George and Mitt Romney: Like father, like son, until a political parting point

[alp227]

Michigan Gov. George Romney, his wife Lenore, with daughter Lynn and son Mitt, walk along a street at the World’s Fair in New York en route to the General Motors pavilion. They were there for Michigan Day at the fair. (AP) (Source of caption)

A popular Michigan governor, an evolving critic of the Vietnam War and a 1968 presidential candidate who led his Republican rivals in early polls until political catastrophe struck, George Romney often brought his youngest son along while campaigning. Former advisers admit to being stunned by how much Mitt looks like their old boss, marveling over the same square jaw and the thick, swept-back hair. But the memory of their relationship is complicated nowadays in Mitt Romney’s case, because his dad was a moderate with occasionally liberal fiscal positions, and Mitt Romney is trying to convince his Republican base that he likes none of those things.

At this moment, over the telephone, he is momentarily a son making the point that he is not his father’s clone. With some of his father’s old advisers arguing that he lacks his dad’s steadfast convictions, Mitt Romney tries to turn the force of their criticism to his advantage in a bit of political jujitsu. It speaks to his campaign’s pressures, and to his skeptics’ persistent doubts about his conservative bona fides, that Romney sometimes distances himself from his father’s political philosophy.

(...)

Political disaster hit in the late summer of 1967, even before the formal announcement of his candidacy. Two years earlier, George had traveled with other governors to South Vietnam, where he received a briefing on American military efforts there from Gen. William Westmoreland and diplomats. Now, he tried to explain on a Detroit television show why he initially supported the war. Alluding to his first trip to Southeast Asia, he remarked: “When I came back from Vietnam, I’d just had the greatest brainwashing that anybody can get.”

(...)

Four years ago, when he cast his Massachusetts health-care plan as an exercise in common sense and personal responsibility, Romney proudly told his listeners that his father would have backed it. But his references to Massachusetts health care, and to the famously moderate Romney, are fewer this time.

full: http://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/style/george-and-mitt-romney-like-father-like-son-until-a-political-parting-point/2011/11/18/gIQAOlD62N_singlePage.html

In other words, Mitt now knows that his father's Eisenhower brand of GOP won't attract voters in 2012.

[Angry Dragon]

1. I wonder what it is like to have greed and ambition as your

driving force without any principles??
Welcome to the GOP of TODAY!!

[MADem]

2. Another Republican trying to outdo his daddy....

I'll bet his brainwashed daddy wouldn't have strapped an Irish Setter to the top of a car for a 12 hour drive, either.