Conservatives this week were quick to mock the Obama campaign's "The Life of Julia," an online slideshow highlighting how government investments in education, health care, small business and retirement security help enable the children of working families to climb the ladder of social mobility. Republican critics dismissed that common path to the middle class as the "condescension" of "cradle-to-grave, government-supported existence" supposedly championed by Democrats.

It is only fitting, then, that the Romney campaign offers its alternative vision. So here is "The Life of Mitt," a tale of a winner-take-all America in which government exists to ensure a privileged few stay that way.

Age Minus 9 Months: The son of American Motors magnate and Michigan Governor George Romney, Mitt fondly recalls being with his father for Detroit's Golden Jubilee. That celebration marking the 50th anniversary of the American automobile occurred on June 1, 1946, "fully nine months before Romney was born." Years later, Mitt would similarly "remember" seeing his dad march with Martin Luther King, Jr.

Age 8: Young Mitt Romney is living his American Dream; that is, being born to a father who achieved his own. "Only in America could a man like my dad become governor of the state in which he once sold paint from the trunk of his car." In Michigan, Mitt learned to love cars and trees which were the right height. He also begins to soak up valuable life lessons from his dad, like "Mitt, never get involved in politics if you have to win election to pay a mortgage." As for the millions of Americans unable to pay theirs, Mitt later concluded:

"Don't try and stop the foreclosure process. Let it run its course and hit the bottom, allow investors to buy homes, put renters in them, fix the homes up and let it turn around and come back up."

Despite his filial devotion, Mitt forgets his father's warning that "rugged individualism" is "nothing but a political banner to cover up greed."

Age 12: After attending a public elementary school, young Mitt is sent to the prestigious Cranbrook School in elegant Bloomfield Hills. This experience leads him to declare he's just "a guy from Detroit," one who happens to support school vouchers and tax breaks for home schooling, while slashing funds for public schools.

While Mitt Romney would certainly never had to worry about "getting a pink slip," he stills gets a chuckle thinking about those who did when his father moved AMC jobs from Michigan to Wisconsin. It's no wonder he chides his former home town in 2008, declaring, "Let Detroit Go Bankrupt."

Age 16: In 1963, Mitt confronts personal tragedy, as "dear, close family relative" Ann Keenan dies as a result of an illegal abortion. As he later explained during a 1994 Senate debate with Ted Kennedy, it was that searing experience which made him a pro-choice Mormon:

"It is since that time that my mother and my family have been committed to the belief that we can believe as we want, but we will not force our beliefs on others on that matter. And you will not see me wavering on that."

Age 19: In 1966, Stanford student Mitt Romney takes part in his only college protest, one in favor of the Vietnam War. But thanks to the generous 4-D exemption from military service, Mitt like many Mormon young men of his age was able to secure multiple deferments in order to perform his church mission. During that two and half year period when other American men were fighting in the rice fields of Vietnam, Romney faced hardships in the vineyards of France. These apparently included pooping in a bucket during his of roughing it in a palatial church mansion in Paris. As he revealed in a 1994 interview with the Boston Herald, Romney was not exactly racked by guilt as the war raged in Southeast Asia:

"Romney, however, acknowledged he did not have any desire to serve in the military during his college and missionary days, especially after he married and became a father," the newspaper wrote. "'I was not planning on signing up for the military,' he said. It was not my desire to go off and serve in Vietnam, but nor did I take any actions to remove myself from the pool of young men who were eligible for the draft. If drafted, I would have been happy to serve, and if I didn't get drafted I was happy to be with my wife and new child.'"

Thirteen years later, candidate Mitt Romney explained he passed on that tradition to his five boys:

"My sons are all adults and they've made decisions about their careers and they've chosen not to serve in the military and active duty and I respect their decision in that regard. One of the ways my sons are showing support for our nation is helping me get elected because they think I'd be a great president."

Age 24: In 1971, Ann and Mitt Romney head to Cambridge, Massachusetts. There, Mitt starts a "terrific" four year program to get his JD and MBA at Harvard Business School, completing both degrees 37 years before accusing Barack Obama of spending too much time in the Harvard faculty lounge. Even with small children and Mitt in school, Ann avoided the "dignity of work" because "Mitt had enough of an investment from stock that we could sell off a little at a time. The stock came from Mitt's father."

That history might explain why Romney offered this advice in March to college students struggling to pay for his education:

"If you can't afford it, scholarships are available, shop around for loans, make sure you go to a place that's reasonably priced, and if you can, think about serving the country 'cause that's a way to get all that education for free."

Pell grants, schmell grants.

In 2012, Mitt tells college students to borrow money from their parents to start a business, advice his son Tagg took to the tune of $10 million.

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There's nothing wrong with being born with a silver spoon in your mouth. It's what you do with that good fortune that matters. And that is at the heart of Mitt Romney's problem with the American people. With his proclamations and policies, the same man who denounces President Obama as "out of touch" and "Marie Antoinette," shows his aloof detachment and stunning incomprehension of the struggles Americans face every day. And yet, they don't begrudge him either his privileged past or financial success. Instead, they just want him to acknowledge the debt he owes to the society that made it possible.

