Before you say that none of us want to be held accountable today for acts committed in the folly of youth, I agree with you. Also, I am a strong believer in second chances. When evaluating such matters, it is important to make a fair determination of whether the person has grown out of such behavior, or that behavior accurately represents who the person is today. In the case of Mitt Romney, the bully, the latter is easily demonstrable.
First let’s look at the original piece that broke the story.
Mitt Romney returned from a three-week spring break in 1965 to resume his studies as a high school senior at the prestigious Cranbrook School. Back on the handsome campus, studded with Tudor brick buildings and manicured fields, he spotted something he thought did not belong at a school where the boys wore ties and carried briefcases. John Lauber, a soft-spoken new student one year behind Romney, was perpetually teased for his nonconformity and presumed homosexuality. Now he was walking around the all-boys school with bleached-blond hair that draped over one eye, and Romney wasn’t having it.
“He can’t look like that. That’s wrong. Just look at him!” an incensed Romney told Matthew Friedemann, his close friend in the Stevens Hall dorm, according to Friedemann’s recollection. Mitt, the teenage son of Michigan Gov. George Romney, kept complaining about Lauber’s look, Friedemann recalled.
A few days later, Friedemann entered Stevens Hall off the school’s collegiate quad to find Romney marching out of his own room ahead of a prep school posse shouting about their plan to cut Lauber’s hair. Friedemann followed them to a nearby room where they came upon Lauber, tackled him and pinned him to the ground. As Lauber, his eyes filling with tears, screamed for help, Romney repeatedly clipped his hair with a pair of scissors.
The incident was recalled similarly by five students, who gave their accounts independently of one another. Four of them — Friedemann, now a dentist; Phillip Maxwell, a lawyer; Thomas Buford, a retired prosecutor; and David Seed, a retired principal — spoke on the record. Another former student who witnessed the incident asked not to be identified… [emphasis added]
Inserted from <Washington Post>
Two key prerequisites to change are remorse and attempting to make amends, where possible, for harm done. Let’s look at how Romney deals with these items.
Sometimes, in politics and government, apologies are in order.
“Back in high school,” Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney said today, “I did some dumb things, and if anybody was hurt by that or offended, obviously I apologize.”
At the same time, Romney maintained in an interview on Fox News Radio that he couldn’t recall the incident for which he was apologizing: As reported in the Washington Post, the accounts of several then-teenage classmates of Romney at the all-boys Cranbrook School in Michigan recalling him and a group shoving and cutting the long hair of a student presumed to be gay.
“I certainly don’t believe that I thought the fellow was homosexual,” Romney said of the fellow prep school student. “That was the furthest thing from our minds back in the 1960s, so that was not the case.”
He questioned how much of a candidate’s past is fair game, too. “There’s going to be some that want to talk about high school,” the former Massachusetts governor said. “Well, if you really think that’s important, be my guest.”… [emphasis added]
Inserted from <Bloomberg>
Conditional apologies, such as this one, demonstrate evasion, not remorse. Frankly, Romney’s claim that he does not remember the incident is not believable, especially considering Romney’s proven preference for lying. If he does not remember the incident, as he claims, how could he possibly know that he didn’t think his victim, was gay? According to the other perpetrators, the victim’s perceived sexuality was the reason they were bullying him. Trying to pass the incident off as unimportant is the clearest indication that Romney refuses to take responsibility and has not changed.
Ed Schultz discuses the story with Clay Aiken and Capt. Stephen Hill, the gay soldier Republicans bullied by booing him at a Republican debate.
Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy
And there’s more. Romney’s business career was to head a corporate raider, the bullies of the business world. He used his power to steal workers’ pensions by borrowing against them to pay his huge salary and liquidating the pensions in bankruptcies to pay off the loans. He used his power fo fire workers and ship their jobs overseas, leaving empty shells, displaced workers and shattered communities in his wake.
In addition, Romney now heads the party of bullies. As leader of the Republican party, he bullies unions, workers, seniors, women, gays, minorities, Muslims, voters, regulators, veterans and anyone else who refuses to goose step within a plutocratic Republican Regime.
In conclusion, what Romney did as a student is identical to what he did in business and to what he is trying to do in politics.
Unless you are willing to do whatever it takes to keep him and his cohorts out of power, you risk becoming his next victim.
14 Responses to “Republican Bully-in-Chief”
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– Gerald Rafshoon, former spokesman for president Carter.
“In addition, Romney now heads the party of bullies. As leader of the Republican party, he bullies unions, workers, seniors, women, gays, minorities, Muslims, voters, regulators, veterans and anyone else who refuses to goose step within a plutocratic Republican Regime.”
No empathy for the working poor main street Americans….
Let me put this in equation form…
Courage:Romney::Legs:Snake
The pattern of behavior attributed to Mittens– meets the diagnostic criteria for an anti- social personality disorder—-all of it , including the amazing grandiosity , along with the many lies where the truth would serve better- fit ;- in my opinion , he is unable to be truthful-
He has been and is a bully-
How ironic ( and fitting, I suppose), that the GOP should have just awarded Romney their supreme “bully pulpit” by making him the party’s de facto candidate for the Presidency.
I often see similar patterns in the histories of prisoners I volunteer to help. The difference, of course is that they show remorse, take responsibility and try to make amends.
He and a group of his ‘friends’ held a boy down who they suspected of being gay and cut off all his hair. He says he doesn’t remember it. Denial? or selective memory? Strange, 4 others do remember it! And I wonder what the target of their derision, John Lauber, would say today were he alive. Here’s, I think, a key part of what Rmoney said in addition to his lack of memory of the incident.
“. . . I did some stupid things when I was in highschool and obviously, if I hurt anyone by virtue of that, I would be very sorry for that and apologise for that . . .”
Several things:
Strange how his ‘friends’ — a dentist, a lawyer, a presecutor, and a principal — all remember the incident clearly, but the main instigator can’t!? And he became a chopshopist, a corporate bully for profit! They all grew up, he didn’t! Once a sociopath in the guise of respectability, always a sociopath.
I guess things haven’t changed for him very much — only now he is bullying women, gays, the poor and everyone else but the 1%, AND he’s still denying it! The Brits said that Rupert Murdock was unfit to run a large corporation. I wonder what they would say about Rmoney running the US, if they dared say anything? I suspect the same thing, but they will never say that publically!
“Denial? or selective memory?”
I’m trying to decide whether it should medically classified as “Convenesia” or “Romnesia”. What do you guys think?
I think it doesn’t matter as long as we acknowlege thatr the only known cure is a Romnectomy.
Had he offered such a sincere apology, I would have had no reason to write the article.
I agree. And not only that, he wouldn’t have so much fur flying now either. I wonder if this new advisor suggested he handle it this way? If so, he should be fired. Or is this yet again Rmoney shooting off the cuff, something he isn’t good at. Either way, there is no undoing this. Rmoney is not fit to be POTUS!
Such evasion seems to be the standard Republican mods operendi… like Larry Craig’s wide stance.
Once a bully, always a bully. I’ve found that bullies are cowards.
So have I.