Mitt Romney and National Suicide

Mitt Romney and National Suicide: No Pixie Tale Here

By Joseph Andrew Settanni


In a mere fairy story, there is no real harm when a prince pretends to be a frog or vice versa; but, when a human being goes about assuming the role of a supposed (political) prince when he’s just a sort of egotistical frog, that can and usually does cause trouble in the political order of things, not just in a land of frogs. But, really now, is a coast-to-coast fairy story worth the price of inducing a national suicide?

What is going on here? The majority of politicians are, normally, said to be egotistical, which might not be said of amphibians; rare it is that a genuinely humble man, an oddity, runs for an office, (which he openly is thought to lust for, one way or another). Most seekers after a political office, and more true for those wanting the highest one in the land, have a more than just ample share of ego dominance in their lives; they assert, as if by right, to then become the biggest frog in the pond.

Mitt Romney is, surely, a mega-egotist on a grand scale of public presentation, which need not be seriously doubted; he feels, consequently, that the Republican Party hierarchy simply owes him the nomination, especially because, among other reasons, he ran before in 2008. Now, he had played the part of a good soldier; Romney, in effect, as with Robert Dole, John McCain, and others, had patiently waited his presumed turn or chance.

Egoism demands, as might be thought, that he be handed this major opportunity to consequently waste by, nonetheless, losing to Obama. In this troubled world, much larger than a pond, not all political calculations need turn out to be of a rational nature. Failure, thus, becomes equated with a kind of supposed success.

Winning the nomination is the prize, not what it ought to lead to the consummation of, meaning as to the final political outcome. But, a genuine conservative, in the thinking of the upper-class, country-club/yacht-club party leadership, is not supposed to get the nomination, as if by law required. So, this fellow, a reportedly devout Mormon, seems just preordained as such.

Failure of a Mitt Romney Nomination: General Election Debacle

Of course, in the meanwhile, he has to go through the unpleasant aggravating motions of having to contend with some assumed “genuine” opponents, prior to his upcoming expected anointing at the convention.

But, Mitt (as Ford reborn?) must give the appearance at least of pretending, though his lack of public passion is often revealing, to be, somehow or other, interested in an essentially fixed process, as to the bottom line, as to the shenanigans. What, however, is actually meant? Can something be yet surmised?

This has certainly all happened before; political history exists; always, it has invariably led, in fact, to the predictable defeat of that chosen egotist, in the general election, because he had lost most of the (unhappy) conservative base of the Republican Party. For some as yet totally unexplained reason (according to many so-called experts) dedicated or substantial conservatives do not normally vote willingly to help elect liberals or moderate liberals.

Perhaps, someday, they will become trained to do so in just a Pavlovian manner, though many do doubt that possibility. Why is this, seemingly, prosaically said?

Gerald Ford lost in 1976 to a proverbial peanut farmer; George H. W. Bush lost in his reelection effort, in 1992, to a licentious reprobate; Dole lost, in 1996, as that aforementioned licentious reprobate got himself handily elected; McCain had lost, in 2008, to someone with a rather thin (quite nearly invisible) political CV; all of them, quite deservedly, had not, thus, become the nation’s Chief Executive. (Bush ran under false colors, in 1988, as a Reaganite and had then easily won, of course, meaning, thus, as ought to have been, logically, just expected).

It takes a strange personality, therefore, that is really more than just a normal megalomaniac to get a major party’s nomination and run it directly into the ground, as part of an extensively organized political campaign, costing in the process, literally, many hundreds of millions of dollars. But, clearly, Romney is just such an exceptional man, with the added toxic character needed, to do it.

He is so fully capable, therefore, of an awful defeat. The man is, moreover, a superbly trained grand master of his many inherent limitations, and they will be revealed, in spades, as he goes down, into historical ignominy, in 2012. It is known, regardless, that he will ever vigorously protest his innocence. Absurdity and irony runs well, therefore, with inevitability.

There will be the incredible (because each was, in fact, once preventable) sequence of Ford, Bush, Dole, McCain, and Romney; this will be eagerly exhibited by the neoconservative (read: moderate-to-liberal) wing of the party, true to their politically suicidal convictions and blind, as ever, to the truth.

Manifest will be the rugged determination, hard fought, to grasp defeat from the jaws of victory, as if it were just a normal thing to do, of course. Nonetheless, many intriguing and important questions can still here be impertinently asked:

Ought a national political party, fully capable of placing their chosen candidate into the White House, freely allow a tremendously vainglorious act of unmitigated hyper or mega-egotism to parade as a legitimate political person interested in becoming President of the USA? Should such a great amount of time, effort, energy, money, talent, organization, planning, etc. be then so lavishly and thoughtlessly expended upon a candidate who must, as was noted, completely fail to win?

Why ought the supreme egotism of this one man come to so absolutely override, totally dominate, all other politically appropriate considerations as to a, thus, hopeless nominee? Is it a form of political determinism, historical predestination, that the party hierarchy must run down, again and again, the same historical rat hole toward the deserved defeat of its celebrated frog-prince nominee?

How could the nomination of a predictable failure be rationally and economically justified as the proper and legitimate act of a national political party boldly claiming to be seeking an electoral victory in 2012? Is it not, perhaps, well seen or perceived cogently that Obama’s reelection victory will bring into being a national suicide as the disheartened nation is transformed, over the course of the then next four years, into a European-style, social-market economy and its cognate social-democratic State?

Conclusion

Of course, as the nation crescively chooses mass suicide, most of the population will, over time, chose modes and degrees of more individualized acts of suicide. And, the would-be frog-prince will openly declaim that he, obviously, played no part whatsoever in the expected debacle by deciding to become a mega-egotistical nominee historically and politically destined to be defeated.


A high price is, once again, to be generously paid in the combined cause of personal vanity and the ugly and spiteful vindictiveness of the party hierarchy because of their rather open detestation of political conservatives. Oh, faithlessness, thy name is obsession. With Romney, however, the disaster cannot simply be averted.

Or, to appropriately quote from T. S. Eliot, … this is the way the world ends, this is the way the world ends, not with a bang but a whimper.