Middling Mitt Romney Not of His Fathers' Sterling Civic Michigan Mettle (Gaskell & George Romney)

Reflection and observations on some of the Romney family history.

Mitt, a Son So Un-alike His Father! It's Fathers Day and this famous son has lost his core and doesn't know where to find it.

Willard "Mitt" Romney (age 10) with his father George W. Romney in 1957. George Romney then CEO of AMC was also on a "Citizens Advisory Committee" attempting to fix Detroit Public Schools.  (LA Times 2006)

Gov. George Romney (former governor of Michigan 1963-1968) was man of genuine Pro-Active Politics and Great Civic Betterment

Mitt "Willard" Romney is his father's doppelganger, a son devoid of firmly held principle, poor of spirit, and inept at truth-telling/credibility. A doppelganger is a double of a person, typically representing an aspect of evil or misfortune, some twist not to the benefit of others.

The History
How Others Saw George Romney, Former Governor of Michigan, the man:

• George Romney took over American Motors Company (AMC) on the verge of bankruptcy and made it a strong competitor again.
• At the same time, he worked to pull the Detroit school system out of a financial mess. Believing in local control of education, Romney helped put across a $60 million bond issue, and a $30 million tax package, which enabled Detroit schools to keep pace with community needs.
• During World War II he headed the Automotive Council for War Production: the greatest industrial, cooperative wartime effort in history.
• In 1959 George Romney took the lead in organizing citizen support for a badly needed new state constitution.
• As Governor, George Romney applied sound management to state spending. He not only increased state services, he cleaned up the financial mess that had made Michigan the laughing stock of the nation.
• Governor Romney fought for laws to halt air and water pollution before they ever became national issues; he also helped pass legislation giving industries tax credits for investing in pollution control equipment. Michigan is now ahead in the fight to end the pollution blight.
• George Romney bought state aid to cities to the highest level in Michigan history. 
• He also helped create the Michigan Civil Rights Commission. "I am against discrimination of any kind" Romney has repeatedly said, "and my record proves it."
•  The National Governors' Conference has recognized Romney's leadership abilities by appointing him to study its most pressing problem: how to get Michigan's fair share of federal tax dollars. 
• George Romney also represents Republican Governors on the National Republican Coordinating Committee. George Romney and his wife Lenore... worked hard for their state for 28 years.
• Their (Father George and Mother Lenore's) commitment to putting an end to "ineffectual and selfish politics" was heartily applauded back then by voters.
• One practical effect of their dedication has been a resurgence of the Republican Party in Michigan.

Source: George Romney's Presidential Candidacy materials (1968)

  Family Tradition in Politics: Is Mitt Worthy? Gaskill Romney Election Flyer (1930's)
George Romney's Father (Mitt Romney's Grandfather)

Mitt's Grandfather: Gaskell Romney
Another huge irony in the paternal line of Mitt Romney goes back to his grandfather Gaskell Romney and his work in the Mexican "Mormon Colony" in the Chihuahua region of Mexico in just after the turn of the century. Has Mitt forgotten his families ties and work with the poor of those days, many whose relatives have immigrated or now seek legal immigration to the US?

Part of the Gaskell Romney story:

"Gaskell Romney moved to Mexico when his father (Miles Park Romney) helped to found the Mormon colony in Colonia Dublán, Galeana, Chihuahua, Mexico in 1885. The Romney families lost their holdings in Chihuahua during the Mexican Revolution and in 1912 Romney moved back to the United States.[7] Eventually he was reimbursed by the Mexican government for some of his losses.[8] He married in 1895 to Anna Amelia Pratt. Romney was the father of five sons: Maurice, Douglas, Miles Pratt Romney, George W. Romney, Lawrence and Charles. Gaskell himself would be a candidate for County Commissioner 1931 as a Republican."

This from a hit piece (using AP content) on Mitt Romney by FOX News back in 2007:

"Polygamy was not just a historical footnote, but a prominent element in the family tree of (Mitt Romney) the former Massachusetts governor now seeking to become the first Mormon president.

