With Bain and his colorful Mormon past off the table, that leaves Romney’s one-term as Massachusetts governor to highlight. He ruled as a moderate — oops, bad word. His greatest achievement, of course, was universal health care that became the template for Obamacare. He once called it, “the ultimate conservative idea.”
As he shed the ideas he embraced in the Bay State and tried to become “severely conservative,” Romney the unknowable became Romney the unlikable. His flip-flops were Olympic in caliber: on gun control, abortion, climate change, taxes, gays.
“Some are actually having children born to them,” he said of gay couples, in disgust, while groveling in the South, as reported in “The Real Romney,” the fair-minded biography by Michael Kranish and Scott Helman.
With Paul Ryan on the ticket, Romney becomes ever more hollow in comparison to the younger man of a cold-hearted-but-consistent philosophy.
A few weeks ago, Brian Williams of NBC News asked Romney if he was “unknowable to us.” Great question. Romney chuckled, that nervous stage laugh, and said voters will likely wait until the debates to discern his character. Fat chance. Better to chase fireflies with a thimble, for the true Romney is a phantom — lost long ago to reinventions and calculations.
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