Alas, Romney's empathy gap was once again on display in response to President Obama's comment about all Americans deserving a "fair shot," even those who, like him, weren't "born with a sliver spoon in [their] mouth." (That rhetorical device, by the way, is one Obama has been using for years.) As he has for months, Mitt Romney took umbrage:

"I'm certainly not going to apologize for my dad and his success in life. He was born poor. He worked his way to become very successful despite the fact that he didn't have a college degree. And one of the things he wanted to do was provide for me and for my brother and sisters."

But that's not all George Romney did. As Rick Perlstein recalled of Mitt's dad, the Michigan Governor and American Motors magnate (who ironically also met with that infamous community organizer Saul Alinsky):

As a CEO he would give back part of his salary and bonus to the company when he thought they were too high. He offered a pioneering profit-sharing plan to his employees. Most strikingly, asked about the idea that "rugged individualism" was the key to America's success, he snapped back, "It's nothing but a political banner to cover up greed."

That doesn't sound anything like the son who boasted that "I like being able to fire people who provide services to me." And while Mitt Romney certainly never had to worry about "getting a pink slip," he stills gets a chuckle thinking about those who did when his father moved AMC jobs from Michigan to Wisconsin.

To be sure, Romney's repeated and comical failures to present himself as a "man of the people" have only deepened his yawning empathy gap. Romney, who explained that over the last decade "my income comes overwhelmingly from some investments made in the past," joked with jobless voters that "I'm also unemployed." The $250 million man similarly declared himself "part of the 80 to 90 percent of us" who are middle class, when just the "not very much" $374,000 he earned in speaking fees last year puts him in the top one percent of income earners. Whether or not he really enjoys firing people, Mitt Romney almost certainly never pooped in a bucket during his time as a missionary at a toney Paris mansion. (Who else would lecture a child about his plans to divvy up his estate among his 16 grandchildren or endorse rooftop canine waterboarding?) And there's no doubt that the man who spent $12 million to buy his third home (none of which are located on "the real streets of America") didn't win any friends when he offered this prescription for the housing market crisis:

"Don't try and stop the foreclosure process. Let it run its course and hit the bottom, allow investors to buy homes, put renters in them, fix the homes up and let it turn around and come back up."

It's no surprise Mitt Romney believes income inequality should only be discussed in "quiet rooms." But it certainly didn't help matters when his wife Ann joked "Mitt doesn't even know the answer to that" when asked how many dressage horses she owns while her husband slanders Democrats as "the party of monarchists." It's no wonder his ally and Massachusetts GOP Senator Scott Brown urged Romney to release his tax returns:

"He's in a category, a lot of those folks are in categories that we don't really understand."

Brown was only saying what most Americans were thinking when he acknowledged that Romney is living in "a different world from me."

And in that world, the rules most Americans play by simply don't apply to Mitt Romney.

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The President took a veiled swipe at Willard the other day, saying,

Somebody gave me an education. I wasn't born with a silver spoon in my mouth. Michelle wasn't.

Obama's larger point was that government should help create opportunities for those not born with a trust fund. Willard didn't like that much.

“I’m not going to apologize for my dad and his success in his life,” Romney said on “Fox & Friends.” “He was born poor and he worked his way to become very successful despite the fact that he didn’t have a college degree.”

No one is asking Willard to apologize for his father's success. Indeed, it's precisely people like Romney's father who Obama is saying government should provide opportunities for. And government did. During the Great Depression, George Romney got a job as an aide to a Democratic Senator, then later as a lobbyist.

George Romney also openly opposed "Mr. Conservative" Barry Goldwater in 1964, and did not seek to roll back the New Deal.

The essential question is this: should government endeavor to make society more fair or should it not? Rockefeller Republicans like George Romney thought it should. The modern GOP, which Willard is the standard bearer, does not.

In a conference call with several thousand potential Wisconsin primary voters Wednesday, Republican Presidential Candidate Mitt Romney joked about his father laying off auto industry workers, showing, once again, that he is completely out of touch with working class Americans. It's hard to tell if Romney was going out of his way to pander to Wisconsin voters or if he's just insensitive enough to the trials that working class Americans face that he didn't understand how the comment could cause pain or controversy.

“I have a few connections with the state of Wisconsin,” said Romney, who was hosting his first tele townhall with Wisconsin voters ahead of next week’s primary. “One of the most humorous, I think, relates to my father. You may remember that my father, George Romney, was president of an automobile company called American Motors, and they made Ramblers and Jeeps, and they had a factory in Michigan and they had a factory in Kenosha, WI, and another one in Milwaukee, WI.”

“And as the president of the company he decided to close the factory in Michigan, and move all the production to Wisconsin,” Romney explained. “Now, later he decided to run for Governor of Michigan and so you can imagine that having closed the factory and moved all the production to Wisconsin was a very sensitive issue to him, for his campaign, and I recall at one parade where he was going down the streets, he was lead by a band, and they had a high school band that was leading each of the candidates, and his band did not know how to play the Michigan fight song.”

