Anti-Romneyism still afoot

Remember the anti-Romney bigotry which I deplored during the primaries? Here is a prime example of it. An e-mail correspondent gives David Frum ten reasons (ten!) why McCain should not choose Romney as his VP candidate. Most of the reasons are so forced and tendentious (for example, he lays great stress on the fact that Romney is “inexperienced” because he only had one term as governor of a major state) that you sense in this correspondent the primal, irrational dislike of Romney that was the main factor in the Republicans’ disastrous choice of the sub-mediocre, pro-open borders, conservative-hating, 72-year-old hot-head John McCain as its nominee over the vastly more intelligent, thoughtful, talented, and appealing Romney.

There are all kinds of rational reasons people could have for opposing Romney—his Mormonism, his past liberalism, his changes of positions, his opportunism, his performance as governor of Massachusetts and so on. But what we’ve seen, over and over, is irrational detestation of him. I’ve offered various explanations for this phenomenon. To me the most plausible theory is that Romney’s conspicuously outstanding qualities, his brains, his good looks, his wealth, his personal uprightness, combined with the fact that he’s not a regular guy, make people, especially some men, resent him intensely. In this democratic age, this age of self-esteem, people cannot stand the sight of someone who is so obviously superior to themselves.

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August 28

Carol Iannone writes:

That Frum correspondent also said something about how McCain had trounced Romney in the debates. I don’t recall that at all. I recall McCain looking mean and small insisting that Romney had called for timetables of withdrawal from Iraq, meaning announcing to the enemy that we were giving up, when what Romney meant was internal understandings between Iraq and the U.S. about when it would be good to withdraw, something that has obviously been discussed from what we’ve been hearing of late.

LA replies:

Agreed. The only trouncing took place in the minds of Mccain supporters who regard McCain’s small, mean, vengeful personality as presidential.

Posted by Lawrence Auster at August 27, 2008 10:36 PM | Send