Mitt, Start Connecting Your Rhetoric With Appropriate Action

As I write this op-ed, I’m still hoping that Senator Mitt Romney will finally have his epiphany. By that, I mean have an honest-to-God awakening about what public service really means and how he — as the vigilant public servant he pretends to be — must fearlessly follow-though.

Speaking out against tyranny and injustice is fine, but it’s no good unless you accompany it with action. Unfortunately, throughout his political career, this public servant has experienced serious difficulties in standing up and standing strong for what he says he believes.

That’s the real tragedy of being Mitt: It seems he wants to do the right thing but can’t. He seems to have an authentic moral compass. His heart seems to be in the right place. He gives the impression that he wants to do what’s right. It looks like he tries, he really tries, But too often, he backs down when he should be charging ahead with appropriate words and accompanying deeds. He folds when he should be unfolding. This discrepancy between what he says and what he does makes him appear hypocritical. He’s not…Not really. He’s just too blindly obedient — no, subservient — to the GOP machine that demands mindless allegiance from all Republicans. Somehow, he always ends up following(or acquiescing to) the party line.

Once a Republican, always a Republican. And Mitt is one diehard Republican.

Look at his voting record. Sure, he did vote twice to impeach Trump. But he went about doing it in a way so that Trump supporters weren’t THAT deeply offended.

Oh, he did characterize Trump as a threat to our democracy. And yet, he wasn’t very passionate or proactive about removing him from The Oval Office. He could have become an outspoken critic with various town meetings, engaging press conferences, or personally written op-eds for The New York Times and The Washington Post. But when push came to shove, he retreated in the shadows so his “good and principled colleagues in the Senate” wouldn’t be TOO upset with him.

And yet, he did risk upsetting them by going against the party line in June, 2020, when he became the first Republican Senator to join a Black Lives Matter march in Washington, D.C. In an interview with Lee Davidson of The Salt Lake Tribune, he gave two reasons for his decision.

“Black Lives Matter is a statement saying that we have a justice system and a law enforcement system which from time to time does not exercise equal and fair justice,” he said. “And that’s an important message.”

Then he added, “I have an African American grandson.”

Wow, how impressive! Such eloquent, heartfelt reasons…So why didn’t Mitt vote for the all-important Voting Rights Act that would have ensured and protected his grandson’s right to vote? Because the Republican party was against the bill. So all the good little Republicans had to step in line and not vote for it.

That was also the real reason Mitt didn’t take to the Senate floor and speak out against the voter suppression that’s been sweeping the country(especially in The Red States). The official line was something like, “Senator Romney wasn’t asked to speak.” But Mitt still could have voted FOR the bill. He still could have used Twitter or cable TV platforms to speak out against voter suppression. He didn’t. Goodbye to ensuring future voting rights for little Kieran James Romney. (Thanks a lot, grandpa.)

Maybe Mitt’s fatal flaw is that he’s a true political Monet. That is, from a distance, he looks like a true statesman: dignified, distinguished, yet down-to-earth enough to be a real man of the people. Get a little closer, though, and you can see a lot of fuzziness. What appeared to be a thoughtful maverick from afar now resembles yet another GOP hack up close. Like a Machiavellian Claude Monet, Mitt has created a political persona that makes him look like an advocate for the public good. His ruse appears pretty credible, too — as long as you don’t look or listen to him too closely for too long. Pay a little more attention and you’ll realize he’s not really what he appears to be.

So, who is Mitt Romney, really? What does he actually stand for these days? I’m not sure anymore because he’s not acting in the way his rhetoric would lead you to believe he should be acting.

Ironically, Mitt didn’t have any problem criticizing President Biden’s recent support of enacting Voting Rights legislation. He wasn’t very statesman like in his criticisms of Biden, either.

During his speech in Atlanta, on January11, 2022, the President challenged the Senate’s stance on this issue. At one point in his oration, Biden asked, “Do you want to be on the side of Dr. King or George Wallace? Do you want to be on the side of John Lewis or Bull Connor? Do you want to be on the side of Abraham Lincoln or Jefferson Davis?”

These reasonable, thought-provoking questions ruffled a lot of Republican feathers. Many Senators who were against the Voting Rights Act were offended by President Biden’s speech. Mitt lost no time in taking to the Senate floor and announcing that the President “had accused a number of my good and principled colleagues in the Senate of having sinister, even racist inclination…So much for unifying the country and working across the aisle.”

Completely missing in Mitt’s rebuttal, however, was the fact that President Biden’s speech NEVER accused anyone of having sinister or racist inclination. Now you might argue that Biden’s questions seemed to insinuate that legislators who were against this voting bill were racist because not approving this bill would encourage voter suppression. And voter suppression(making it difficult to vote in elections) specifically targets people of color. So what happened to Mitt’s moral compass here? Where did it go?

Why was it so easy for Mitt to defend his “good and principled colleagues in the Senate” who became complicit in suppressing his grandson’s future right to vote but so difficult for him to vote for the bill that would have ensured his grandson’s voting rights in the future?

In order to better understand his flip-flopping M.O., we need to go back to something that happened eight years ago, after Mitt lost the U.S. Presidency but before he was elected to be the U.S. Senator from Utah, the current center of his Mormon religion. No doubt this incident that involved Mitt Romney’s newly adopted grandchild has been largely forgotten by most people. At the time it happened, however, I remember the big firestorm of criticism over racism that destroyed both the credibility and career of MSNBC host Melissa Harris-Perry, even though the racism was more alleged than self-evident. Ms Harris-Perry herself had a white mother and black father, so her ethnicity is Black or Biracial. But Right wing nuts love nothing more than to accuse a woman with such an ethnic background of being “racist.” Not accurate at all, especially since she did nothing or said nothing that was racist.