“They only knew how to play the Wisconsin fight song, so every time they would start playing ‘On, Wisconsin,’ ‘On, Wisconsin,’ my dad’s political people would jump up and down and try to get them to stop because they didn’t want people in MI to be reminded that my dad had moved production to Wisconsin,” said Romney, letting out a laugh. “None the less, I appreciate the chance to be with you this morning.”

It's humorous to Romney that his father fired workers in Michigan, his home state. The Obama campaign quickly jumped on the comments:

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Rick Santorum fared incredibly well in the Iowa caucus Tuesday night. It ended in an almost virtual tie with Romney pulling ahead by a handful of votes. In Santorum's "victory speech" he discussed his family's working class roots. We rarely hear anything much about Mitt Romney's family even though his father ran American Motors and was Governor of Michigan. What about Romney's roots?

I decided to research Mitt Romney's father. George Romney was a powerful industrial and political figure of his day.

Romney's family came from England, converted to Mormonism, came to America and quickly turned to plural marriage which led them to an unexpected exile and exodus to Mexico and then just as abruptly, they fled back to the USA to avoid a revolution.

It's an unexpected backstory to the "next in line" probable GOP nominee.

In this post I'll use information I found from the book by Tom Mahoney published in 1960 called 'The Story Of George Romney."

Mitt comes from a long line of Romney's that resided in England for generations and when an early Mormon missionary from America named Orson Hyde came to England to spread their word, Gaskell Romney and his wife Elizabeth converted in 1839. Soon after they boarded a boat to America. (pg 50)

He and his wife, who had been Elizabeth Gaskell, were attracted by a street meeting of Orson Hyde, one of the first Mormon missionaries to England, and in 1839 were baptized.

If you're not familiar with the Mormon religion, Joesph Smith, the founder, said he had vision as far back as 1820 in upstate New York and traveled West, where his flock finally ending up in Utah, led by Brigham Young after Smith was killed. After writing the Book of Mormon, Smith had a revelation which is known as Article 132 from the Mormon text called Doctrine and Covenants of the Church of the Latter Day Saints, a sort of addendum book to the Book of Mormon.

Revelation given through Joseph Smith the Prophet, at Nauvoo, Illinois, recorded 12 July 1843, relating to the new and everlasting covenant, including the eternity of the marriage covenant, and also the plurality of wives (see History of the Church, 5:501–7). Although the revelation was recorded in 1843, it is evident from the historical records that the doctrines and principles involved in this revelation had been known by the Prophet since 1831.

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This week, Mitt Romney's former Lieutenant Governor and current adviser Kerry Healy nonchalantly acknowledged the yawning chasm separating her candidate from American women; "There's always going to be a gender gap between Republicans and Democrats."

She should know. After all, she was by Mitt's side as he made — and broke — a bevy of promises to women voters during his days in Massachusetts. And as it turns out, that long list doesn't only include his gymnastic reversal on abortion rights and shocking betrayal of Planned Parenthood. As we now know, Mitt's belief that "now mom and dad both have to work" and "I want the individuals to have the dignity of work" don't apply to well-off households like his own.

Seeking to capitalize on the manufactured flap over Hilary Rosen's offhand remark that Ann Romney "has actually never worked a day in her life," Mitt proclaimed that "all mothers are working mothers." As it turns out, Romney's Rule is means-tested. Put another way, on Mitt's Animal Farm, some mothers are more equal than others. As he explained during his 1994 Senate run against Ted Kennedy:

"This is a different world than it was in the 1960s when I was growing up, when you used to be able to have mom at home and dad at work. Now mom and dad both have to work."

Now, as the severely conservative and severely condescending Romney insisted in January, women who receive welfare must work outside the home, even if their children are very young:

"I wanted to increase the work requirement," said Romney. "I said, for instance, that even if you have a child 2 years of age, you need to go to work. And people said, 'Well that's heartless.' And I said, 'No, no, I'm willing to spend more giving day care to allow those parents to go back to work. It'll cost the state more providing that daycare, but I want the individuals to have the dignity of work."

Just not if the individual is his wife.

As Ann Romney explained in an October 1994 interview, their dignity was provided by Mitt's father George:

"Neither one of us had a job, because Mitt had enough of an investment from stock that we could sell off a little at a time."

"The stock came from Mitt's father. When he took over American Motors, the stock was worth nothing. But he invested Mitt's birthday money year to year -- it wasn't much, a few thousand, but he put it into American Motors because he believed in himself. Five years later, stock that had been $6 a share was $96 and Mitt cashed it so we could live and pay for education."

$250 million dollars later, the dignified Mrs. Romney now claims their wealth can't be quantified. As she lectured voters in January:

"I understand Mitt's going to release his tax forms this week. I want to remind you where our riches are: our riches are with our families," Ann Romney said. "Our riches, you can value them, in the children we have and in the grandchildren we have. So that's where our values are and that's where our heart is -- and that's where we measure our wealth."

As Rosengate reached its crescendo last week, Ann Romney explained, "My career choice was to be a mother." She then added:

"We have to respect women in all those choices that they make."

Just not when those choices involve their own bodies and their own health. And that message to the women of America is the exact opposite of the one Mr. and Mrs. Romney sold to the women of Massachusetts.

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