as casually as he switches positions."
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LA Times: http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-ticket28oct28,0,2497649.story?coll=la-home-nation
The New Yorker: http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2007/10/29/071029fa_fact_lizza
photo: http://itchmo.com/wp-content/uploads/2007/06/mitt_romney.jpg
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