But remember, the Republicans have an all-important double standard that everyone must heed, or else. They can say whatever they want about anyone or anything, no matter how inaccurate or destructive. But nobody can ever say anything about another Republican that (they believe) seems even faintly unfavorable.

So when they heard one of Mitt’s sons had adopted a black baby, they went into all uber-protective/hyper-paranoid mode. And MHP paid the price.

The controversy erupted during her show’s year-end review for 2013. Ms. Harris-Perry began showing photographs that documented events from 2013, then asking her guest panel to provide captions for each image. Because her panel was comprised of witty communicators, the tacit understanding was that their captions would be light-hearted, humorous, maybe silly or irreverent. When she showed a photo of Mitt Romney surrounded by his large family and holding his black baby grandson, the panel was struck by the contrast between black, white, and gray.

With Mitt sitting in the center of his large white Mormon family and holding his non-white grandson, the baby looked like a tiny raisin in a big bowl of oatmeal. The panel couldn’t help but notice Mitt and this little baby because they were the focal point of the photo that was used in the family’s 2013 Christmas Card. Both MHP and her guests also couldn’t help but notice the immediate contrast between this small black color against the larger whites and grays in the picture.

MHP’s photograph of the Romney’s Christmas card photo elicited the song from Sesame Street about “One of these things is not like the other”…and a quip from comic Dean Obeidallah that the picture “sums up the diversity of the Republican Party.” Then Melissa Harris-Perry mused that some day baby Kieran James Romney might marry North West, daughter of activist/businesswoman Kim Kardashian and rapper Kanye West. What made everyone laugh was MHP’s comment, “Can you imaging Mitt Romney and Kanye West as in-laws?”

That image of those two demographically different people, now related through marriage, seemed humorous. So MHP and the panel laughed. No one voiced any opposition over interracial adoption. No one ridiculed baby Kieran James Romney or his new parents or grandparents. Nothing overtly or insidiously racist took place. But if I had been one of the producers on Melissa Harris-Perry’s show back in 2013, I would have advised her against including that photo of Mitt and his black grandson. Why? Because it’s an image of a white Republican and his black grandson. That means anything(absolutely anything) mentioned about it would be considered racist — even if no racism had been intended, even if no racism had actually existed. And, because it was Melissa Harris-Perry’s show, she would get blamed for the “racism.”

And that’s exactly what happened.

It became her Gotterdammerung. She acted admirably, though. Not only did MHP take full responsibility for what happened, she offered a tearful apology on-air. She also apologized with numerous tweets and written regrets on MSNBC.com. Too bad she got shamed and fired from her job at MSNBC anyway.
What’s really troubling about this brouhaha is how the GOP propaganda machine reacted emotionally and politically with a narrative that was inaccurate, even devoid of facts. The laughter on MHP’s show resulted from recognition of Mitt Romney’s living irony. His new grandchild led to that realization but was NOT the real reason behind the giggles. No, the laughter came from yet another example of Mitt’s disingenuous posing and rhetoric.

Look again at this Monet’s record of voting and public service. He’s never been a real diehard, outspoken proponent of equality and justice for black people. Or brown or red or yellow people. It was never on his radar. He never really thought about it enough to be outspoken or proactive about it. He never really cared THAT much about helping people outside of his white purview. But now that he has a black grandson, he’s decided to participate in a Black Lives Matter march? Now that Mitt’s personally involved with HIS black grandson, he’s going to join Black Lives Matter? Good for him. Way to go, Mitt. Too bad it took you 7 years to get marching.

Hey, wait a minute. Why did it take him that long to get involved?

Does everything have to personally affect HIM before HE gets personally involved? Well, yeah.

That reminds me of another irony that tickled those funny bones in 2013. For more than a century, Mitt’s religion believed black people were descended from Cain, and so, were prohibited from actively participating in Mormon Church rites. That did change in 1978 when The Church President Spencer W. Kimball had a revelation from God: Black people were people too. Their souls had just as much right to salvation as white people’s souls had. Oddly enough, many Mormons ignored God’s revelation. Many of them still believed that black souls needed more spiritual development before they could participate with other white souls. Anyway, why it took God so long to tell Kimball something so obvious remains a mystery.

So does Mitt’s behavior with Melissa Harris-Perry. If Mitt’s Church was as important to him as he says it is, why did he let these personal attacks against her continue after she’d given so many heartfelt apologies on so many different venues? He could have contacted MSNBC with something simple like, “Ms. Harris-Perry has apologized for what happened. I, along with others in my family, have accepted her apology. We consider the matter closed. We also hope no further retributions be taken that would adversely affect Ms. Harris-Perry’s career.” That didn’t happen.

Mitt also could have halted these Right wing attacks against MHP by simply asking her critics to stop. He also could have taken the high road by coming on Ms. Harris-Perry’s show and discussing the issues and concerns of interracial adoption, for educational purposes. Those things didn’t happen, either. Not very Christian-like, was it? Especially when Mitt got so offended in 2013 about this so-called racism, but then refused to enact legislation in 2022 that would have legally ended the racism involved in voting rights.
Just once, it would be nice if Mitt Romney took a stand on something, then kept standing — instead of sitting down.