Last week scientists in China announced that they had unearthed the remains of a birdlike dinosaur the size of a T-rex, a finding that will challenge what is known about the evolutionary process for birds. Speaking of weird species that could change our thinking on the progress of nature, let’s knock the wheels off the Mitt Romney bandwagon right now.
Just as a giant lizard bird seems unlikely and thus easily dismissed, so are we ignoring Romney’s redeployment of fear and his reliance on voter’s selective amnesia to space-out his baldly opportunistic position flips. It’s critical to remember that a huge number of Americans, not necessarily a majority, were so distracted by George Bush’s simple Christian guy approach that they forgot that he’d barely held a job his entire adult life.
Romney looks at that bit of recent history and realizes that who you were and what you’ve said will merely be snacks left behind for the gnashing teeth of pundits if you can get large numbers of voters to believe that what you say now is all that matters. Even better, Romney has already distracted the media from his newfound zeal for opposing abortion and same-sex marriage by thumping everyone in the forehead with his Mormon faith: It matters, it doesn’t matter, it somehow changes his relationship to God. No, it just provides the stage fog as Romney’s rock band opens with their number one song, “I’m Right for America.”
More Right. Further Right. Yeah, well, somebody has to do it. Somebody has to go out there and keep alive the exploitation of evangelicals by the GOP. In May, Romney gave the commencement address at Pat Robertson’s Regent University. It would be reasonable to ask Romney if he would sit down and court the president of Iran, since by wooing Robertson “Mitt” clearly has no problem sharing the prestige of a presidential bid with irrational nut jobs that make hate-filled statements of revenge and coming atonement.
But therein lies the rub: If we continue to hash-out Romney’s Mormonism and faith situations, we’ll miss the real event with him: He’s a careerist weasel.
Recently The New York Times wrote a rather exhaustive piece on the path of Hillary Clinton from her vote for the Iraq invasion to her positions now. It was the kind of scrutiny that would make one pause if considering a run for a major office, for fear that every moment of your career could be accessed and sorted into a graph of your consistency.
The Times’ piece on Clinton found that she had reacted to the realities of post 9/11 emotion – as a senator from New York – with a possible blind spot from bogus White House intelligence. Thousands of words, and they concluded she should have done more reading. That doesn’t compare at all to Romney’s announcing his candidacy and then buying back his years as an abortion rights supporter. Just last Friday, flanked by American flags and red, white and blue balloons, Romney got a standing ovation as he told hundreds of anti-abortion activists attending the National Right to Life convention that their work helped win him over. “I proudly follow a long line of converts,” Romney told the crowd. “When I first ran for office, while I was always personally opposed to abortion…I concluded that I would support the law…the pro-choice position. I was wrong.”
John McCain aides have released a video of a May 2005 news conference where Romney said he was “absolutely committed” to maintaining Massachusetts’ abortion rights laws. Last Friday at the convention, Romney said the 1973 landmark Roe v. Wade ruling that legalized abortion “continues to work its destructive logic throughout our society. This cannot continue.” And then he went on to attack stem cell research.
The huge Bird-a-saurus found in China was a large and gangly creature that likely would have had trouble blending in at parties and church socials. Not so a walking haircut and top Republican fundraiser like Mitt Romney. But the big bird knew who he was and was good with it, ultimately disappearing when he couldn’t change fast enough to survive.
