The Boston Globe this weekend offered a fascinating analysis of why Mitt Romney lost the 2012 presidential election. But for all the impact of ground games, turnout models and campaign strategies, Mitt Romney lost not because he failed to define himself to the American people, but because he succeeded. At the end of the day, he was inevitably "reduced to caricature, as a calculating man of astounding wealth, a man unable to relate to average folks" because that is who Mitt Romney is. Voters sized him up as a hyper-ambitious, amoral opportunist more than willing to mislead them on almost any topic. As his number one son Tagg revealed to the Globe, Mitt Romney was a liar to the end, still pretending he never wanted to President in the first place.

Tagg, who now provides his father office space at the Solamere Capital private equity firm his parents' $10 million investment and priceless connections helped create, performed one final campaign task for Mitt. How disappointed could his father really be, Tagg suggested, if he never wanted to be President anyway?

"He wanted to be president less than anyone I've met in my life. He had no desire to...run," said Tagg, who worked with his mother, Ann, to persuade his father to seek the presidency. "If he could have found someone else to take his place . . . he would have been ecstatic to step aside. He is a very private person who loves his family deeply and wants to be with them, but he has deep faith in God and he loves his country, but he doesn't love the attention."

Unfortunately, a mountain of documentation exists which confirms voters' suspicions that Mitt Romney was preparing to run for President of the United States even before he took the oath of office as Governor of Massachusetts 10 years ago. Contrary to the Romney clan's tall tale that it took the intervention of Tagg and Mitt's wife Ann to convince her husband to run again in 2012, Mitt Romney never stopped running even after his bruising GOP primary defeat in 2008: As the New York Times detailed in August:

Not long after Mitt Romney dropped out of the presidential race in early 2008, a titan of New York finance, Julian H. Robertson, flew to Utah to deliver an eye-popping offer.

He asked Mr. Romney to become chief executive of his hedge fund, Tiger Management, for an annual salary of about $30 million, plus investment profits, according to two people told of the discussions...

But Mr. Romney was uninterested. His mind -- and his heart -- were elsewhere, still trained in the raw days after his political defeat not on Wall Street but on the White House and an urgent quest: to be understood by an electorate that had eluded him.

Romney's quest for redemption was well underway by the time Barack Obama took the oath of office in January 2009:

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[H/t Dave]

By now you've probably heard Ann Romney say even though her husband and sons didn't serve in the military they did serve their Mormon church by going on its missionary work.

The wife of Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney on Thursday said that her husband and sons had not joined the U.S. military but had found "different ways of serving" by going on religious missions as part of their obligation to the Mormon church. During an interview on ABC's The View, co-host Whoopi Goldberg asked Ann Romney how she would explain to the families of fallen soldiers why her husband and sons had not served their country.

"When I read about your husband, what I had read -- and maybe you can correct this -- is that the reason he didn't serve in Vietnam was because it was against the religion," Goldberg said. "That's not correct," Ann Romney insisted. "He was serving his mission, and my five sons have also served missions. None served in the military, but I do have one son that feels that he's giving back to his country in a significant way where he is now a doctor and he is taking care of veterans."

"So, you know, we find different ways of serving," she added. "And my husband and my five boys did serve missions, did not serve in the military."

The candidate's wife explained that Mormon missions were like military service in that "you're going outside of yourself, you're working and you're helping others. And it changes you. And are we so grateful in this country for those people -- men and women -- that are volunteering, they're sacrificing their life for us, and we cannot forget that or we have to acknowledge that always."

See, serving a Jehovah's Witness type service of being a door-to-door Mormon salesman in Paris is just the same as going into Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan. Just ask Ann. I'm sure the mothers of slain sons and daughters will relate to that. Losing a limb in combat will certainly change you just as having a door slammed in your face as you spread the word of Joseph Smith.

"So, when you're facing these mothers whose children have not come back, how will you explain to them that your sons haven't gone?" Goldberg pressed. "Will you talk about the missions they've gone on?"

