President X – Will Americans Really Elect a Man in Hiding?

Along the way, many people have remarked that Mitt Romney looks like he came direct from Central Casting to play a President. Though they were talking about Romney’s appearance, they may have also nailed the entire Mitt Romney candidacy, that of the performance of someone who is an actor (albeit a poor one in a community theater production of “Wicked”), playing the role of someone he isn’t…namely, a viable candidate.

It is unashamed gall that Mitt Romney and his campaign display in concocting one asinine excuse after the other as to why he is justified in withholding critical information about himself from the public. Clearly, the subtext here is that they are willing to take the damage from appearing as defiant and secretive than what would be worse, letting the public know who Mitt Romney really is.

The key excuse Romney gives for cloaking so much of who he is and what he would do as President is that the Democrats and voters would “use it against him”. So the twisted logic is, “By hiding who I am from Americans, I can do all the specific things I never told you I would do once elected President.”

There are some generic boasts he’s made about what he will do but killing “Obamacare”, bloating up the military, removing all regulations on polluters, and Wall Street and cutting taxes on the wealthy are just touching the expected Right Wing bases and highly questionable about being able to accomplish whether Democrats would retain the Senate majority or filibuster if they become the minority.

The simple logic is of course, if Romney was planning on doing things that the majority of voters would approve of, he would tell them. The few generalities we do know about his plans all have to do with making the wealthy wealthier and more independently powerful at the expense of the rest of Americans. He only blathers on about moronic, pie in the sky magic tricks he will perform, creating millions of jobs, making everyone wealthy, saving education, reducing the deficit, discovering bacon that actually makes you lose weight, all without the details that would be necessary to accomplish many of these sometimes conflicting miracles.

And as to how he sees things as a human being, that is classified information that he obviously feels would not help his chances in winning.

Not that Romney’s primary directive is a mystery, he is an egocentric, greedy man who simply wants to possess the presidency and hasn’t hesitated to flip, flop, lie, pander and contradict himself in the most blatant ways to get there. A democratic campaign to him is a necessary evil (democracy is such an annoyance to people accustomed to being able to buy everything they want when they want it) that an Entitled One like himself must stoop to and view as an insult, openly showing spite towards the process of explaining to voters what he wants to do…as if they have any right to know that! He wants to be President and that should be all he needs to tell them! Okay, he’ll promise them ponies and free hamburgers for life if it gets him elected but insisting that he tells the public who he really is and what he really would do as President is an intrusion on his privacy.

Despite the meme that some on the Left take comfort in, Romney is not just an empty suit, there is someone there…who desperately wants to remain hidden from the American People.

This alone should be very disconcerting to a anyone considering voting for him, whether affirmatively or as a way of showing dissatisfaction with President Obama. Why is this man working so hard and so willing to hurt his campaign in order to hide who he really is? And what kind of man with what kind of character would seek the Presidency feeling that the public has no right to know who he is or what specific decisions he’ll make if elected?

The camouflage shelter he has built around his true identity, beliefs and his financial history and entanglements is pretty encompassing. The things Romney is hiding include most things critical to Americans’ understanding of a candidate. Those who have been following the race closely enough have have a good idea of key areas he’s cloaking in secrecy and Romney’s blunders along the way have helped expose some of who he is.

WHAT ROMNEY IS HIDING FROM AMERICANS

His Finances

WHAT WE DON’T KNOW:
Romney is hiding his tax returns which would tell us how patriotic he truly is or how unsupportive he is of our American system. It would not only be a very honest reflection of who he has been but would let Americans know what predatory policies he has financially supported in foreign countries and how he would personally profit from decisions he and his administration would make. Hiding all of this from Americans is like playing blackjack in Vegas and only letting the dealer look at your cards to tell you if you won or The House did. There couldn’t be a greater threat to our nation’s future and democracy than to have someone elected President who has loyalties that conflict with what’s best for Americans.

WHAT WE DO KNOW:
He has lied about his time at Bain Capital to avoid responsibility for destroying American jobs and businesses. He filed SEC papers saying he was the sole owner and manager of a company while simultaneously telling the public that he wasn’t.

He has money invested in off shore companies and horded in off shore bank accounts to avoid his patriotic duty of paying his fair share of taxes.

He has lied to the public in claiming that he has no control over where his blind trust invests or hides his money. It is an indisputable fact that the owners of blind trusts can indeed give instructions as to what investments can and can’t be made by those managing the blind trust. If Romney didn’t want his money hidden away in off shore banks, all he had to do, at any time, was say so.

He has profited greatly from the pillaging and destruction of companies by his company, Bain Capital.

He has no moral or ethical reservation about harming American society in order to personally profit.

His Stand on Social Issues

WHAT WE DON’T KNOW:
Whether it’s illegal immigration, government aid for the poor or women’s rights, Romney pandered to the Right Wing and Tea Party throughout the primary to take harsh and insulting stands against a majority of Americans. Now that the Etch-A-Sketch season has arrived in the post-primary months, Romney has magically declared that up may in fact be down and hot could sometimes cold. In other words, his description of his stands on social issues are as flexible as a Mitt Romney shaped pipe cleaner.

One of his favorite dodges is to support right wing positions on federal protections but claim he’s doing so because states should have the right to make those decisions.

Though all of these positions are completely in conflict with his record as Governor in MA, he supports overturning the ACA, overturning Roe v. Wade, preventing LGBT Americans from getting married and declaring war on illegal immigrants and their children.

