Mitt Romney’s infamous
dog-on-the-roof-of-the-car
story is atrocious, and has been mocked within an inch of its life. But
there are many other stories from the Republican presidential
candidate’s personal life that illuminate what kind of a human being he
really is. Here’s a look at a few of them.
1. Mormon women have reported "horror stories" about Romney from when he served as a Mormon bishop.
According to
investigative reporter Geoffrey Dunn,
several Mormon women have reported disturbing stories about how Romney
treated them while he was an LDS bishop and “stake president.” (One
Mormon woman who’s known Romney since the '70s called them “horror
stories.”) In one story, a woman who was facing a life-threatening
medical condition was advised by her doctor to terminate her eight-week
pregnancy. Despite receiving the blessing of her local stake president,
Romney, then a bishop, reportedly came to her hospital room uninvited to
pressure her not to go through with the abortion. "At a time when I
would have appreciated nurturing and support from spiritual leaders and
friends," Sheldon has written, "I got judgment, criticism, prejudicial
advice, and rejection."
In another incident, Romney reportedly
pressured a woman to put her son up for adoption because, according to
the woman, her son “didn't have a Mormon father in the home and because
of the circumstances of his birth--being born to a single mother.” She
said she felt attacked and intimidated by Romney.
Other details
from the report reveal that Romney “never seemed to be particularly
comfortable in the company of unmarried Mormon mothers.”
These
stories, and others from Dunn’s reporting (not to mention Romney’s
wavering, but always troublesome, abortion stance), illustrate a man who
is ill-suited to govern the female half of the U.S. population.
2. He reportedly pushed Bain employees to lie to get information.
In a recent
story in Vanity Fair,
Nicholas Shaxson interviewed one of Romney’s former Bain employees, who
said he remembers his old boss being “nice,” “fair” and encouraging,”
but also someone who had no problem bending the truth.
Romney,
the person says, suggested “falsifying” who they were to get such
information, by pretending to be a graduate student working on a
project at Harvard. (The person, in fact, was a Harvard student, at
Bain for the summer, but not working on any such projects.) “Mitt said
to me something like ‘We won’t ask you to lie. I am not going to tell
you to do this, but [it is] a really good way to get the information.’ …
I would not have had anything in my analysis if I had not pretended.
“It was a strange atmosphere. It did leave a bad taste in your mouth,” the former employee recalls.
This
probably shouldn’t be a huge surprise, given the whoppers Romney has
been telling on the campaign trail, including in the first debate.
3. He paid for his son and daughter-in-law’s surrogacy agreement, which included an abortion clause.
Speaking
of Romney’s hard-to-pin-down stance on abortion, a recent story about
his son Tagg, who had twins through a surrogate earlier this year,
reveals that Romney seems to fall into the “abortion for me, but not for
thee” viewpoint so common among conservatives. As AlterNet's Sarah
Seltzer
recently noted:
TMZ
released a blog post this weekend explaining that in the surrogacy
agreement signed by Mitt Romney's son, Tagg, there were clauses that
allowed both the parents and the surrogate to opt for an abortion in
non-life-threatening (but serious) situations.
There’s evidence that the clause may have been included by mistake, but:
Still, the fact they did
allow the clause in -- and indeed, that it's a standard part of
surrogacy agreements -- is telling, because it's totally reasonable to
have those kinds of clauses in a surrogacy agreement. Surrogates
shouldn't be compelled to complete pregnancies that threaten their
health. That's common sense, right? Not in Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan's
dream world.
As Kathleen Geier so perfectly put it, “I don’t doubt
that, like the vast majority of elites, Romney would support abortion
rights for his own family members for any reason, because rich white
Christians by definition are not those slutty, trashy people running
around having the ‘wrong’ kind of abortions, just for the hell of it.”
Americans, this is your Republican nominee for president of the United States.
4. He’s annoying his neighbors by quadrupling the size of his beach house.
So,
about that $12 million beach house: the Romneys plan to make it four
times its original size. Unsurprisingly, the neighbors are not thrilled –
not only because of the “impact on the neighborhood,” but because of
their political leanings.
The
New York Times' Michael Barbaro
talked to several of Romney’s neighbors in June and found that many of them are Obama supporters and at least a few are gay couples, like Randy Clark and Tom Maddox.
The
men, who married in San Francisco four years ago, were asked by Mr.
Romney’s architect to sign a document that stated they have no
objections to his planned renovations, which would obscure a portion of
their ocean view. They refused.
Mr.
Clark, an accountant, is trying to organize a campaign fund-raiser at
his home for President Obama and hopes to bump into Mr. Romney on the
street, so he can explain, “in a neighborly way,” why he thinks his
relationship with Mr. Maddox deserves the same rights and status as the
marriage between Mr. Romney and his wife, Ann.
Good luck getting neighborly with the Clark-Maddox household, Mitt.
5. He publicly berated a man for drinking and smoking weed.
As
Barbaro reported in June, the Romneys “have tried to weave themselves
into the fabric of local life” in La Jolla, Calif. But the way they’re
going about that social weaving is a little odd. For instance:
Mr.
Romney and his wife take regular walks around La Jolla, exchanging
pleasantries with fellow strollers and occasionally enforcing the law. A
young man in town recalled that Mr. Romney confronted him as he smoked
marijuana and drank on the beach last summer, demanding that he stop.
I
can think of a lot of ways to ingratiate yourself with the neighbors;
ordering them to stop drinking and smoking is not one of them.
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