Republican Utah Sen. Mitt Romney marched this weekend with Black Lives Matter protesters, winning the conservative lawmaker widespread acclaim from politicos and members of the press.
But Romney being a decent person and supporting civil rights is not exactly surprising. Indeed, this sort of thing is par for the course for the senator and his family.
The interesting thing about Romney’s actions this weekend is that they have won him high marks from the very same people who did everything within their power to destroy him both professionally and personally when he ran as the GOP nominee in the 2012 presidential election. And, contra what some claim now, the attacks on Romney eight years ago by the pro-Obama forces were most certainly not politics as usual. Do not be fooled by this historical revisionism.
As Politico’s Tim Alberta noted with understandable awe this weekend as Democratic officials and media types applauded Romney, “The mistreatment of this man, the demonization of him on a personal level by opponents in both parties, will be studied for decades to come.”
In response, New York magazine’s Jonathan Chait laughably asserted, “It was a completely normal campaign, and the tactics used by Obama against Romney were no different than the tactics used by Romney against Obama.”
New Yorker contributor James Surowiecki added elsewhere, “Mitt Romney seems like a genuinely decent guy. But the idea that Democrats ‘demonized’ him in 2012 is ridiculous.”
First, it is interesting that both Chait and Surowiecki immediately went into defending the Democratic Party’s behavior in 2012, considering Alberta mentioned neither Barack Obama nor the 2012 election.
Secondly, who are they kidding?
In 2012, a pro-Obama super PAC produced an ad accusing Romney of killing a woman with cancer. The Obama campaign itself touted the ad’s central claim during a conference call as well as on its official reelection website.
In terms of dirty political tactics in the 2012 election, what is the GOP equivalent of the super PAC cancer ad? Romney’s failed attempt to turn Obama’s “you didn’t build that” comment on its head?
There is more.
Speaking to a predominantly black audience, Obama’s running mate, former Vice President Joe Biden, claimed during the 2012 election that Romney was “gonna’ put y’all back in chains.” Subtle.
Perhaps worst of all was when Obama’s right-hand man in the Senate, then-Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid of Nevada, used the floor of Congress’s upper chamber to spread a malicious lie accusing Romney of being a tax cheat. The slander was, of course, spread far and wide by Obama surrogates. Years later, well after Obama secured his reelection bid, Reid all but admitted to concocting the tax smear from thin air.
In terms of dirty political tactics in, say, the last 40 years of American politics, what is the GOP equivalent of the Democratic Senate majority leader using the floor of the U.S. Senate to promote a political hit job?
The Obama campaign portrayed Romney in 2012 as an irredeemable bigot whose victory would lead to the enslavement of minorities and the sexual subjugation of women. When Democrats were not actively participating in the total destruction of Romney, who was just as decent then as he is now, they watched silently as it happened to a man they knew not to be a villain. And this is to say nothing of the pro-Obama forces in the news and entertainment industries, many of whom slandered the senator mercilessly in 2012 with a variety of lies and trumped-up scandals, including nonsense about “binders full of women” and Seamus the Romney family dog.
Dirty tactics have long existed in American politics (see: the presidential election of 1800 or anything with Roger Stone’s fingerprints on it). But the Obama campaign really went at it with everything it had in 2012. It attacked Romney directly with slanders of all shapes and sizes, blasting the former Massachusetts governor from orbit with a Death Star laser of character assassination. Even the vice president got in on the game.
Sure, the election eight years ago was not the worst that the United States has ever seen. Far worse will surely come in the near future. But it is pure fantasy to say that what the Obama campaign and its surrogates did to Romney, who has always been a perfectly honorable and decent man, in 2012 was just plain, old-fashioned American politics. The race between Obama and Romney was uniquely ugly, one of the ugliest in recent history, and it likely paved the way for today’s brand of brutal, uncompromisingly obnoxious politics. And we have Democrats to thank for that.
To believe that 2012 was business as usual requires that one embrace either ignorance or dishonesty — or both.