Romney's great-grandfather, Miles Park Romney, married his fifth wife in 1897. That was more than six years after Mormon leaders banned polygamy and more than three decades after a federal law barred the practice."

(Break)

"Romney's father, former Michigan Gov. George Romney, was born in Chihuahua, Mexico, where Mormons fled in the 1800s to escape religious persecution and U.S. laws forbidding polygamy. He and his family did not return to the United States until 1912, more than two decades after the church issued 'The Manifesto' banning polygamy."

The origin of the radical right-wing use of questioning the birth of Barack Obama or the so-called "Birther Movement" still being used by many Republican candidates in the 2012 election cycle and that was brought up against John McCain as a presidential candidate in 2004, who was born at Coco Solo Naval Air Station in the Panama Canal Zone in 1936.  These tactics were used to fight the candidacy of George Romney, Mitt's father back in his 1968 run for POTUS.

This from the book by the opposition to George Romney's run for US President written by Gerald O. Plas entitled "The Romney Riddle" in 1967:

"The religious zeal with which Romney supports his opinions comes to him naturally. He is a devout Mormon as was his father and his father's father before him. His grandfather, Miles Park Romney, was a Mormon of the old school, and he took four wives to prove it. When Federal authorities sought to enforce the statutes against polygamy. Miles Romney fled to Mexico with his wives and family.

George Romney was born in Mexico some sixty years ago, son of Miles' son Gaskel and Anna Pratt Romney. Romney's foreign birth has raised a serious constitutional question with regard to the Governor's presidential aspirations.

The United States Constitution specifically bars the presidency to any but "natural born citizens." Debate centers on interpretation of the phrase "natural born citizens."

Many constitutional authorities maintain that our founding fathers meant that a man must be born in America (rather than be merely naturalized by birth) to be eligible for the presidency. Romney protagonists maintain that it doesn't matter where a man is born, if his parents are American citizens."

Interesting isn't it? The time tested use of the old GOP tactics they used against their own, applied to a sitting US President? It's win at all costs then as now, inside and out.

Pointing the Way to a Son Forever in His Shadow: George and Mitt Romney (age 17)
at the World's Fair in Queens, New York City in 1964 (Romney Campaign 2006)

Back to Father's Day
So, we ask on this important day, who is this the dim visage of a great father--the lost son of an esteemed George Romney, who is struggling to become the president of the United States-in the midst of its most challenging economic crisis of the 21st Century?

It was reported long ago, when Mitt first powered up his bid 2007 to run for president that "old friends of George Romney aren't thrilled with the politics of his son."

The New York Times reported:

'I think George Romney would despair of what Mitt has done in order to become the candidate of the conservative extreme right of the GOP party,' said Walter DeVries.

"DeVries, the elder (George) Romney's chief political strategist, called (Mitt) Romney Jr.'s campaign 'desperate' and 'ill conceived,' recalling that the " 'moderate-to-progressive' governor also did not share his son's tendency to change his position on issues in order to curry voters' favor." 

Also in this piece from the NY Times is the zinger haunting Mitt Romeny now. DeVries was quoted as stating:

"George Romney was among the last champions of the moderate-to-progressive wing of the Republican Party"...a straight talker who never hedged a position for political gain. In contrast, Mr. DeVries argued in an interview, "The only thinking Mitt (Romney) hasn't backed off is his Mormon faith," Mr. DeVries said. "He has changed his positions on just about everything. It was like he couldn't wait to race to the other side of the political spectrum."

One could wish Mitt were the "true quality" son of his father George and not the metaphorical pampered son of a Pandora-then the prospects for a better America beyond the November election would be many times more hopeful and promising for everyone should he win.

