{"id":7751,"date":"2012-05-11T13:06:20","date_gmt":"2012-05-11T20:06:20","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/?p=7751"},"modified":"2012-05-11T13:06:20","modified_gmt":"2012-05-11T20:06:20","slug":"republican-bully-in-chief","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/2012\/05\/11\/republican-bully-in-chief\/","title":{"rendered":"Republican Bully-in-Chief"},"content":{"rendered":"

Before you say that none of us want to be held accountable today for acts committed in the folly of youth, I agree with you.  Also, I am a strong believer in second chances.  When evaluating such matters, it is important to make a fair determination of whether the person has grown out of such behavior, or that behavior accurately represents who the person is today.  In the case of Mitt Romney, the bully, the latter is easily demonstrable.<\/font><\/p>\n

First let\u2019s look at the original piece that broke the story.<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

\"11bully\"Mitt Romney returned from a three-week spring break in 1965 to resume his studies as a high school senior at the prestigious Cranbrook School. Back on the handsome campus, studded with Tudor brick buildings and manicured fields, he spotted something he thought did not belong at a school where the boys wore ties and carried briefcases. John Lauber, a soft-spoken new student one year behind Romney, was perpetually teased for his nonconformity and presumed homosexuality<\/strong>. Now he was walking around the all-boys school with bleached-blond hair that draped over one eye, and Romney wasn\u2019t having it.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe can\u2019t look like that. That\u2019s wrong. Just look at him!\u201d an incensed Romney told Matthew Friedemann, his close friend in the Stevens Hall dorm, according to Friedemann\u2019s recollection. Mitt, the teenage son of Michigan Gov. George Romney, kept complaining about Lauber\u2019s look, Friedemann recalled. <\/p>\n

A few days later, Friedemann entered Stevens Hall off the school\u2019s collegiate quad to find Romney marching out of his own room ahead of a prep school posse shouting about their plan to cut Lauber\u2019s hair. Friedemann followed them to a nearby room where they came upon Lauber, tackled him and pinned him to the ground. As Lauber, his eyes filling with tears, screamed for help, Romney repeatedly clipped his hair with a pair of scissors<\/strong>. <\/p>\n

The incident was recalled similarly by five students, who gave their accounts independently of one another<\/strong>. Four of them \u2014 Friedemann, now a dentist; Phillip Maxwell, a lawyer; Thomas Buford, a retired prosecutor; and David Seed, a retired principal \u2014 spoke on the record. Another former student who witnessed the incident asked not to be identified\u2026 [emphasis added<\/em>]<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Inserted from <Washington Post<\/a>><\/p>\n

Two key prerequisites to change are remorse and attempting to make amends, where possible, for harm done.  Let\u2019s look at how Romney deals with these items.<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

\"11bully_quote\"Sometimes, in politics and government, apologies are in order.<\/p>\n

\u201cBack in high school,\u201d Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney said today<\/a>, \u201cI did some dumb things, and if anybody was hurt by that or offended<\/strong>, obviously I apologize.\u201d<\/p>\n

At the same time, Romney maintained in an interview on Fox News Radio that he couldn\u2019t recall the incident for which he was apologizing<\/strong>: As reported in the Washington Post, the accounts of several then-teenage classmates of Romney at the all-boys Cranbrook School in Michigan recalling him and a group shoving and cutting the long hair of a student presumed to be gay.<\/p>\n

\u201cI certainly don\u2019t believe that I thought the fellow was homosexual<\/strong>,\u201d Romney said of the fellow prep school student. \u201cThat was the furthest thing from our minds back in the 1960s, so that was not the case.\u201d<\/p>\n

He questioned how much of a candidate\u2019s past is fair game, too. \u201cThere\u2019s going to be some that want to talk about high school,\u201d the former Massachusetts governor said. \u201cWell, if you really think that\u2019s important, be my guest<\/strong>.\u201d\u2026 [emphasis added<\/em>]<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Inserted from <Bloomberg<\/a>><\/p>\n

Conditional apologies, such as this one, demonstrate evasion, not remorse.  Frankly, Romney\u2019s claim that he does not remember the incident is not believable, especially considering Romney’s  proven preference for lying.  If he does not remember the incident, as he claims, how could he possibly know that he didn\u2019t think his victim, was gay?  According to the other perpetrators, the victim’s perceived sexuality was the reason they were bullying him.  Trying to pass the incident off as unimportant is the clearest indication that Romney refuses to take responsibility and has not changed.<\/font><\/p>\n

Ed Schultz discuses the story with Clay Aiken and Capt. Stephen Hill, the gay soldier Republicans bullied by booing him at a Republican debate.<\/font><\/p>\n

<\/embed><\/object><\/font><\/p>\n

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news<\/a>, world news<\/a>, and news about the economy<\/a><\/p>\n

And there\u2019s more.  Romney’s business career was to head a corporate raider, the bullies of the business world.  He used his power to steal workers\u2019 pensions by borrowing against them to pay his huge salary and liquidating the pensions in  bankruptcies to pay off the loans.  He used his power fo fire workers and ship their jobs overseas, leaving empty shells, displaced workers and shattered communities in his wake.<\/font><\/p>\n

In addition, Romney now heads the party of bullies.  As leader of the Republican party, he bullies unions, workers, seniors, women, gays, minorities, Muslims, voters, regulators, veterans and anyone else who refuses to goose step within a plutocratic Republican Regime.<\/font><\/p>\n

In conclusion, what Romney did as a student is identical to what he did in business and to what he is trying to do in politics.<\/font><\/p>\n

Unless you are willing to do whatever it takes to keep him and his cohorts out of power, you risk becoming his next victim.<\/font><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Before you say that none of us want to be held accountable today for acts committed in the folly of youth, I agree with you.  Also, I am a strong believer in second chances.  When evaluating such matters, it is important to make a fair determination of whether the person has grown out of such […]<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7751","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics","category-5-id","post-seq-1","post-parity-odd","meta-position-corners","fix"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7751","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7751"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7751\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7751"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7751"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7751"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}