Now while Mitt’s father could have stood up before an audience and honestly made the claim: ”I didn’t inherit my wealth.” The same is not true for Mitt. He did inherit a large foundation of wealth. As the son of a multimillionaire, Mitt Romney was born with not a silver, but a golden spoon in his mouth. George W Romney’s estimated net worth was 600 million dollars when he died. It is said that he left each of his children over 100 million dollars. Furthermore, Mitt’s father was already a multimillionaire by the time Mitt was born. Mitt has never in his life lacked for any material thing–never. He has no conception whatsoever of the term “doing without.” (Unless you wanted to make a case for doing without winning an election.)
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MORE ABOUT GEORGE THE FATHER ROMNEY
Mitt’s grandparents were polygamous Mormons who fled the United States with their children due to the federal government’s opposition to polygamy. Mitt’s father was born in 1907 in the Mexican state of Chihuahua.
Later, in the United States, George the father Romney grew up in humble circumstances. The family subsisted with other Mormon refugees on government relief in El Paso, Texas. (Good thing for them that Newt or Mitt or Ron Paul weren’t running the country.) A few months later they moved to Los Angeles, California where Gaskell Romney worked as a carpenter. In kindergarten, other children mocked George Romney’s national origin by calling him “Mex”. George started working in wheat and sugar beet fields at the age of eleven and was the valedictorian at his grammar school graduation in 1921.
The family later moved to Salt Lake City where George became a skilled lath and plaster worker. In October of 1926 he had saved enough to fund himself as a Mormon missionary and he sailed to Great Britain to preach in a Glasgow, Scotland slum. The abject poverty and hopelessness he saw there affected him greatly but he was not effective in converting people. He also suffered a crisis of faith. In February of 1927, he was shifted to Edinburgh where he was more successful. Romney often said that his missionary time (proselytizing the Mormon religion from soap boxes in Hyde Park and from a platform at Trafalgar Square) had meant more for developing his gives for debate and sales than any other experience.
Visionary is a word that would fit George Romney, but many of his visions would make the hair of the current mob running the Republican Party stand on end.
In 1939 he moved to Detroit and joined the American Automobile Manufacturers Association, where he served as the chief spokesperson for the automobile industry during World War II and headed a cooperative arrangement in which companies could share production improvements.
In 1948 he joined Nash-Kelvinator and became chairman and CEO of its successor, American Motors Corporation in 1954. Romney turned around the struggling firm by focusing all efforts on the compact Rambler car. Romney mocked the products of the “Big Three” automakers as “gas-guzzling dinosaurs” and became one of the first high-profile, media-savvy business executives.
He took office as governor of Michigan in 1963 when Mitt was 15. He was re-elected by increasingly large margins in 1964 and 1966. Romney worked to overhaul the state’s financial and revenue structure, culminating in Michigan’s first state income tax, and greatly expanded the size of state government. Romney was a strong supporter of the American Civil Rights Movement. He briefly represented moderate Republicans against conservative Republican Barry Goldwater during the 1964 U.S. presidential election. He requested the intervention of federal troops during the 1967 Detroit riot.
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It may have been telling the truth that eventually destroyed George Romney’s chances at the highest office in the land. Perhaps that explains his son’s aversion to the truth today.
Romney was a candidate for the Republican nomination for President of the United States in 1968. He was initially a front-runner but then he proved an ineffective campaigner at the national level. After a mid-1967 remark explaining that his earlier support for the Vietnam War had been due to a “brainwashing” by U.S. military and diplomatic officials in Vietnam, Romney fell behind Richard Nixon in the polls. (This was exactly what they did and what they continue to do today with visiting officials to war zones–Generals and other military officials and members of the diplomatic corp carefully monitor and control what visiting dignitaries are allowed to see in order to brainwash them in favor of war. Romney was doing nothing but telling the truth.)
But George Romney broke all kinds of Republican rules with that statement about being brainwashed by the military.
1. Never criticize the U.S. Military or diplomatic officials.
2. Certainly never accuse them of doing what the enemy does–brainwashing (or torturing prisoners–although torture has become acceptable in some circles).
3. If you speak against war, you are an anti-American Pinko
