George Romney opposed Barry Goldwater's extreme rhetoric
This exchange between Mitt Romney’s father – then Michigan governor George Romney – and Barry Goldwater, the Republican nominee at the time, is fascinating.
Actually, it’s especially fascinating given that Ron Paul is in the race against Romney-the-younger this time around, and Paul shares many of Goldwater’s more unfortunate views on the Civil Rights Act. He also has some of the same dubious associations.
Don’t get me wrong, I still think Ron Paul comes off as a heck of a lot less crazy than someone like Santorum, and leaps and bounds more honest than Romney, but the Ron Paul newsletters raise many of the same concerns about Paul’s past choices as George Romney raises about some of Goldwater’s associations.
Meanwhile, Mitt Romney displays none of his father’s courage or frankness, none of his honesty whatsoever. The younger Romney comes across as a fake, through and through.
It’s too bad, really. Reading George Romney one does realize how badly this country needs two grown-up parties and not one grown-up party and one party throwing a perpetual temper tantrum.
At a time when the Republican ticket consisted of a man who opposed the Civil Rights Act, George Romney was saying things like: “The assassination of Martin Luther King is a great national tragedy. At a time when we need aggressive nonviolent leadership to peacefully achieve equal rights, equal opportunities and equal responsibilities for all, his leadership will be grievously missed.” George Romney even marched in civil rights marches.
Of course, these days we have Newt Gingrich saying that the first black president is the “food-stamp president” and that black people are all dependent on government largess. And we have Rick Santorum saying that women really ought to be governed by the laws of Christ rather than the laws of America when it comes to their own bodies.
Wouldn’t it be nice if George Romney’s son could speak out against this sort of nonsense the way his father spoke out against similar nonsense several decades ago?
I can’t really argue with the meat of this post, Erik, but the title doesn’t sit well with me. I don’t think we can judge Romey’s worthiness as a son (or person) based on his abilities or habits as a politician.
I see where you’re going with the title. The contrast between the father and the son is a useful context for analysis, but the title seems just a bit too personal.
It’s a quote from the post I link to, actually.
Apologies. (I should have noticed the quotation marks.)
I know this is your ‘act like a partisan loon’ blog but that headline is pretty over-the-top. If Romney Sr. were alive todat something tells me he would not be basing his assessment of how good a son Mitt is on his political performance. Parenthood runs a little deeper than that. By all accounts Mitt and his father were EXTREMELY close. Suggesting that the father deserved better is a really low blow.
Oh yes, this is my “act like a partisan loon blog” Mike. And you accuse me of low blows. Uhm, mind if I tell you to fish off?
Oh come on Erik. Have a little thicker skin. This is an EXTREMEMLY partisan blog and you have admitted as much. When you announced it to the League you said (emphasis mine),
“My blog at Forbes has gradually morphed into a tech blog. I write about all sorts of tech stuff there now – from social media to video games to the politics of SOPA and, of course, my craft beer reviews. But politics, in the “Mitt Romney is secretly the anti-Christ” variety, are out.”
and…
“This [The League] is where I write about the way that craft breweries might embody how liberal politics can move beyond organized labor – not where I write about how Gingrich is a cheating, lying, duplicitous son-of-a-bitch.”
and…
“I don’t want to crowd up the front page…with my snarky potshots at Rick Santorum.”
So… the partisanship charge seems beyond dispute. You yourself admitted to snark. Maybe ‘loon’ was a bit of a cheap shot, so my apologies, but that’s sort of how I feel about ALL partisanship of this type.
Not sure if partisan is the right word. Loon I’m fine with.
LOL. I’m sure that called Einstein a loon too.
Romney (the junior) is just the kind of politician that worries me the most: I’m not sure he believes much of anything at all. Why does he want to become president? It’s certainly not because he has a vision of society he wants to share or promote. Really, it’s because he’s a rich guy who’s given himself a lofty goal for his own self-improvement / satisfaction. I wish he’s just go to Landmark Forum instead. George H.W. Bush was another one: the Bush that ran for office was completely different than the one that ran in 1988; nevertheless, even though he ran for office in a pretty shameless way (Willie Horton / Karl Rove / Lee Atwater), he governed pretty much as a centrist. And many people who have worked with him have spoken of his innate decency, and I’ll take them at his word.
Romney may turn out to have some inner decency, as well, but I hope never to have the opportunity to find out: I have never, in my 54 years, seen a politician quite as shameless as Romney. His misrepresentations of Obama’s record and positions, and his pandering to the Republican primary base, is so shameless that I think that Grover Norquist had it exactly right: he would be a weak president that would be compelled to follow the party line wherever it went.
Republicans–and a lot of the rest of America–and long posited that the government should be run like a business. George W. Bush (our first MBA president!) and Romney test that theseis: they seem as autocratic, and ends-over-means directed as a corporation. So Bush, when he decided to go to war, he approached the task of achieving “consensus” as a businessman would: by engaging in a marketing campaign that withheld some facts, distorted others, and treated its aim as the correct positioning and branding of the War In Iraq.
Similarly, Romney markets, making representations that he clearly knows are untrue, promises he will never be able to keep, and splaying himself before the media in precisely the way that his marketing consultants tell him to. That he does it so badly suggests that maybe there is a sliver of conscience inside the man, but I wouldn’t want to take the risk.
So yes, I would agree with your thesis: George Romney did indeed deserve a better Android.
A better android – that’s good. At one point I thought that maybe Romney would just govern as a basic moderate – no big deal. Now I don’t know. The shamelessness of his campaign is unsettling at best.
I think we’ve got one party throwing a perpetual temper tantrum and another party (or at least president) with the people-pleasing manner of an adult child of an alcoholic.
As for Mitt, best part of him ran down his father’s leg.
At a time when the Republican ticket consisted of a man who opposed the Civil Rights Act, George Romney was saying things like: “The assassination of Martin Luther King is a great national tragedy. At a time when we need aggressive nonviolent leadership to peacefully achieve equal rights, equal opportunities and equal responsibilities for all, his leadership will be grievously missed.”
Sen. Goldwater was the Republican nominee in 1964. Dr. King was assassinated in April 1968, nearly four years after Goldwater lost to Johnson.
The quote from Romney must have come from 1968, when Richard Nixon was the Republican nominee.
It’s fine and proper to criticize Goldwater and to contrast him with Romney the Elder, but the sentence above, as written, presents a false comparison and is misleading. If you wish, compare 1964 Goldwater with 1964 Romney.
Good point. Thanks.
Mike Dwyer: Mitt Romney is a slick, plastic Ken Doll with the mendacity of Joe Isuzu. He’s the most transparently, shamelessly dishonest person I’ve ever seen in politics. And you think this is just about his “political performance”?
Do you compartmentalize the behavior of Madoff or Blagojevich in the same way as just “business practices” or “politics”?
Hey, maybe Heinrich Himmler really loved his kids — you can’t just judge him by that stuff he did at work, right?
Mitt ran Massachussets. Do the people there also make Nazi analogies to that time?
If there’s a Nazi analogy to be made about “that time” in Massachusetts, it lies in Mitt’s strenuous insistence that “it never happened.”
It’s too bad, really. Reading George Romney one does realize how badly this country needs two grown-up parties and not one grown-up party and one party throwing a perpetual temper tantrum.
I assume that you mean Republicans by the latter, but are you seriously suggesting that that’s not also a perfectly valid description of the Democrats?
No Democrats have other descriptors. Like “contemptuous” and “unprincipled.”
Pingback: Let’s Review: David Brooks Really Is a Boil on the Body Politic « The Inverse Square Blog