On the Reader:
Read the attack book on George Romney entitled "The Romney Riddle" on-line on this website or the eBook version .
More on the interesting history of Mitt's grandfather Gaskell Romney in the NPR story "Mexican Cousins Keep Romney's Family Tree Rooted" by John Burnett (January 2011)

Related Slates:
Mitt Romney: America’s Nascent Holy “god” & Possible President? (February 2012)
Welcome to Planet Willard: Michigan's Wayward Son Mitt Romney to Rule His Own World (January 2012)

More on Mitt Romney and George Romney, and the 2012 Election Cycle on the Gazette.


Original.

Tea Party Pot Bellies: Michigan's Tea Partiers - What's in their Kettle?

Whistling from their ears, full of steam piped in from the boilers of Koch Petroleum, these angry men and women are pawns of the first order.

Dunces with dulled intellects and greedy with selfish desire to hold on to what little their corporate masters, have deigned to allow them to retain of all their years of work, labor, and endless toil, "Steamed" Tea Party Pot Bellies are in a manipulator's manufactured rage. It's actually one of the saddest stories to be told; it spells out how the public can be conned, hornswoggled, beguiled, into working exactly against what has always been in their best interests, futures, and well-being.

Centers of Civil Discourse Drown Out: American conversation on local concerns in the
corner of the hardware or general store replaced by Big Media and AFP Money
(General Store in Haysi, VA National Archives 1938)

The Michigan TeaPublican (Tea Party Republican) Super Majority back inside the Capitol, all comfy in their leather swivel chairs, faces lit by taxpayer provided laptops, saw an opening to their advantage. True to form,
GOPer's took the easy path: stick to the Corporatist scripts and rad right discipline: Put the burden of revenue off on children, the elderly, the pensioner, the poor, the public servant. By all means protect the business and corporate community!

If only these Republicans strove to serve the real needs of the public as much as they pride themselves in being errand boys/"buds" to business!

What a nunce Snyder is! Says he was "hired" by Michigan to be their "CEO"! Find that in your state constitutions, you uber-strict constitutionalists. It's not there.

Michigan Americans for Prosperity Propaganda Troupes for Senior Citizen as Shock Troops:
Michigan TP'ers at AFP / Mackinac Sponsored Rally in Lansing, MI April 14, 2011 (DailyKos)

Taking a reach-back look at the Lansing Capitol Rally of the Michigan Chapter of Americans for Prosperity (led by Scott Hagerstrom) last spring, one sees photos of row after row of ball capped, balding older white males, supported by carefully placed courtesy folding chairs. They are angry and frustrated waving provocative signs to prove it's just right to be ginned up for projecting anger and blame on someone else and advantage the Rovian Backroom Boys. Steampotters are ripe for backing the blacklash, then when their handlers have taken all the advantage they can, Tea Party Pot Bellies will be toast!

Staring at the ongoing effects of the worst economic catastrophe of our time, the ruinous, failed Bush regime and its unbearable and destructive rampage of eight years (misdirected wars, unprecedented debt, and unequal taxation) was bad enough; not seeing a clear way out, still forced to confront the seemingly intractable flaws and effects of G.W. Bush cataclysm, has left the worried public to sip the bitter dregs resulting from his bad judgment.

Steampotters are forced to stare at a resultant, potential economic and political collapse worldwide. That's too much for a potbellied TeaPartisan under duress and stress. They're ready for a brawl. But with whom? Their neighbors, their grandchildren, the first responders? The cause of their troubles which has them in a kink? They are supporting the very Corporatist interests that have been eroding their nest eggs and killing their democracy. How odd!

Steampotters are damn mad at the demise of their retirement assets stolen by Wall Street and speculators, the trouble their children are enduring, and the loss of their home equity value-stripped as it was in the Bush Bust of 2008. THEY NEED SOMEONE TO BLAME. They are ready to led by the Kochs MEGA-cash-campaigning. As chance would have it, Koch Brothers had shipped in that unsavory character, Dick Morris - and didn't fetish Dick strut his stuff?