"I would say it's probably the hardest thing that a president and a first lady probably do is to comfort those that have lost a love one and have gone in harm's way," Ann Romney replied, not directly answering the question.

Of course she didn't answer that question. Her response was repulsive. Imagine trying to tell a grieving mother that you understand military combat because her husband went to France and knocked on doors to convert people to Mormonism. That's a very hazardous job because there are many IED's placed throughout the streets of Paris just waiting for unsuspecting Mormons.

Here's how Mitt's father George described his missionary work. (pg75 The Life of George Romney)

Missionary work is often character-building and it proved so for George Romney. He found his mission the best training that he received and later said that it meant more to him in his work than any other single experience that he ever had. "The first thing you find out," he once explained, "is that you have to decide what you really think, what you really believe. Secondly, you have to acquire the ability to explain what you believe to others and to do it in various manners. The third aspect is exposure to people of all types of religious, economic and social conviction. This is stimulating."....

Oh, I get it. Honing your Mormon beliefs and meeting different people is a lot like facing down your NVA enemy at the MacNamara Line in the DMZ.

Here is the dangerous work George, Mitt and his sons faced every day during their mission years. (pg.76)

The missionaries were required to keep diaries and account on printed forms for their time. Much of this was spent in door-to-door "tracting."

"Good morning," was the proper greeting, "I am a missionary of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and I have a very important message about the restoration of the Gospel that I would like to explain to you. Would you care to accept a tract ?"

The tracts explained the beliefs and story of the Church, how Joseph Smith, prophet and founder, started it at Fayette, New York, in 1830 after the Book of Mormon was revealed to him; how its members believe theirs a restoration of the true church....

The danger Tagg Romney feels when he knocked on a door and asked someone if they'd like to hear his message about revealing the nature of the true church probably adequately equates to a troop in the battlefield hearing his commanding officer yell the words 'INCOMING!" Mitt Romney did have two major car accidents when he was there trying to convert the masses so there's that too.

There were six people in a car that would comfortably seat five, but otherwise it was an ordinary drive that happened to turn tragic.On the way back from Pau, the car was hit head-on and Anderson's wife, Leola, was killed. Anderson's driver, a 21-year-old missionary named Mitt Romney, is now a leading candidate for the Republican nomination for president of the United States, with the June 16, 1968, accident one of his rare dark moments.

Journos don't usually bring up his second major accident in France. I wonder why?

The missionaries apparently had good reason for concern. In December 1968, they were in another accident, in which the Peugeot Romney was driving through Le Mons was hit from behind by a dump truck. "I looked in the rearview mirror, and there was a garbage truck coming quickly behind us, with people in the front seat, all laughing and talking, and it was a snowy day," Romney said. "He ... slammed into the back of my vehicle, which caused it to slam into the car in front of us, and they kept going - bang, bang, bang, bang!"

See? Serving your church is exactly the same as serving your nation.

KTVN Channel 2 - Reno Tahoe News Weather, Video -

Friday night Ann Romney did an interview in Reno, NV with CBS News where she said this:

Asked what her primary worry would be should her husband succeed in defeating President Obama on Nov. 6, Mrs. Romney replied, "You know, I think my biggest concern, obviously, would just be for his mental well-being."

"I have all the confidence in the world in his ability, in his decisiveness and his leadership skills, in his understanding of the economy, in his understanding of what's missing right now in the economy - you know, pieces that are missing to get this jumpstarted," she continued. "So for me I think it would just be the emotional part of it."

So Ann, you have confidence in the mechanics, but are uncertain whether the fundamentals are sound? Is that how I'm supposed to interpret this? Because if so, we've got a problem and you should sit down and breathe for a second.

While it's true that your husband, if elected, would be unlikely to suffer the barrage of underhanded slams at his race, or at his place of birth, life will not be a cakewalk for you, because governing this country isn't all about the economy, nor will you two reign as king and queen.

