Housing And Urban Development Department

George Romney was the Chief Executive of American Motors Corporation in the 1950s and early 1960s, and then ran for and won the Governorship of Michigan for six years, and was Secretary of Housing and Urban Development for four years under President Richard Nixon. He was a candidate for the GOP nomination for President in 1964 and 1968, and at one point, was ahead in public opinion polls for the Presidential nomination in 1968.

George Romney lived in poverty as a young man, but became a self made millionaire, and devoted his political career to moderation in the Republican Party, bitterly fighting Senator Barry Goldwater’s nomination and campaign for President in 1964, saying it was undermining Republican values.

George Romney had a good relationship with the African American community, as HUD Secretary, and was always an activist on civil rights.

George Romney was a very decent man, who, when he ran for President, revealed 12 years of his income tax returns, making it clear that a candidate for the highest office in the land needed to be transparent about his financial matters, and that one year revelations could be very misleading.

Lenore Romney, George’s wife and First Lady of Michigan when her husband was Governor, ran for the US Senate in Michigan in 1970, losing in a landslide to distinguished Senator Philip Hart. But she ran a campaign supporting abortion rights, advocated a national health care plan, spoke up for environmental regulations of industry, and opposed continuation of the war in Vietnam.

This wonderful political couple contributed to their nation not only their political careers, but four children, with the youngest, born in 1947, being Willard Mitt Romney, now the GOP Presidential nominee.

But the problem was that they made life too easy and comfortable for their youngest child, who basically turned out to be a “spoiled brat”, who could bully a fellow student while in high school, as the leader of what could be called a “gang”, and go on to feel that he was “entitled” to what he wanted, and could avoid service in Vietnam by using his Mormon religion as an excuse, which is perfectly legitimate, but showed he had no desire to put his life on the line, since he was a privileged young man, and could evade it, and would do so!

That has been the reality of Mitt Romney’s life: to evade responsibility, to take advantage of others, to abuse workers in companies he owned, to have no conscience about what he was doing to others, while claiming to be “religious”, and demonstrating willingness to change his mind as often as possible on every issue imaginable, and therefore having no convictions or principles he would not sacrifice for his obsessive ambition to be President!

It is hard to imagine that George and Lenore Romney would be totally proud of how their son has turned out. Of course, they would love him, but it is quite likely they would be embarrassed and distressed about his moving from the center of American politics to the extreme right, something George and Lenore fought against all of their lives, They would also be distressed that he has endorsed stands against women’s rights to their control of their own bodies on the issue of contraception, all for their son to gain the backing of conservative and evangelical voters!

Face the facts: Mitt Romney is NOT George Romney, and his wife, Anne is NOT Lenore Romney, a woman of true convictions, unlike Anne, who gave up her faith to marry a very wealthy guy, agreed that her parents would not be allowed in the Salt Lake Mormon Temple for their marriage, and allowed her dad, an atheist, to be converted to Mormonism after death by baptism without his approval or knowledge!

The children are not the match of the parents in the case of Mitt and Anne Romney, sorry to say!