Steaming potbellies are addicted to Right's Noise Machine and Rupert Murdock's pap-and-slap
Actually more than 70% of Republicans with cable access watch FOX News exclusively. Nothing satisfies an angry depressed curmudgeon more than more anger and depression. Bad news fuels fear, resentment and aggression.

As dailies, such as the Detroit News and the Grand Rapids Press, slide down the waste pipes, FOX News enriches itself and its Machiavellian owner. An alien with "bought" power and influence. It's a place of influence and profit FOX and Rupert do not deserve.

This is possible because of these same gullible discontents-the more they are depressed the more they want someone else to ante up and bear their far share of load. Many citizens from out the past paid for the infrastructure that was the life-long support of these Tea Party Pot Bellies-now whiners and malcontents.

The whole attitude is: I've got my "little bit" and I'm scared witless it will be lost to someone else. Their mantra: Me, my son John, his wife and my wife, us four and NO MORE. This kind of self-centered selfishness leaves behind both Christianity and neighborhood democracy.

Given permission to lash out and accost others, goaded on by Svengalis re-pleat with talking point books designed to manipulate and exploit exaggerated blame; as long as it distracts the November voters from the Bush Depression (still in bubble wrap) the danger plays right into the hands of the negativists who inhabit both the Detroit News and the dank dens of the deceitful enemies of public life and service.

Warming the Factories of Manufacturing and the Middleclass: Garland Stove Company's
World's Largest Stove, Postcard Detroit MI 1893 (Michigan Historical Archives)

Amway's Richard M. DeVos Sr. and the Brothers Koch are thought to be Depression proof. However, if they can manipulate the TeaPartisans to do the heavy lifting to lobby to remove regulations, and overturn customer protections, and collective bargaining rights, etc. to greatly benefit them and the other greedy Corporatists - this would be perfect timing.

And to assuage the pent-up anger and the angst tearing at the gut of Tea Potbelliers, what do the current Rad Republicans offer?

Actually Harry Truman laid out the genuine GOP "offers" best:

• Republicans approve of the American farmer, but they are willing to help him go broke.
• They stand four-square for the American home - but not for housing.
• They are strong for labor - but they are stronger for restricting labor's rights.
• They favor minimum wage - the smaller the minimum wage the better.
• They endorse educational opportunity for all - but they won't spend money for teachers or for schools.
• They think modern medical care and hospitals are fine - for people who can afford them.
• They consider electrical power a great blessing - but only when the private power companies get their rake-off.
• They think American standard of living is a fine thing - so long as it doesn't spread to all the people.
• And they admire of Government of the United States so much that they would like to buy it.

Harry T. enjoyed the blunt truth of strongly brewed black coffee in a big cup, not a steamy tea made with the deadly Kool-Aid of the Koch Bros. subversions, et. al. served up in a Koch Industries-made throwaway paper cup.

On the Reader:
History on the Garland Company Giant Stove and what happened to this Michigan landmark.
Gazette posts on the Americans For Prosperity run Tea Party Rally April 14, 2011 pictured above in "Greedy Bros Koch-Bought & Paid for Visi-Galts: The Randian Libertarian Spawn - Gleefully Storm the Gates of the People’s House in Lansing, MI" and "Americans for Prosperity’s Cotton Head Grump Out, High on Motrin 800, Fizzles.

Related Posts:
In Detroit: Resentment, Malice & Roaring Opportunism Ride a Wave of Harsh Tea Party Ideology (April 2012) - Revisit Occupy Detroit: the Tea Party is Different – Hank Payne’s Myopic View (November 2011) - The Occupy Wall Street Activists & Grassroots Tea Party Activists Have a Lot in Common (October 2011) - It Was No Frenzy Island: Neanderthals & the Nerd (Republican Leadership Conference on Mackinac Island) (September 2011) - Teaparty leader: The More We Pay Attention - The More Hopeless it Can Seem, Political Parties Only Exist to Get and Keep Power (February 2011) - Saint Ayn - Extolling Great Evil - Used As Source of Tea Party Political Punch Lines

Original.

