Hullabaloo

Wednesday, October 10, 2012

 
Will the real Mitt Shady please stand up, please stand up?

by digby


Watch the first five minutes or so of this NOW with Alex Wagner from this morning to see all the various Mittster positions on abortion in living color. It's quite something:

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For those wondering what is Mitt's "real" position on abortion, I'd probably default to this. I have no reason to believe he isn't sincere about his religious beliefs.

In 1973, the First Presidency of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints released the following statement regarding abortion, which is still applicable today: “The Church opposes abortion and counsels its members not to submit to or perform an abortion except in the rare cases where, in the opinion of competent medical counsel, the life or good health of the mother is seriously endangered or where the pregnancy was caused by rape and produces serious emotional trauma in the mother. Even then it should be done only after counseling with the local presiding priesthood authority and after receiving divine confirmation through prayer.”

I haven't heard any of the mainstream wags talk about this, but I wonder if Mitt's performance couldn't begin to shred the myth that people care about "authenticity." If the GOP base sticks with this guy we'll know they're just partisans, which is par for the course. But what about these alleged "undecideds" in the so-called middle who Romney is supposedly wooing? Aren't they one ones who demand authenticity the most? If they're breaking for Mitt you just cannot say they are sticklers for authenticity. I honestly don't think we've ever had a presidential candidate who's taken both sides of fundamental definitional issues like this one has. Yes, Tricky Dick was a liar and Reagan made things up and Clinton was slick. But this man has openly run for high office as both a moderate liberal and a hardcore conservative --- within a ten year span. And in this current race, he's running as both. He proves that in this polarized age you can be completely inconsistent in your views and get away with it. Obama did this too, to a certain extent, but it was far more subtle using a sort of theatrical, content free liberal "style" and symbolism to create the illusion to those who wanted to see it that way that he was further to the left than his plain words clearly placed him. (Clinton did it too, with the whole baby boomer, sax playing, draft dodging and pot smoking.) I think that's a fairly commonplace political sleight of hand. Mitt's the same guy to everyone --- a vaguely patrician heir to a famous name who made a fortune through inscrutable financial transactions. The only people his persona dogwhistles are his donors. There's no way for him to subtly signal to either his base or enough moderates that he's one of them. He isn't. He's the quintessential One Percenter, without even the slightest claim to the common touch. So he has to literally say that he's all things to all people.


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digby 10/10/2012 01:00:00 PM