So I have been doing a little reading about Mitt Romney’s father, George Romney. As you may know, George Romney was a Governor of Michigan in the 1960’s, and he was for much of 1967 the frontrunner for not only the GOP nomination for the Presidency, but also the Presidency itself as he was leading Lyndon Johnson in the polls at the time. What I didn’t know about George Romney is that he was not an American. Because he was never born here.
Here’s the story: George Romney’s grandparents, Mitt Romney’s great-grandparents, were polygamous Mormons who fled the United States with their children because of the federal government’s crackdown on polygamy at the turn of the last century. There, in 1907, in Galeana, Chihuahua, Mexico, George Romney was born. George Romney, Mitt Romney’s father, is a Mexican by birth. He was raised in Mexico during his childhood, until the Romney clan finally decided to return to America, illegally. So Mexican George Romney is also an illegal alien.
So this is rich on two levels. First, you have the whole Mexican immigration angle. The Republican base hates Mexicans. They hate immigration. Then you have the whole birther angle. Recall that the Republican teabagging base were screaming, despite all evidence to the contrary, that the President is not a natural born citizen (i.e. he was born somewhere else). The birther movement lost its media spotlight and some followers after the President released his long form birth certificate, but I guarantee you that many in the Republican base still believe that the President was not born in this country. And now they will be forced to accept a candidate whose father actually was not born in this country.
Indeed, when Romney was running for President himself, some questioned whether Romney was eligible to serve as President since was not a natural born citizen. But it surely did not become the firestorm that we witnessed with respect to President Obama. Perhaps if Romney’s campaign had lasted longer, it would have. But imagine for a moment that Barack Obama was in fact born in Kenya and tried the run for the Presidency himself. The press firestorm would have been what we saw earlier in 2011 when Trumps was riling them up, if not more so. But no outrage was expressed, then or now, regarding the presidential candidacy of illegal alien George Romney.
That’s probably because Mexican George Romney was white and rich. He looked like a “reel murkin.” And American Barack Obama is not and, apparently to the Republican base, does not.