Walter Rhett: Mitt Romney’s Manifest Destiny

As the world celebrates its gifts and youth at the Olympic games, Mitt Romney went to the barricades. His hurdles and lane markers were mental and his enemies and opponents were in his own mind. Not once did he comment on the amazing skills of the world’s youth to run and jump and shoot and fly and hit with accuracy; not once did he marvel about the opening ceremonies of the Olympic Games, with its artistic oeuvre of the values and traditions he praised. Even got the Queen into the act with an outsized flight of fancy–a pun on the maudlin side of being Her Majesty.

(The values and traditions on display were also tweeted as “leftie multicultural crap” by one Tory member of Parliament—who was roundly condemned by the Prime Minister as “completely wrong” and “idiotic.” The MP, who has admittedly participated in Nazi-themed stag parties where he dressed up and sang Nazi songs, claimed his explicit statement was “misunderstood.”)

No, Mitt was busy raising money from the participants of the Libor rate scandal, whose rigged transactions go around the world and whose impact numbers ripple as far out as the number after $999 trillion. Barclay’s Bank, the scandal’s leader, were among Romney’s main supporters. He put no distance between them and himself.

Apart from his penchant for the balance sheet, Mitt Romney’s subtle side is the bold bias that hides his beliefs. He speaks of “heritage,” “culture,” “shared values;” yet he persists in ignoring the whole mainstream of history–that this heritage and values has creative expression in all communities...