It's about 3 AM phone calls, and a Congress that can't seem to get anything done. It's about a Tea Party group funded by billionaires who will constantly put Mitt under pressure to produce his digits for appropriate bill-signings, show up at state dinners, and do little else.

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And yet another wheel comes off the bus:

In Omaha for a closed to the press fundraiser for her husband Friday, Mrs. Romney was supposed to give interviews to several reporters but canceled due to the controversy over her blow up at Republicans on a radio interview, in which she ordered Mitt’s Republican critics to “stop it.”

Omaha.com reported:

She had scheduled interviews with The World-Herald and other reporters but canceled after controversy erupted this week over her comments to a public radio station in Iowa about her husband’s Republican critics.

She appeared at the luncheon, $250-per-plate fundraiser at the Embassy Suites and La Vista Conference Center. The event was closed to reporters.

So much for being Mitt's secret weapon.

Ann Romney has watched for over a year while her husband falsely accused the president of "apologizing for America," suggested he's not quite a real American because he doesn't understand this country -- and by the way, probably wasn't born here -- not to mention of running a campaign based on hate.

But apparently, it's Mitt who's being "demonized."

ROMNEY: Well, I think the thing that I want to communicate to people, and that it's so important that people understand, is that Mitt and I do recognize that we have not had a financial struggle in our lives. But I want people to believe in their hearts that we know what it is like to struggle. And our struggles have not been financial, but they've been with health and with difficulties in different things in life. And in particular, for Mitt -- who really has been demonized in many ways as being heartless and for people to stand up and say, 'Excuse me. He was there when my son was dying of leukemia. He came to my son's bedside. He did all of these things for my son.' And then another woman saying how Mitt was there for her. So there's hundreds of those stories that haven't been told.

The hypocrisy of this is pretty staggering.

Barack Obama has been called a socialist, a communist, a Marxist, a Kenyan, a foreigner, a Muslim, a nigger, the magic negro, a dictator, a Manchurian Candidate, a racist, a homosexual, married to a man, anti-capitalism, Hitler, Stalin, tied to Murderous Communist Terrorists, treasonous, a backer of global currency, a dope dealer, an Islamic terrorist, the most anti-religious president in history, “a Muslim president who hates farming, hates the military, hates the U.S.,” and much, much more.

But you people need to stop saying mean things about Mitt.

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Dear Ann Romney,

I don't like your attitude very much. It seems very entitled and imperious. You say you have done everything legally required, and there will be no more tax returns. Not only do you say it, you say it with a snarl, as if those you're asking to vote for your husband are simply too stupid to understand what a tax return filed by a Very Wealthy Couple looks like. As if you're saying "we've given all you people need to know."

Oh wait. You actually said that.

Ma'am, you've released *one* return. ONE. If we're really lucky, we'll get to see the second one 15 days before the election, when it's too late to really understand how you and your husband run your finances.

Here's the thing. I'm not looking for a fight with a woman who is fighting for her husband's election, but you're simply wrong about your pronouncement that what is in those returns isn't relevant, doesn't matter, and won't matter if you do release it. You assume the reason we're asking for these returns has to do with some sort of attack on you.

Don't you understand the attacks are happening because you refuse to disclose this information to people who you're asking to trust for four years? Or are you just above it?

Here is a list of legitimate, real reasons why voters are entitled to access to your tax returns, whether you like it or not:

