Romney circles drain (ii): hapless Romney gets schooled and sent scrambling for his notes

January 1, 2008 in 2008, argument, campaign communications, campaign communiques, campaign management, conservatism, election 2008, gaffs and pratfalls, GOP, incompetence, Iowa, media, mitt romney, policy, republicans, rhetoric, romney, strategy, stupidity, the dark soul of Mitt Romney, triumph of unreason
Tags: eyeon08.com, foreign policy, foreign policy experience, Iraq, marc santora, New York Times, note taking, notes, NYT, personal histories, security, Sen. John McCain, terror, terrorism, the caucus blog

… “Romney was […] was queried about why he gave a sunny assessment of the war in Iraq after a visit in 2006, even though he now often says the aftermath of the invasion was not managed well,” writes Marc Santora in a NYT The Caucus blog post titled McCain on Experience

[Credit goes to eyeon08.com in a post titled Romney: Check with Lawyers and Notes ]

[Romney:] You could look at what I said at that time. I was encouraged at that time that there was a creation of a coalition government and believed that was a positive step and I continue to believe that that was a positive step. Let me make it very clear. Not everything that happened over the period of time following Saddam Hussein’s collapse was bad.

The establishment of a constitution, the election of a coalition and the creation of a coalition government. Those were positive developments but nonehtheless I felt in some respects the management of the post-Saddam Hussein conflict there was not as well managed as we would have hoped it would have been, and I think that was in part because we frankly did not have sufficient preparation and planning for what occurred.

Q: If you felt at that time, why didn’t you say something then?

Mr. Romney: I don’t recall all the things that I said at that time, so I’d just have to go back and look at my notes at that time.

Q: Wasn’t it important to take a stand?

Mr. Romney: I said what I knew at that time … etc.

Another profile in courage.

Conclusion: It is impossible to hold this man—his imperious holiness, Willard Milton Romney—to anything he has ever said, to any commitment he has ever made, to any position he has ever held, to any policy he has ever pursued. Romney—apparently—is, or believes that he is, a creature of pure will and imagination, a demigod-like figure who stands apart from the causal nexus, a creature unlimited by even his personal history, a story he feels himself free to revise on the fly: He is what he says he is, and his words mean only what he says that they mean, and he takes grim offense should a miserable quaking mortal stand and suggest otherwise.

Moral: There are no messages in the abstract. There are only the men and the women who emit them, who carry them, who must defend them, creatures of flesh and blood, historical entities who pass into this world, live, love and labor for a short time, construe their experiences of this world as stories, and then pass away again. All politics is therefore identity politics, because a message has meaning only to the degree that we can identify with a flesh-and-blood messenger, and that messenger’s motives, intentions, perceptions, reflections, history of good or bad fortune, hard sufferings, and costly successes.

Our question: Who identifies with Romney?

Who is Romney’s natural constituency? Just how many super-rich, super-privileged shape-shifters exist among us?

Who gapes upon the expertly groomed face or form of Romney and believes that he sees in it himself, or believes that she sees in it herself, or even detects in it something remotely human and familiar?

Who?

yours &c.
dr. g.d.

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Romney and Madden huff, puff, and wax indignant about Rush Limbaugh’s comments on anti-war soldiers—result: no one cares

October 1, 2007 in campaign literature, election 2008, incompetence, mitt romney, republicans, rhetoric, romney, stupidity, the dark soul of Mitt Romney
Tags: blame, bloviate, bloviating, ElectionCentral, Greg Sargent, Huffington Post, Iraq, kevin madden, negative, Rush Limbaugh, soldiers, TPM, veterans, war

“Mitt Romney becomes the second GOP Presidential candidate to denounce Rush Limbaugh with this statement sent to the Huffington Post by Romney spokesman Kevin Madden,” writes Greg Sargent in a TPM ElectionCentral post titled Romney Becomes Second GOP Prez Candidate To Blast Rush

Romney?—is this is the same misguided candidate who compared the comfortable lives of his privileged sons to soldiers on the field of battle? See:

• latest Romney outrage: claims sons show support for their country by “helping me get elected”
• watch a hapless Romney get spanked by Deputy Sheriff Mark Riss over Romney’s claim that his sons were serving thier country by serving Romney—as opposed to say, wearing a uniform and carrying a rifle

About the effectiveness of Romney’s frequent bursts of void-of-moral-courage rage, please see:

• the reviews are in: Romney’s “grandstanding” about Ahmadinejad ineffective, counterproductive
• Romney’s inflection point—the strange rhetoric of a troubled campaign
• Romney the scold of the GOP (ii); Continetti: Romney hates fake people

Also please reflect upon what Romney’s judgments and opinions—frequently offered—say about Romney:

Romney’s language of blame indicates a personality that believes itself powerless and uncared for

yours &c.
dr. g.d.

yet more Romney corruption: Bain Capital and Ren Zhengfei of Huawei

September 30, 2007 in 2008, analysis, election 2008, GOP, incompetence, mitt romney, republicans, romney, stupidity, the dark soul of Mitt Romney, triumph of unreason
Tags: 3com, Bain Capital, Charles Cooper, China, CIA, Cisco systems, CNET, corruption, Huawei, intellectual property, Iraq, Iraq Survey Group, Ren Zhengfei, scandal, WMD

“Most Americans probably are not intimately familiar with Huawei (pronounced “Wa-way,” as if Gilda Radner of Saturday Night Live fame were asked to pronounce the name). The company’s founder, Ren Zhengfei is a former officer of the People’s Liberation Army,” writes the estimable Charles Cooper for CNET’s Tech news blog in a post titled Mitt Romney’s communist connection

Tough to know what to make of that. When it comes to speaking with the press, Ren is a regular Greta Garbo. A mini-profile Forbes ran three years ago noted that many of Huawei’s major customers are state-run businesses in China. And while Ren owns 1 percent of the company, the rest belongs to an unidentified “union.”

Go figure.

Meanwhile, Ren has gone about building Huawei into a success story disregarding the usual corporate niceties. In 2000–three years before the WMD craze got us all nutso about taking out Saddam–the CIA accused Huawei of secretly selling a communications system to Iraq. In the final report of the Iraq Survey Group, Huawei and two other Chinese companies were singled out for carrying out “extensive work in and around Baghdad”–mainly telecommunication switches and the installation of fiber-optic cable.

Then in 2003, Cisco socked Huawei with a patent infringement lawsuit. Cisco claimed Huawei ripped off its intellectual property to make a lineup of routers and switches. Huawei denied the allegations though in the end caved.

But if at all possible, business doesn’t let politics intrude. So it is that Friday we learned that Bain Capital is paying $2.2 billion to acquire 3Com. Part of the deal involves China’s Huawei Technologies, which will acquire a minority stake in 3Com.

And, oh, by the way, Mitt Romney, the former Massachusetts governor running for the Republican presidential nomination–he headed Bain Capital for 14 years … more

More on Romney’s web of corruption:

evidence of Romney corruption and incompetence continues to build; GOP needs to start thinking post-Romney

Was it really hard work and clean living that issued in Romney’s vast personal fortune?—we mean, really?

yours &c.
dr. g.d.