The liberal reaction to Romney, what it means

Paul of Powerline has more about the absurd attacks on Romney concerning his statements that he “saw” his father march with Martin Luther King, the latest one coming from the AP.

Meanwhile the Concord Monitor not only declined to endorse Romney in the New Hampshire primary, but amazingly called him “a disquieting figure who sure looks like the next president and most surely must be stopped.” I don’t remember ever seeing such language about a major presidential candidate in a primary election.

What’s going on here? Does the Monitor, a liberal paper, oppose Romney, as it claims, because it truly sees him as a “phony” whose changes from liberal to conservative positions cannot be believed? Or does it oppose him because it regards him as a truly formidable Republican candidate? Considering the MSM’s over-the-top reaction to Romney’s unobjectionable remark about his father and King, I’m starting to believe that the liberals have concluded that Romney is the Republicans’ best bet to win the White House, and therefore in their charming way are lining up to smear him with everything they have. They’re not disquieted by his supposed lack of honesty and character. they’re disquieted by the fact that he looks like a winner.

But the very assault may undercut the Monitor’s attempt to paint Romney as a faux conservative, because when conservatives voters see liberals demonizing someone, they conclude that he really is a conservative, else why would the liberals attack him so?

- end of initial entry -

Ken Hechtman writes from Canada:

There’s something else. The specific kind of lie Romney was caught in, let’s call it a “Clintonism” for lack of a better word, was exactly the kind of lie that Bill, then Al Gore, and now Hillary have been telling for the last 15 years.

A Clintonism has two motivations:

I’m your best friend and always have been.

I was at the center of whatever-it-was

Suppose Romney had said “I didn’t get the Civil Rights movement when it first started, but now that you people have the vote I’m not going to forget you”? There’s no shame in that. It worked for George Wallace and if it could work for him it can work for anybody. Suppose he said “I saw Martin Luther King on TV when I was a kid. I wished I was old enough to be part of what he was doing”? No shame in that either. Anybody *not* described by that today is too old for public office anyway.

But no, he had to put himself at the center of things. Since 1992, Clinton, Gore and Clinton again have been embarrassing their friends and enraging their enemies with this exact kind of lie and never once has the press let them get away with it. Seems to me if a Republican commits a Clintonism, he’s fair game.

For the record, my father never met Martin Luther King. My father was a low-level grunt-worker in the movement, did some block-busting in New Jersey in the late 1950s. He met Hosea Williams. He met Ralph Abernathy in Georgia once. He even heard Malcolm X preach in New York. But he never met Martin Luther King.

LA replies

You’re being quite unfair. George Romney, as governor of Michigan, was an active supporter of the civil rights movement in the early 1960s and marched and so on. For Mitt Romney to say that “I saw my father march with MLK” is simply true. It means his father was an active and public ally and supporter of King. Obviously he didn’t mean, “I saw my father with my eyes march with King,” because if he had been physically present at the march he would have been marching with them.

To make an equivalence between Romney’s comment and the relentless, soul-destroying Clintonian lies that debauched this country is amazingly off-base. It’s a further example of how, in order to remove moral judgment from Clinton, Clinton’s defenders have to lower all Americans to Clinton’s level: “Everybody does it.” “All U.S. Presidents have behaved like Clinton.”

Ken Hechtman replies:

Point taken. I certainly don’t want to have an argument about the meaning of “saw.” And I do remember that in the grand scheme of things, a Republican trading on his father’s connections to Martin Luther King is much better than one trading on his great-grandfather’s connection to Nathan Bedford Forrest.

But I still say this superficial similarity to Clintonian lies, even if it is off-base, is motivating the liberal attacks. We saw our guys get raked over the coals for (something superficially like) this for years and years and years and we’re not going to pass up the opportunity to get some of our own back.

LA replies:

I don’t agree that Romney’s comment about King bears even a superficial similarity with Clintonian lies. I do agree that given the political realities created by the demonically aroused left, Romney would be advised only to make literally true comments about his background, such as, “My father was a strong supporter of King in the early sixties and was devoted to the cause of civil rights. He participated in civil rights marches with King and other leading civil rights figures,” etc.

A reader writes:

Very good, and notice how liberals like Ken Hechtman have to back down when someone really argues against their shallow take on things.

Posted by Lawrence Auster at December 23, 2007 01:45 AM | Send