• The next President of the United States must lead an effort to reform our current tax code. It's long overdue and must be done. We're entitled to understand how you approach your own taxation, and what interests your husband will serve if he were leading that effort. Simply put: Will a Romney Administration consider the needs of the working poor over the needs of corporations and the wealthy?
• Ordinary people don't have offshore tax shelters. Why do you? Why do you consider it American to shelter income from taxes offshore? Why would your investments take precedence over patriotism?
• Americans deserve to fully understand how Bain benefited your family. It's well established at this point that Bain Capital was in the business of mergers and acquisitions. People lost many jobs to offshoring, mergers, and just plain asset-stripping. It's fair for them to understand what kind of profit you took from those lost jobs, particularly when you claim you know how to create them.
• Ordinary people endure far more invasive inquiries for minimum wage jobs. You can get all high and mighty with us, but to get an $8.50 per hour job, many ordinary people have to endure (and authorize) a credit check, and in the case of government jobs, a background check. In many cases, they have to submit to a drug test, too. That drug test requirement isn't because their potential employer believes every applicant is a drug addict. It's because they want to make sure this applicant isn't one.

  Similarly, we're entitled to know whether any possible future President is a tax dodger. From the one single return released, it certainly appears that there are some dodgy tax items that deserve closer scrutiny. The problem is, we don't have enough information to say one way or the other, and you think we shouldn't see it.

You say to us: "Trust me." I say to you: "Why?" What have you done to earn my trust? You treat me like I'm some kind of scum for asking reasonable questions about issues that truly do matter. We're entitled to know how you manage these things, how you approach taxes, how we can expect to be treated in a Romney administration. Telling me "you people don't need to know" does not foster trust. It fosters resentment.

You haven't given us one single reason to trust you. You say, well, we tithe, that makes us good people. No, it doesn't. Anyone can write a check. So what? A central tenet of LDS doctrine is the requirement to tithe, at a minimum. a very bare minimum. That's not evidence of integrity; it's evidence that you seem to place the LDS doctrine above the tax laws currently in effect in this country. That's hardly reassuring.

You say to us: "You don't need to have that information." I beg to differ, for the reasons I've stated. Here's what you risk with this attitude, Mrs. Romney. You risk alienating voters who might have been in your camp. I say might, because there are plenty of other reasons not to vote for your husband. But by shoving your puffed-up chest and a mighty attitude of high dudgeon in our faces not once, but several times, you exclude those who might otherwise be convinced.

You want your husband to represent me, Mrs. Romney? You want him to have that job, a job I pay for? Then both of you need to submit to my hiring requirements. This election is a by the people, for the people moment, not an appointment by the oligarchs, no matter what you might think. We, the people, are your Job Interviewers, and right now we're inclined to say we'll get back to you with our decision after the returns are released.

The fact that you would place yourself and your husband above even one other person in this country tells me you and your husband are unfit to occupy the White House. That you do it to the voters who are entitled to know exactly who they are voting for disqualifies you entirely.

I'm sure you'll enjoy your retirement to California. Bye, now.

Best regards,

Karoli

crossposted from Momocrats.com

By most accounts, Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney is a devoted father, dedicated family man and committed church leader. But as his record sadly shows, Romney's family values often take a back seat to his presidential ambitions. Just last week, he cast aside his father George Romney, the man whose rags-to-riches success story Mitt uses as a proxy for his own, all in the name of keeping his mysterious tax returns secret. His wife Ann Romney, the woman who now heads his Women for Mitt Coalition and who her husband says "reports to me regularly" regarding what American women care about, has been hung out to dry over issues including Planned Parenthood, abortion and the family's personal finances. And as it turns out, Mitt's betrayals hardly end there.

In his interview with David Muir of ABC last week, Governor Romney trotted out a new defense of keeping his secret tax returns secret:

"From time to time I've been audited as happens I think to other citizens as well and the accounting firm which prepares my taxes has done a very thorough and complete job pay taxes as legally due. I don't pay more than are legally due and frankly if I had paid more than are legally due I don't think I'd be qualified to become president. I'd think people would want me to follow the law and pay only what the tax code requires."

Put another way, if you paid a penny more to Uncle Sam than you could've, you're not just a sucker; you should be disqualified from becoming President.

Just like Mitt's dad, George Romney.