De onversneden Filistijnen: Pernicious and Pugnacious Michigan Tea Party Philistines Assert a Self-Righteous Tsunami of Testosterone

There's a Southwest Michigan Dutch Hollander expression for the "enemy" unworthy of praise "De onversneden Filistijnen" meaning loosely in Dutch - the uncut Philistines - translation: "the uncircumcised" or out-group in moral and cultural terms-from whom the Hollanders actively separate and religiously abjure. The arch-conservative or "zwarte kousen"- the "black stocking" people of Southwest Michigan and environs use this foreign phrase to define their enemies. Zwarte Kousen, the radical religious extremists of Southwest Michigan, are not-at-all typical of the greater population of the Netherlands.

The Dutch Revolt - Decades of Battling for Religious Freedom (1568-1648): Dutch Protestants resisted the domination and perceived tyranny of the Spanish occupying Catholic Church (Engraving by Frederik Muller 1569)

The Dutch of Europe are:

"Long known as the bastion of liberalism and tolerance, the Netherlands has now been declared home to the least prejudiced people in Europe."

Unsavory Rogues: Well-Dressed Male Legislative Bullies & Bellicose Blockheads
A huge portion of the impulse and projection of overly zealous power of Michigan's TeaPublicans (Tea Party Republicans) arises from this unsavory group of male bullies and blockheads, men who find themselves in a super majority and cannot and/or will not limit themselves from over-boarding their perception of God's gift of power and influence is bestowed upon themselves: power and moral fitness make them "righteous." This group of men has dominated West Michigan politics and business for a long period.

These radical Republicans are sponsored in large part, and paid into politics: sustained, bought, and buoyed, by the nouveau riche Amway Clan -- the Richard M. (Rich) DeVos Sr. and Jay Van Andel families-at-large. These Amway scions, have been enriched by billions plucked from the "dead-end dreams" of suckers - (recruits churned into seeking a fortune from soap selling in a MLM/product-based pyramid scheme-where over 98% fail miserably and pay a heavy personal cost).

The Amwayites (founders of Amway/Alticor) believe themselves on a mission from God. They are the self-appointed members of the "hounds of Heaven" out to purge the state and its laws of all things offensive to their narrow and short-sighted tastes. (while enhancing in every way their grip on mega-wealth and the final say in all things business related.) As spokesperson Betsy DeVos put it, "We expect a return on our investment." Over the years the "returns" from shrewdly placed political investments has paid off for Amway, big time, they milk the game fully!

Now, amid this orgy of "rightness," the Tea Party faction in the Michigan GOP has placed US Representative Dave Agema in the top political post of the party, GOP National Committeeman. Agema will go on to "infect" the larger body politic with his special brand of self-importance and superiority. Nasty political snobbery will be his trademark and calling card.

Agema, a Frisian, is a member of a specific sub-culture originating in a ill-famous lowland province of the Netherlands. It's a Dutch sub-culture of which former Congressman Pete Hoekstra is also a prominent member-and more importantly-a direct child immigrant from that special area of Holland.

Frisians are known to members of the Michigan Dutch Community for their special characteristics which distinguish them as a sub-group (tribe): super-stubborn and opinionated, extremely hardheaded, specifically limited socially, hardly tolerant, and certainly not liberal in a religious or cultural sense.

The recent flareup against two members of the legislature who are ladies reflects a deeper and more pernicious affliction amongst this group of men, highly influenced by West Michigan's "black stocking" faction -- angst and mistrust. Theirs is an outright fear of women and female power to move agendas and influence decisions many of these "old world" / paternalistic-minded males (governing people in a fatherly manner, especially by providing for their needs without giving them rights or responsibilities.) They believe God gives them preemption over women, government is a realm left only to men.

The George Lakoff image of "strict father" - master disciplinary of his house - lay out the most appropriate and descriptive model for the TeaPublican talking-points approach to politics. "Harsh discipline" and "complete male-control morals" fits the present atmospherics in the Lansing Capitol to a "T," what with the on-going "V" revolt!

