The nominee’s wife—and all nominees’ wives

I am totally uninterested in Ann Romney. I am not interested in learning more about her. I don’t care about the nominee’s wife. I don’t think anyone should particularly care about a nominee’s wife, other than the fact that she is his wife.

The idea of the nominee’s wife, and children, giving speeches at the convention telling the country what a fine man he is—the idea that we should vote for a man for president of the United States because his wife and children avow that he’s a good man—has got to be one of the most ridiculous and embarrassing innovations in the history of politics. It makes me feel embarrassed to be an American. It’s almost on a par with spreading democracy to Muslims.

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Kathlene M. writes:

Here are two lines that bothered me from Ann Romney’s speech about Mitt:

“You may not agree with Mitt’s positions on issues or his politics. Massachusetts is only 13 percent Republican, so it’s not like that’s a shock.”

I didn’t watch her speech but merely read it from the transcript. That line leaped out at me.

This is an attempt to get conservatives to accept Mitt’s liberal leanings by telling them that Mitt’s liberal record in Massachusetts wasn’t his fault, that he had to lead like a liberal because the state was liberal. (Interestingly, she equates Republicanism with conservatism using the “only 13 percent Republican” voter identification as justification for non-conservative leanings.) So the implication is that Mitt will lean left on social issues such as gay “marriage” if the correct polls show that people “accept” it, because hey, it’s not Mitt’s fault because certain polls show “the people” want it. And anyway, “only 35 percent of the people are registered as Republican;” which proves that people are liberal. (sarcasm)

Posted by Lawrence Auster at August 29, 2012 05:00 AM | Send