Mitt's idol didn't merely establish a precedent by releasing 12 years of tax returns during his failed 1968 presidential campaign. As Paul Krugman recently reminded voters, the auto magnate and Michigan governor not only paid a lot to the U.S. Treasury, but probably much more than he needed to.

Those returns also reveal that he paid a lot of taxes -- 36 percent of his income in 1960, 37 percent over the whole period. This was in part because, as one report at the time put it, he "seldom took advantage of loopholes to escape his tax obligations."

(The contrasts between father and son hardly end there. As Rick Perlstein documented, George Romney didn't merely develop an innovative profit sharing plan for his employees at AMC and return bonuses if he thought them too high. He also believed that "rugged individualism" is "nothing but a political banner to cover up greed.")

But if Mitt Romney has turned his back on the legacy of his late father, he has similarly shown no compunction about tossing his wife Ann overboard when political circumstances dictated.

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For months, Mitt Romney like John McCain before him has tried to compare President Obama to Marie Antoinette, an Ivy League educated elitist who is out of touch with the American people. Of course, that task is a daunting one for the $250 million man who insists his personal finances remain a mystery to voters. And Romney's laughable case of projection became even more comical after he held three $75,000-a-head fundraisers in the Hamptons last weekend.

Obviously, Mitt Romney is the one who is badly out of touch. And here are just some of the ways you can tell.

You know Mitt Romney is out of touch when he tells his guests in the Hamptons that "I spend a lot of time worrying about those that are poor" after previously declaring, "I'm not concerned about the very poor."

You know Mitt Romney is out of touch when one of his Hamptons donors explains "the common person" and "the lower income" voter "don't understand what's going on."

You know Mitt Romney is out of touch he expresses his disdain for those common people who wear polyester and plastic rain ponchos, while praising his friends who own NASCAR and NFL teams.

You know Mitt Romney is out of touch when he criticizes President Obama's call to let the Bush tax cuts expire for only the top two percent of earners as a "massive tax increase" for "on families, job creators, and small businesses," while proposing an average $264,000 annual windfall for the top 0.1%.

You know Mitt Romney is out of touch when his tax cut proposal supposedly focused on "the people in the middle" could save his own family tens of millions of dollars and his billionaire backers billions more by ending the estate tax.

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Cry me a freaking river.

On a mission to shatter the image of her husband as rigid and unrelatable, Ann Romney told CBS News she worries that President Obama's entire campaign strategy is "kill Romney."

"I feel like all he's doing is saying, 'Let's kill this guy," she said, seated next to her husband, presumptive GOP presidential nominee Mitt Romney, in an exclusive interview with CBS News chief political correspondent Jan Crawford. "And I feel like that's not really a very good campaign policy.

"I feel like Mitt's got the answers to turn this country around," she continued. "He's the one that's got to bring back hope for this country, which is what they ran on last time. But the truth is, this is the one that has the hope for the - for America."

Interesting that Mrs. Romney used the word "truth" there because her husband has done little else on the campaign trail but tell non-stop lies about President Obama. In fact, the staggering number of lies Willard has told about Obama are unprecedented in modern presidential campaigning. And there doesn't seem to be any stopping him.

Romney has figured out a loophole – one can lie over and over, and those lies quickly become part of the political narrative, practically immune to "fact-checking". Ironically, the more Romney lies, the harder it then becomes to correct the record. Even if an enterprising reporter can knock down two or three falsehoods, there are still so many more that slip past.

So tell us, Mrs. Romney. What exactly is President Obama saying about your husband that isn't true?

Pressed by Crawford on what qualities in her husband she sees most misrepresented, she said, that "he's not as approachable as I am or something like that. That's like, really kind of funny to me because it's all - it's all backwards."

I may throw up.