Michigan’s self-righteous tsunami of testosterone projects just the right set of overweening evil drives and vengeance on to destroy the quality of life in our state

Much of the ongoing theatrics and rudeness of behaviors in the torrent of conservative savage attacks on women and their status, their jobs, their retirement, and their health care (in larger terms) in the Michigan state legislature comes from the pre-New Testament concepts rooted in the Genesis account given in the Old Testament. This permission to override female judgment and opinion, the choices and goals of women, comes directly from the continuing belief (however quaint and mythical) that the "fall of man" comes directly from the fault of a woman (think St. Augustine).

Elaine Pagel in her book "Adam, Eve, and the Serpent" (New York: Random House, 1988) explained it for John R. Mabry, who writes:

"A recent study I did on St. Augustine of Hippo convinced me that the starting point for guilt as a staple of Christian life began with him. As Elaine Pagels points out in her marvelous book Adam, Eve, and the Serpent, what the Jews and early Christians had read for centuries as 'a story of human freedom became, in [Augustine's] hands, a story of human bondage.' Instead of being a story about the gift of moral freedom, as St. John Chrysostom proclaimed, Augustine taught that 'Adam's sin not only caused our mortality but cost us our moral freedom, irreversibly corrupted our experience of sexuality... and made us incapable of genuine political freedom.'"

(Emphasis Added)

Does this sound silly or unbelievable to you? And what place does this theological contrivance have in modern, legitimate civic affairs?

Mayhap you are not attuned with the deeper theolotics behind and invasive in the present fanaticism and outrage going on in many churches (Christian Dominionists, Michigan's Citizens for Traditional Values - a well-known member: State Representative Tom McMillin (R - Rochester, MI) and in the hidden corners of the Opus Dei Vatican and Michigan's Tom Monahan (Read “Tom Monaghan becomes national power broker for GOP Catholic candidates” that appeared in the Naples News in September 2008.

Testosterone Fear Runs Wild in Evangelical Circles
Things have grown so out of hand , so irreverent and absurd, that Christianity Today has a cover story entitled “Forever Young: The Juvenilization of the American Church, the inside story: When Are We Going to Grow Up? The Juvenilization of American Christianity” by Thomas Bergler.
Amazon Book Notes expands:

“(Thomas) Bergler shows too how this "juvenilization" of churches has led to widespread spiritual immaturity, consumerism, and self-centeredness, popularizing a feel-good faith with neither intergenerational community nor theological literacy.”

Meanwhile in the real world of pain and gain: Pernicious and Pugnacious Philistines are in complete control of the political direction of Michigan-Michissippi is on a tsunamic crest. 

Those the conservative Southwest Michigan Dutch Hollanders diss as the "De onversneden Filistijnen" they themselves have become "concubines," as it were, to another set of rogue Dutchmen: the Koch Brothers and their powerful lobby the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) - the Koch's effective and secret way to legislative directly into corporate advantage.

Those the conservative Southwest Michigan Dutch Hollanders may diss the "De onversneden Filistijnen" yet it is they themselves who have become the neo-Philistines playing Animal House - a consequence of their own overblown evil ambitions and greed.

On the Reader:
Read the book "Adam, Eve, and the Serpent: Sex and Politics in Early Christianity" by Elaine Pagels (Vintage 1989) or an interview with George Lakoff on language and 'reframing' in "Framing the issues: UC Berkeley professor George Lakoff tells how conservatives use language to dominate politics" (Berkley News 2003).


Related Slates:
The Blind-eyed Marriage of the Conservative Churches to the Excessive & Corrupt Business Practices (April 2012) - Mitt Romney: America’s Nascent Holy “god” & Possible President?

More on theolitics or the role of religion in politics under "Christian Values" on the Gazette.

The Original Post was CENSORED and DELETED by the editorial staff at the Detroit News and Michigan View.