I don’t think I could sit through a documentary about Mitt Romney in order to write a movie review. The man told too many lies. Maybe some of you know how many Steve Benen ultimately documented. By late-August 2012, it was up to 533. It was just incredible how frequently and shamelessly Mitt Romney made outright false assertions. And I think forcing nearly half the country to defend that kind of behavior has a crippling effect on the moral character of America. It’s very similar to the way the GOP’s standards were permanently damaged the moment that they had defend Sarah Palin as an acceptable potential president. Suddenly, it was not just acceptable, but virtuous, to be ignorant about foreign affairs. Reading the papers became something only snobs do. It was okay to treat a vice-presidential debate the way you’d treat a beauty pageant.
When Mitt Romney decided to run a campaign built entirely on mendacious statements, he destroyed any vestige of truthfulness in his party. I was so happy to see him lose and was amazed that he’d managed to lie even to himself about his prospects for success. If this movie portrays him as somehow honorable, that is just one more lie. Call it the cherry on top.
What else could the moviemakers do? If you’re going to be true to the spirit of the man and the campaign, you should make a movie that is nothing but lies. Anything else dishonours Romney’s legacy.
very funny!
Here’s another one.
With Christie fading fast, the rehabilitate Mitt (if Nixon could do it so can Mitt) crowd seems to be swinging into gear, making more of a historical footnote than otherwise.
And the review seems to be stenographic fawning bullcrap.
Actually, he’s holding relatively steady, if by steady you mean that moment of inertia hanging over the precipice. See Roadrunner and Coyote.
But you are quite right, Mitt is getting another look from desperate oligarchical insiders. Christie was such the made man.
And Mitt’s clean and smart to pass on Christie for VP on 2012. So yeah, the cards are falling good for the Mittster.
As the i ching says…. Perseverance Furthers!
Hillary will eat him for lunch.
Pretty much. Even if he’s a personally decent guy, as the movie seems to claim, he doesn’t have enough empathy to realize the policies he would’ve put in place if elected were horrific. There’s no decency in that.
Good riddance, you historical footnote.
He’s a personally decent guy in that if the engine of your yacht died while you were puttering around La Jolla Cove, he might give you a tow back to the marina, and maybe let you use a cell phone to call someone.
Beyond that, it’s anyone’s guess.
…but only if he doesn’t smell anyone smoking pot.
Romney’s nature shows through in how he handled his concession speech: First, in is failure to recognize, despite overwhelming evidence, that he would need one, and then the utterly graceless and self-centered speech that he delivered.
I’ve had enough of calling Mitt Romney a liar — which is not to defend him, or to contend that he spoke the truth, but because (1) there is a crucial difference between lies and stories and (2) anyone else in Romney’s position would have done exactly the same, quite possibly more so.
Lies are false. Stories are neither true nor false; they inhabit a different continuum. They are not part of rational discourse at all and rational discourse cannot compete with them. What we laughingly call “politics” has become a branch of applied literary criticism. Everything is fable and allegory. Performance is judged as performance. Until we realize this, we shall make no headway at all.
I suggest you take a look at Benen’s list. It is comprised in large part not of, say, unsupportable anecdotes, but of active misstatements of fact and distortions of the clear words of others. We have a word for people who do that compulsively, and Boo used it correctly.
Politician = liar.
It’s just that some of them lie more convincingly than others.
yes less demonize all politicians that will get good people to run for office
thanks for writing that.
Just to add, since it’s in the news now, in our city
we worked hard to elect Dawn Zimmer and others to city council to clean up the developer situation and pay to play. It took a long time, and we lost often, but we didn’t sit around saying that’s how politics always is in Jersey and alot of ppl kept at it for years. I’m very proud of our city, my neighbors who worked extremely hard for years on this and the mayor we elected
here’s the link on pay to play I posted yesterday
a couple links for a look into the nitty gritty
pay to play has been an ongoing issue as is the devlopment of the waterfront
http://www.nj.com/hobokennow/index.ssf/2011/02/hoboken_city_council_parces_zi.html
http://betterwaterfront.org/in-hoboken-citizen-initiated-ordinances-bring-an-end-to-pay-to-play-camp
aign-cash/
here’s the link to the Kornacki from yesterday
http://www.msnbc.com/msnbc/mayor-christie-camp-held-sandy-money-hostage
and if anyone says oh, it’s just once city and it doesn’t matter, well, I beg to differ
Yeah I’m tired of even on our side that all politicians are the same. There are tens of thousands of elected officials in this country, most doing a great public service.
It’s hard enough getting people to run, why would they if they’re going to be called a liar and scum as soon as they announce.
From what I read about Zimmer it sounds like you got a good one there, I’m sure it wasn’t easy.
thanks so much, we did, and it took over a decade of concerted effort for the candidate and much much longer on the issues. Then first “development transparency” mayor we finally elected turned out to be non-transparently pay to play so we had to start again trying elect another independent mayor, Dawn, as well as a supportive slate of City Council members. What’s interesting is that she began running for City Council on the flooding in her ward issue [SW Hoboken – it’s a mile square city, very small] which is at or below sea level. So when Sandy hit she’d been thinking and working for a long time about what the city might do about flooding. Evidently she’s on an Obama environment advisory committee since Sandy. Anyway the plan she asked for the $$ for involves designs by Dutch engineers.