Year 2, Month 11, Day 2: Is Being An Opportunistic Hypocrite Genetic, Or A Lifestyle Choice?

The Wall Street Journal notes that the Mittster has been inconsistent on climate change. Heh heh heh heh.

Rivals of Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney on Friday repeated their accusations of flip-flopping on core issues, after he told an audience on Thursday that he didn’t know what caused global warming.

Mr. Romney said earlier this year that human activity played a role.

“Mitt Romney’s positions change, often dramatically, depending on the audience or location,” said Ray Sullivan, a spokesman for Texas Gov. Rick Perry, also a GOP candidate. “Voters need to consider the fact that Romney, in one week, changed positions on man-made global warming, capping carbon emissions and Ohio’s efforts to curb union powers.”

It took me longer than I expected to write this letter, given that it was essentially a rephrasing of yesterday’s. Sent October 29:

Having learned early on that an inadvertent bit of truth-telling can deep-six a politician’s aspirations, Mitt Romney should know never to question conservative shibboleths.

Young Willard Romney was only 20 when he watched his father’s 1968 presidential run spin out of control when George Romney spoke of being “brainwashed” by advocates of the Vietnam war. While history has vindicated the Michigan Republican’s apostasy on our Southeast Asian misadventure, primary voters at the time rejected him soundly. So it is today, with the conservative base unified in its absolute denial of climate change.

Like father, like son. Historians will undoubtedly recognize Romney the Younger’s timid statement on global warming as a piece of truth-telling uncannily similar to that which sank Romney the Elder’s presidential run. Anti-science Republican absolutists will never acknowledge climate change, and Mitt’s subsequent equivocations may not be enough to undo the damage done by his brief flirtation with the truth.

Warren Senders