Romney’s speech

Watching Romney give his acceptance speech is like watching a vacuum, it’s like being drawn into a vacuum. He carries that vacuum around with himself and inside himself. He carries it in the blank expression in his eyes and face. He carries it in that plastic unreal kindly smile that never leaves his face. What is that smile about—trying to appeal to women, showing them that he’s not a threatening white Republican racist? Romney’s vacuum is not just his. It is the vacuum of whatever remains of the historic America, it is the vacuum of conservatism and the Republican party. A vacuum cannot defeat the active, determined force of evil. I don’t see him winning. I seem him losing. I hope I’m wrong. But that’s what I see in my mind’s eye, and I’m not going to suppress—for the sake of maintaining team spirit—the fact that I see it.

The only problem he identifies in Obamacare is its cost. He doesn’t see it as tyranny.

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David B. writes:

I agree that Romney can’t win, but if enough people want Obama to lose, it could happen.

Peter F. writes:

Those around Romney seem to think very highly of him as a decent, moral man who fulfills his responsibilities and works hard to support his family and create value for his company, shareholders and workers. His wife speaks highly of him; through her we learn that Mitt has come to the aid of many colleagues and friends in moments of need.

This is very hard to square with what you have termed the “empty suit” quality manifested by Romney. He never seems to be upset about anything; is there nothing out there in this big-wide world of ours that has ever made him angry enough to lose his temper? The old saying has it, “If you aren’t angry, you aren’t paying attention.” What are we to make of Romney, who seems to lack any sort of fire in the belly or passion about anything? We are told he is a good man, but aren’t good men supposed to be aware of evil in the world and take a stand against it? Aren’t those same men supposed to feel outraged when the evil hurt the good and when the weak are preyed upon by the strong? Today’s politicians—Romney included—seemed to have purged entirely from their vocabularies the terms “good” and “evil.” Do they even know what those terms mean? Are they capable of applying them in the world when interpreting events and making policy? I really do not know anymore.

All of this is as I predicted; Romney is a nice man, a competent man—but so far, he manifests absolutely no desire to fight for those things which will save our civilization. He is a man to whom being liked is more important than leading or doing what is just and right. In our hour of need, this nation needs a 21st century Winston Churchill; instead we got a technocrat with a nice smile.

LA replies:

As I’ve said before, I grant that he is a good, virtuous man in his private character. But my concern is not his private character, but his public character. And it is in his public character that he manifests the vacuum I described.

I agree with everything you said.

Roger G. writes:

Since Mitt Romneycare doesn’t understand principles, convictions, and so forth, can we convince him that Obama is a conservative? He was certainly willing to savage Santorum.

August 31

Jim R. writes:

I have a more cynical take than yours. I believe Machiavelli was correct when he said that when you make a man poor, you make a greater enemy than if you had slaughtered his parents. Obama has made most people poor. All Romney has to do is collect enough of the votes of those persuadable (mostly white women who are losers economically under Obama though winners culturally).

This is not a trivial matter, money. Not at all. Money, and the more the better, allows particularly white women who lack physical strength and size deterrence from violence to live in nice places devoid of blacks and Hispanics. And physical street violence. Physical protection by the police state does not exist. Sure we can all get randomly groped by TSA at the airport or bus station or streets, but it does not make those women safer. Their safety is only bought with … MONEY.

Money buys you a nice house in the safe, white suburbs. Money buys you a nice, robust SUV that can maneuver around obstacles and drive away from danger while commuting. Money buys you the ability to shop online, not in a dangerous immigrant neighborhood.

Mitt Romney was talking about MONEY. How Obama made most of America poorer. This is the most potent weapon he has among his arsenal. People will do anything for money, because money alone buys them out of danger. They know it even if they cannot speak it. No one is clamoring after all to live in Compton or South Bronx despite the fabulous real estate buys to be had there.

I found Romney to be fine. He’s not a phony-boaster like Obama, or the smarminess of Huckabee, he’s fairly shy, which accounts for his stiffness. Many American leaders suffered from this, among them Ike, Washington, and Madison. Like most white guys his age and upbringing, he’s not into boasting and bragging. He’s not Chris Christie. People are terrified they’ll be poor and living on the streets or in Compton. Romney is telling them he’ll restore the safe suburbs. It’s who he is, we could a lot worse.

We fundamentally don’t need a hero. We just need to be rid of the villains.

Paul Nachman writes:

Diana West’s current column contains this:

Stunningly, these same Caucasian newsies are blind to their own skins. How else, for instance, could “NBC Nightly News” anchor Brian Williams in July have asked Mitt Romney “to confirm or deny” whether he was looking for a running mate who is “an incredibly boring white guy”?

“You told me you were not available,” quipped Romney.

Quick-witted, funny, and a good putdown all in one.

September 2

Richard S. writes:

There seems to be a virus spreading among many Republicans (your correspondent Jim R. being among the infected) which leads them to believe that taking up the mantle of their opponents constitutes a clever political strategy. This would indeed be “smart politics,” but only if their leadership weren’t becoming the mask, as is actually happening.

Scott in PA writes:

The Romney speech was flat. Speaker after speaker failed to take on Obama’s gravest offense: his pledge to “fundamentally transform the United States of America” (his exact words). The Republicans failed to show that Obama’s policies have been directed toward carrying out that transformation. To do so would necessarily depict Obama as anti-American, and the Republicans are not up to that. For one, it would be too “mean spirited,” meaning that women wouldn’t go for it.

Speaker after speaker called Obama a failure, but Obama has been a success at his mission: reducing America’s preeminence; transforming us away from meritocracy; systemically advantaging minorities, Muslims, and Third-Worlders while disadvantaging whites; devaluing talent, hard work, and intelligence as preconditions for success; elevating the government’s role in ordering American society as never before. The dominance of liberalism as a reigning ideology has been doing this to America for sixty years, but Obama has taken it to a new level. We could only wish that he failed at this, but he has been all too successful.

LA replies:

Under liberalism, the more extreme a liberal is, the more he gets away with it, because if you speak the truth about his extremism, it only makes YOU look extreme for saying such extreme things about him.

Andrea C. writes:

Here’s another take on the last night of the convention, Romney night, at the convention that I found very interesting and I want to share it with you. It’s about Romney & Co. using “Alinsky tactics” that come across like a velvet glove concealing the sock on the jaw. What struck me most was the part about how Romney talking about his “mom and dad” was a “negative” that brought Obama’s family origins into the picture—like Eastwood’s chair put Obama in the room. This is a good one because Obama’s family is strange, to put it mildly. I think his abandonment by his father wounded him and contributed to his sociopathic focus on himself and lack of compassion for others other than his wife and children, his grandiosity, lack of shame or proportion, and his compulsive lying.

Posted by Lawrence Auster at August 30, 2012 11:17 PM | Send