Showing posts with label Romney. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Romney. Show all posts

September 26, 2012

The Passing Parade on Romney's 47% comment

At The Passing Parade, David, an acerbic commenter on the Scots-Irish culture of his home state of Tennessee, offers an unusual perspective on Mitt Romney's 47% comment:
Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney isn't "dog-whistling" about race when he writes off 47% of the American electorate. Blacks are only 12% of the US population, not 47%. Much of the shortfall is white troops, teachers, vets, unemployed, students, retirees. This means Romney is bundling them with the fewer than 12% of people who are crack-dealers etc. who are on welfare. Finally, a Republican who doesn't see race. 
Perhaps the GOP can stress that in campaign ads. "Lost your job? Received unemployment checks? Chances are, you're white, but Mitt isn't racist. He thinks YOU'RE scum, too." 
Such an ad would probably play well in red states such as Tennessee, despite this state's being a net taker of federal funds and much of its employment's being government employment. 
Which leads your seldom blogger to his point. Don't give up yet on Romney's presidential bid. For American voters are as reliable as Pavlov's dogs, if certain bells are rung. We all know that "strong defense" works, but "hard work" works even better. "Useless eaters" gives many a disabled vet a tingle. They will climb mountains and swim rivers to get to vote for more outsourcing, fewer government services, and higher taxes on themselves or their families. "I'm not a victim," they will assert even as they take up residence in their American-flag-festooned cars and Mitt goes to China on a junket.

By the way, David has attempted to translate Benjamin Franklin's crucial but difficult 1751 essay Observations Concerning the Increase of Mankind into 21st Century English here. Seems like it needs a better opening paragraph, but it's pretty useful after that. I wouldn't mind seeing side-by-side versions, original and modernized.

August 29, 2012

Romney and the Mormons

I actually like Mitt Romney, but I have no idea if he'll make a good President. 

One concern I've heard is the notion that he's a prime product of the general healthiness of Mormon culture. Mormons try to set up their lives to have a lot of good influences from other Mormons around them. But it gets pretty lonely in the White House, and it's a new set of challenges. (Also, despite his looks, he's not young anymore.)

By way of analogy, think of the late Neil Armstrong. He was a prime product of the general healthiness of mid-20th Century American culture (which Mormons continue continue to espouse, which is why they are considered so weird and creepy today). American culture had systems in place that produced a lot of competent, brave, altruistic, and modest people, few more so than Armstrong. And part of that modesty was that he didn't much mind being viewed less as a unique superman and more as proof that the systems worked. He didn't run for President.

Today, we have a sense that our society's general systems don't work that well, so we are more invested in longshot hopes placed upon space oddities like Obama.

February 7, 2012

"The Real Romney"

In Taki's Magazine, I review The Real Romney, the new biography of the candidate:
The Creepily Normal Mormon 
In his new book Coming Apart: The State of White America, 1960-2010, master social scientist Charles Murray flavors his statistical portrait of the widening gap between the classes with some human interest by referring to the bottom 30% of American whites as “Fishtown” (after the gritty Philadelphia neighborhood) and the upper 20% as “Belmont” (after the leafy Boston suburb). 
Perhaps coincidentally, Belmont, MA has been home for the last four decades to GOP frontrunner Mitt Romney and his lovely wife Ann, ever since Mitt was at Harvard earning his JD and MBA degrees. 
Indeed, this patrician paterfamilias is almost a cartoon embodiment of Murray’s thesis about elites losing touch with the rest of America ...

Read the whole thing there.