Is there anything more dangerous than a man with no long term moral convictions on social issues sitting in the most powerful office in America?

WHAT WE DO KNOW:
Romney has exhibited elitism and prejudice both directly and passively. He happily campaigns on the superiority of the top 1% and their entitlement to greater wealth and power. In his international trip this past week, he has offended millions around the world by “being himself” and espousing superiority of himself and “cultures” that he views as closer to his. He has refused to dispute racist claims and attacks by fellow Republicans in every instance.

Is Romney a racist? It would not be a difficult case to make when one considers his race-baiting performance in the GOP primary nor his attacks on Obama as “foreign”. Raised in the virtually all-white Mormon Church which had racism as a part of their dogma at the time (more on this below), it is not a huge leap to make. When one sees how Romney conducts himself around Americans who are black, Latino, etc., the high degree of unnatural pleasantness and uncomfortable glances, it is hard to make the case that Romney sees those of color as peers.

Then how would a President Romney perform when it came to civil rights for minorities? Rights for gays? Rights for women? These questions seem unfortunately easy to answer.

His Loyalties:

WHAT WE DON’T KNOW:
Would Mitt Romney profit personally if overall American employment dropped while Chinese employment rose? Would the gains by any other countries, even some that are adversarial towards the U.S., represent a financial benefit to Mitt Romney?

Is there any issue or position that is too extreme or too far Right for Romney not to support if it meant being in conflict with the GOP base?

Would Romney take America into an unnecessary war that would greatly profit him both financially and politically with his base?

If he can get elected without informing the public about who he really is and what he’s really done in his life, if hundreds of millions of dollars from a a small minority of the nation, Wall Street and the wealthy through SuperPACS can elect him President, will he owe loyalty to the majority of Americans or this minority?

How does he reconcile his absolute faith in the exclusionary Mormon religion and the requirement of Americans to have a President that represents everyone?

This religious issue has been deemed off limits by many on the Right and the Left but I would suggest that the convicted religious beliefs of a human being are very critical to understanding who they are and how they view their fellow human beings, what could be more critical to assessing a person who could have great power over your life?

The Mormon Church has a history of misogyny, child abuse, racism and vicious intolerance for dissent. This is not to say that because one is a Mormon, one necessarily has any of these traits embedded in them. However, it would be a politically correct exercise in denialism to insist that this is wholly irrelevant to who Mitt Romney is and what kind of President he would be.

But there’s more to Romney’s religion than the theological side. As Joanna Brooks, who writes frequently on Mormonism, argues so persuasively, “It is important for readers to know that Romney developed his leadership style in a non-democratic, patriarchal, hierarchical church culture where he rarely encountered open challenge.”

http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-503544_162-57456730-503544/where-is-mitt-romneys-faith/

Some things to consider about how being raised as a Mormon could have impacted who Mitt Romney really is and why he hides who he is:

It was not until 1978 that the Mormon Church finally changed their dogma that black people were black because they were cursed “by Cain’s seed” and because of that, were deserving of racism and prejudice. By that year, Mitt Romney was already 31 years old and had been raised in and grew up in a church that promoted such racism.

He has also been a part of a Mormon Church that has baptized dead people of other faiths against their families’ will, shuns people and separates them from their families for leaving the church and has a spy organization to track, pursue and attack those who speak out against the church.

The Mormon Church’s Strengthening Church Members Committee which is said to include ex-CIA members, “strengthens church members” by having a threatening, totalitarian type unit that performs surveillance on its membership with the mandate to help The Church move against those who dare to question or oppose any aspect of the Mormon Church.

The materialism of the Mormon Church is no secret. To remain in the church, one is required to donate 10% of their earnings or be excommunicated. The Mormon Church’s net worth exceeds $30 billion and many church operated businesses. So, you won’t find one of Jesus’ central themes of wealth bringing corruption in Mormon sermons.

Surrounded by all of this, especially the exclusive, materialistic and vindictive aspects of the Mormon Church, what kind of personality results in someone born with a silver spoon in his mouth such as Mitt Romney?

Wealth-obsessed, a sense of superiority and entitlement, prejudice, condescension and disrespect towards non-whites and those of other beliefs, chauvinism, authoritarianism…is the character of the church he grew up in and is devoted to, irrelevant or influential to the character of Mitt Romney?

It seems to be unlikely that the real Mitt Romney will ever be willingly shared with the American public. Instead, the gamble is that Americans can be stampeded away from President Obama so intensely that they would blindly run in the opposite direction even if it means they run right off a cliff.

It takes a great deal of cynicism about the American people and an almost unimaginable amount of money to take such a route but that is the path Romney has chosen to get to the White House.

Will a majority of Americans vote for a man in hiding to become their president? Precedent and a preponderance of polls in Swing States argue that won’t be the case. The impact of SuperPACs could have an effect on that but it is far from assured.

The Right Wing attacked President Obama in his first Presidential campaign in 2008 and once again in this campaign for re-election as being a possible Manchurian Candidate, someone who deceived the public to get into the White House in order to serve anti-American interests.

The irony is that Mitt Romney seems not only to be from Central Casting in appearance for the role of president, his stonewalling against revealing who he really is and what he’d really do as President makes him also look like he’s the one who’s actually auditioning for the lead role of The Manchurian Candidate.