Mitt Romney Deserved to Lose

In April of this year, sometime shortly before former Governor of Massachusettss Mitt Romney secured the Republican primary for president (but he seemed at that point to very much be on track to win it), he and Mrs. Romney indulged a television journalist's request for an interview.  They sat down with ABC's Diane Sawyer.

As they sat together, after talking a while, Sawyer asked the couple a question, "What would each of you say to President and Mrs. Obama?"

Romney looked her in the eye and took a second to weigh his thoughts.  He inhaled a deep breath and said, "Well... start packing."  He and Mrs. Romney thought it was funny.  Together, they laughed heartily.  Romney continued: "That's what I'd like to say. Obviously, we have a very different view."

The incident was shocking in its naked unkindness.  It was brutal.  "Start packing":

"Yuk, yuk.  Get out of your home, I'm taking it over.  Chortle, snort.  Empty the drawers.  Take the photos off the walls.  Tell the girls to pick up their toys.  We're moving in.  Ha, ha.  My, how that tickles us.  Get out."

One must wonder if this expression is part of their personal style and they had it with them all along, or was it a bleedover effect from the nastiness of the Republican Party's visceral dislike of President Obama and Democrats, even more emphatically expressed in its tea party wing?  I suspect it's a combination of both, but the Republican Party, never exactly known for its generosity of spirit, has, since 2009, more definitely become the "Party of Hate."

If I wanted to take the time, I could create a bullet list of incidents to support the charge from the 2012 primaries alone, but there's far more to it than that.  When the president won his first election and the Democratic Party won control of Congress, thoughts of murdering Democrats were being expressed in baseless charges of governmental tyranny and a claim that the Second Amendment gave rightists a moral right to use guns.  Being that the charges were completely baseless, their wellsprings were anger and hatred expressing themselves as a desire to kill.

And, of course, the foundation for all of it was laid in the Gingrich revolution of 1994 when Republicans gained control of the House, and former Speaker Newt Gingrich engineered the politics of demonization against former President Bill Clinton and his wife, current Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.  All of it was a kind of hysterical nastiness that most likely has its roots in the McCarthy era and the John Birch Society.

Of course, that part is more speculative than systematic at this point, though I think I'm onto something.  I've always called the Republican Party "The Party of Hate," and history has done nothing but make me more sure.

And the governor himself has his own little heartless demons lurking in his past, and so many point to an empathy vacuum: The haircutting incident, the dog on the car roof, his Bain career with takeover layoffs.  Then the public display on television of the Romneys' personal unkindess to a family: "Start packing."

Mitt Romney and his party are a fitting match, and, together, they deserved to lose this election.  America is better than they.