I can say it now. I liked Romney. He seemed like a decent guy. A family man – sober and risk averse. A results oriented CEO. He reminded me of the kind of Republican Eisenhower might have hung out with. Sure, I have to overlook the vulture capital, company destroying parts of his biography, but I’ll chalk that part of his professional life up to just being in the game when that was considered fine. Sorta like being in baseball when using steroids was an open secret.
Similarly, and to his detriment, he happened to be a Republican politician when being sane was a sever disability. He also, as it turns out, didn’t have the strength of character to rise above the craziness that that modern GOP demands of its candidates.
That is the real tragedy of Mitt Romney. Just when the party could have used a rock to break the wave of insanity – and just when he was well positioned to be that rock, he decided to go with the flow. The GOP was in desperate need of an anti-Bush, and I think Romney could have been that guy. Instead he flip/flopped to beat the band and decided to pander to social conservatives. And still he panders to the “Club for Growth” zealots who somehow continue to believe that taxes (all taxes) are the enemy of free enterprise. As a business man, he knows that is hooey, but he still mouths the words that the moronic GOP jury wants to hear.
As a result, his campaigns all ended in a bog of crazy contradictions and off the cuff rationalizations. But it didn’t start that way for Mitt all those years ago. It started as something quite a bit more honest and decent.