As I watch all of the millions of dollars pour into the negative campaign ads on television on both side of the aisle, I wonder what would happen if both candidates just had a meeting with each other and said, ”Let’s just stop all of this negativity and pool these dollars and put our constituents back to work and let the chips fall where they may. Let the folk decide who the leader of our free world should be.”
Since I turned 76 years old July 10, and since the Republicans could care less about what I think, I may as well just shut up and write my story. Well, I will take a portion of that remark back. There is one Republican in this town who cares about what we think, and that is Sheriff Rich Stanek. (He is the only Republican my family allows me to vote for.)
But my story is about the honesty of a Republican father and the deception of his Republican son. I was wondering why Gov. Mitt Romney never talks about his parents on the campaign trail as much as President Obama and other candidates do about theirs.
Now I know why. I read an article in the Wikipedia, the free online encyclopedia, that would humanize Mitt Romney if he were as honest as his father.
This is a brief story of George Wilcken Romney, who was born to American parents living in Mormon colonies in Mexico. Events during the Mexican Revolution forced his family to flee back to the United States when he was a child.
The family lived in several states and ended up in Salt Lake City, Utah, where they struggled. Mitt’s father worked in a number of jobs, served as a Mormon missionary in England and Scotland, and attended several colleges in the U.S. but never graduated from any.
As I focus on the struggles Gov. Mitt’s family went through, it was devastating to hear George Wilcken Romney’s son, W. Mitt Romney, on Wednesday, July 11, as he spoke at an NAACP Convention arrogantly stating that his main goal was to eliminate every “Obama Care” program he can find were he to become president.
Gov. George Romney had a different view about supporting African Americans in their hardship and struggles for equality. He entered politics by participating in a Constitutional Convention to rewrite the Michigan Constitution during 1961-62.
He was elected governor of Michigan in 1962 and was re-elected by an increasingly large margin in1964 and 1966. Romney worked to overhaul the state’s financial and revenue structure, culminating in Michigan’s first state income tax, and greatly expanded the size of state government.
Hmm, I wonder if Gov. Mitt has seen this piece?
Gov. George Romney was a strong supporter of the American Civil Rights Movement. He briefly represented moderate Republicans against conservative Republican Barry Goldwater during the 1964 U.S. presidential election. He requested the intervention of federal troops during the 1967 Detroit riots.
Once President Richard Nixon was elected, Gov. George Romney was appointed Secretary of Housing and Urban Development. Romney’s ambitious plan for housing production increases for the poor, and for open housing to desegregate suburbs, was moderately successful. He was seriously undermined by Richard Nixon (who was a Tea Party member of his time).
I am writing about Gov. George Romney because, unlike his son Mitt, he had strength and backbone to stand for something and not be kept by a group of power-hungry people like Richard Nixon or the Tea Party folk of today.
Governor Mitt Romney is a very wealthy and intelligent man, but he is not forthcoming with the folk, even his African American supporters. (I’m not one, but his dad’s story is fascinating.) What Mitt is not telling us is that, while he and the Tea Party Republicans are trying to do away with all of the programs President Obama and the Democrats are putting in place for the poor, these are the same government relief programs that benefited his father George and his family and other Mormons in El Paso, Texas before they moved to Los Angeles, California with a carpenter uncle, where life became a little better.
In kindergarten, other children mocked George’s natural origin by calling him ”Mex.” But guess what? Governor Mitt Romney is smarter than all of the Republican Tea Party folk. He is given millions of dollars by Karl Rove, Grover Norquist, the Koch brothers, and all the other lunatics that are pushing for him to defeat our President Barack Obama.
Meanwhile, his finances are kept in off-shore accounts, and when he loses to President Obama, Mitt will still maintain all of his riches. Even though he does not have the integrity and backbone of his father George, I can easily see that the boy ”ain’t no dime-store dummy.” He has no intentions of standing in the poverty lines with the rest of us, trying to apply for Medicare, Medicaid and food stamps.
Rev. Mary Flowers Spratt welcomes reader responses to maryawmin@yahoo.com, or call 827-9264, or write to 411 East 38th, Suite 102, Minneapolis, 55409.
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