Ronmey's 47%

John at Ad Orientem threw a hissy fit over Mitt Romney's much publicized 47% remark. His posting elicited some good comments, and I'd invite this blog's readers to wander over to peruse.

I'll re-post my comment here:

John, maybe you're never been invited anywhere, but when I've attended closed-door fundraisers, I've accepted a more casual mode of address. I've cut speakers more slack than when they're making a public address because of the more impromptu ambiance.

Up to this point, I was supporting Paul Ryan and accepted Romney as an unavoidable byproduct. After Romney's "gaffe", however, I'm beginning to like the man more.

Was the 47% quantitatively correct? The funny thing is that no one knows, especially the Tax Policy Center and its media lickspittles. All of these empirical studies are full of shit to some extent, filled with estimates, fudges, averages, and proxies. The point that Romney was making was that parasites vote for politicians who deliver the bacon. The current President has been ladling cheese to his supplicant voting bloc as fast as the Salvation Army ladles soup. I'm glad that Romney brought it up.

I'm further amused by the aversion to Romney's Mormonism because it isn't "Christian". Heck, my beliefs say that no heterodox are Christian. As far as I'm concerned, all of the major Presidential candidates and their running mates aren't Christian. That doesn't make them bad people. In fact, I don't think that it's an issue at all.

You know, we could always examine the Christianity of his opponent who sold his chosen spiritual advisor of twenty-something years down the river to get elected. I'm not even going to address that advisor's venom, but the fact that the relationship was long-standing suggests some underlying resonance, even if expediently disowned.

Let's assume for a moment that one of the candidates magically converted to Orthodoxy, and thereby became a Christian. Would an Orthodox Christian politician automatically possess superior "core values"? Maybe Blagojevich, Dukakis, Collins, Sarbanes, and Snow could answer that question, but somehow I don't think that being Orthodox exempts one from sleaze. From what I've seen, Romney displays Mormon core values in his personal life--attending church, helping others, evangelizing, producing children, and making money. Not bad. Pretty consistent.

What are Romney's problems? He isn't likable or magnetic. He's no intellectual. His oratory lacks the woolly loftiness of the professor who's used to addressing ass-kissing law students. Nah, Romney's strength was his effectiveness at producing results for his constituents, including ass-kicking stockholders, athletes, and Bostonians. He's a CEO, and really now, whose boss is likable? I happen to like my boss personally (although, as a boss, he's about 50% moron), but my fellow underlings unanimously think that he's an asshole.

Romney's MA health care program was a response to his constituents' concerns, but unfortunately, no focused consensus existed with respect to the funding mechanism. The Commonwealth still lacks that funding consensus.

Do you want to know the thing of which I'm most suspicious? Not Republican “fascist control freaks”, but Trojan horses, like tricky Dick Nixon. My reading of postwar history tells me that this nominal capitalist conservative ushered in a whole host of Keynesian evils with which America is still dealing. I don't see any trickiness in Romney. His latest “gaffe” consisted in his trusting the confidentiality of his closed-door meetings, unlike the “always on” phoniness of the professional huckster.