Two funny things happened this week on Mitt Romney's way to the White House. First, the man who cried "let Detroit go bankrupt" announced "I'll take a lot of credit" for President Obama's million-job saving rescue of the American auto industry. But just as telling was the Republican's claim that, despite Obama's "Forward" campaign slogan, it was the President who was "looking backward." After all, Mitt Romney isn't merely offering an even more reactionary resurrection of George W. Bush's failed policies. As it turns out, from his charges on immigration reform and women's issues to labeling Obama an out of touch "Marie Antoinette" and so much else, Romney's strategy is call to the kettle black.

(Click a link below for the details on each.)

• "Looking Backward"
• "Fairness"
• "Out of Touch"
• "Spent Too Much Time at Harvard"
• "Hide-and-Seek Campaign"
• "Broke His Promise to Hispanics"
• "Respect Women in All Those Choices That They Make"

"Looking Backward"

In April, the RNC's Alexandra Franceschi gave away the game when she explained that even after the calamitous Bush recession which began over four years ago, the2012 GOP economic platform would be the Bush program, "just updated." As a quick glance at Mitt Romney's proposals shows, Franceschi has a gift for understatement.

Romney, after all, is promising massive tax cuts which would deliver the lion's share of their winnings to the very richest Americans, his family included. (His 20 percent across-the-board tax cut is simply a tired retread of Bob Dole's failed 1996 plan, one that nevertheless steers a third of its benefits to the wealthiest one-tenth of one percent of Americans.) He nevertheless pledges to balance the budget even while boosting defense spending. And this latest scion of a proud Republican family would like to privatize Social Security and leave Americans to fend for themselves in the private health insurance marketplace.

Undaunted, Romney slammed the President this week in East Lansing, Michigan:

"Looking backward won't solve the problems of today, nor will it take advantage of the opportunities of tomorrow," Romney said. "His are the policies of the past. The challenges of the present and the promise of tomorrow must be met by a new and bold vision for the future, and I will bring it."

Despite the conclusion of the nonpartisan CBO and the overwhelming consensus of economists that Obama's actions saved the U.S. from "Great Depression 2.0," Romney has insisted for months that the President "made the economy worse." Unfortunately for Mitt, "we are not stupid."

"Fairness"

Barack Obama has made "fairness" a central theme of his reelection campaign. And with good reason. After all, at a time of record income inequality and the lowest federal tax burden since 1950, Both Mitt Romney and his budgetary twin Paul Ryan would deliver a massive tax cut windfall for the rich, paying for it by gutting the social safety net each pretends to protect. Each would end Medicare as we know it with a premium support gambit that would dramatically shift health care costs to America's seniors. While increasing defense spending, the House Budget Chairman and the GOP frontrunner would repeal the Affordable Care and leave at least 30 million people without insurance. And despite their mutual pledges to end many tax loopholes and deductions to fund their gilded-class giveaway, neither Paul Ryan nor Mitt Romney has the courage to say which ones. As a result, these supposed deficit hawks would actually add trillions more in red ink to the national debt.

Nevertheless, Romney used the occasion of his Northeast primary sweep three weeks ago to portray himself as the crusader for fairness:

"We will stop the unfairness of urban children being denied access to the good schools of their choice; we will stop the unfairness of politicians giving taxpayer money to their friends' businesses; we will stop the unfairness of requiring union workers to contribute to politicians not of their choosing; we will stop the unfairness of government workers getting better pay and benefits than the taxpayers they serve; and we will stop the unfairness of one generation passing larger and larger debts on to the next."

Afterwards, The Democratic Strategist translated Romney's cynically transparent gimmick, "We will twist and distort the concept of fairness to justify bashing government workers, crushing labor unions and privatizing public schools."

"Out of Touch"

Four years ago, the campaign of John McCain - a hundred-millionaire who literally lost count of how many homes he owned - unsuccessfully tried to portray Barack Obama as an out-of-touch, arugula-eating elitist who vacationed in exotic Hawaii. Now Mitt Romney has branded President Obama a modern day Marie Antoinette, an "out of touch" occupant of the White House whose message to financially struggling Americans is "let them eat cake."

That might not be the wisest strategy.

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