Romney: "I didn't inherit money from my parents."
Last edited Thu Aug 30, 2012, 12:43 PM - Edit history (1)
This has been a stock Romney line for years. And a somewhat clever one.
His father, George, died in 1995. Mitt was already profoundly wealthy by 1995, so the question of whether Mitt inherited money is an intentional red herring, irrelevant to the question of whether he is a self-made man. (Chelsea Clinton hasn't inherited a penny from Bill or Hillary yet, but I wouldn't say she has struggled up from poverty.)
So Mitt's claim that his father left him nothing is deceptive in what it purports to say and, of course, also a literal lie. What a surprise.
When asked about why his father would write his own kids out of his will Mitt (probably realizing belatedly that his lie made it sound like he must have done something truly horrible to written out of George's will like that) corrected the record. He wasn't left any money, but he was left some funds. Okay... the executor didn't hand him a sack of unmarked twenty-dollar bills. Merely some funds.
His father did, in fact, leave Mitt a modest (by Mitt standards) chunk of American Motors stock which Mitt then donated to Brigham Young University's George Romney school. (Note the pattern. Mitt try to include his gifts to the Mormon church as part of the "taxes" he pays. Mitt denies an inheritance because he subsequently gave it to a Mormon institution. In both cases he ***chooses*** how to spend money, and then claims that he somehow never had the money because of what he chose to do with it! Mitt lies to express what he feels to be a larger truth, which is itself always another lie.)
"I figured we had enough of our own," he said. (Meaning they had enough that donating the bequest meant that they actually did keep a substantial part of the bequest in the form of tax savings. Think it through. Assuming Mitt pays taxes at all, and if the bequest was as small as half a million, then at 1995 rates that bequest would have had a cash value to Mitt of about $200,000.)
Since George Romney didn't die until 1995 it is really not very germane how much money he bequeathed Mitt, of course.
Saying, "I never received help from my very wealthy father growing up," would be more to the point, but I doubt Mitt would care to make that claim.
= new reply since forum marked as read
See? he's technically not lying!! 
At least, until he can trick someone into buying it off his hands. 
He just doesn't get it. 
