Getting to Know Romney

The Republican primary race has produced a rare outcome: a major party presidential candidate has not been properly vetted.

We’ll be learning a lot about Mitt Romney in the coming months, because frankly… nobody knows much of anything about him. We know he’s rich, we know he’s a Mormon, and that’s where most people’s knowledge of the guy ends.

And it’s no wonder this happened, given the 2012 primary campaign and the news coverage leading up to it throughout the second half of 2011.

There was a never-ending clown-car of “front-runners” popping out of nowhere, all the way up to Romney’s presumptive nomination. About the three people in America that the media didn’t list as a Republican front-runner in that campaign were Charles Manson, Kim Kardashian, and Ron Paul. What’s more, when Romney’s opponents started coming up with effective strategies to actually attack him (like calling him a “vulture capitalist”), the Republican establishment made sure the attacks were reined in.

Romney never had any real competition, he just sat quietly on the sidelines and let the other candidates make a never-ending series of gaffes. None of his Republican opponents and no one in the media really challenged his past, only his current political leanings. While the primaries were full of barbs directed at him, he never really answered for his own record, merely falling in line with the extremist right-wing sideshow.

Now, questions are finally being raised about Romney’s time as governor of Massachusetts (and his desperate attempts to shred any record of his time in office), his time at Bain (including their criminal activities and perjury claims stemming from lying on official forms about when he truly severed ties with them), and even his time in college and high school (where it turns out he was an abusive asshole).

The more we learn about what Romney has actually done, the more it becomes apparent that Romney is unelectable and an embarrassing choice for the Republicans.

It’s an amazing development, because after nearly four years of the right undergoing spastic fits of rage over the election of Barack Obama, it’s looking more and more like he will get re-elected. It won’t be enough in November for people to hate Obama; they have to actually vote for Romney.

Romney can expect little help from the center. Even those who are fed up with Obama would never dream of voting for Mitt Romney. Why? One of the main things so unappealing about Obama is his close connection to the corrupt financial industry. Voting for Mitt Romney is like taking out the middle man in regards to corporate cronyism.

Mitt Romney is just not a candidate with any appeal outside of a very narrow, insignificant slice of America, and the more we get to know him, the clearer this will become.