(Cross posted at Maine Progressives Warehouse)
Last night the world was given a view of the Mitt Romney story, in the form of a video even more painful than being a captive audience to the family's numerous slideshow presentations of "Vacations with Seamus".
But this morning, a clearer story of the Romneys' saga has floated to the surface of Lake Michigan. Some excerpts:
"Willard Mitt Romney was born into a life of extreme poverty and married a young woman of a similar background, Ann Davies.
Davies attended Kingswood School, the girls' equivalent of Mitt's Cranbrook School.
Despite being the daughter of an avowed atheist and Mayor of Bloomfield Hills, Ann converted to her husband's Mormon faith- and never looked back.
At first, the newly married and poverty-stricken post-college (Harvard Business School (1975), Harvard Law School (1975), Brigham Young University (1971), Stanford University (1965;1966) Mr. and Mrs. Romney had only themselves to feed, which was convenient as they managed to keep body and soul together on meager meals of tuna and pasta, served graciously on an ironing boardtable.
But over time, their family grew and they found themselves having to cash in more and more of their dwindling stock portfolio to feed their five sons and dog Seamus.
This required much more ambitious fishing on Mitt's part and a bigger ironing board for the daily catch. Seven at the "table" became crowded every night and the Romneys knew that things had to change, if they were going to stay afloat.
Simply cashing their stock was not going to be enough, as it had been during their struggling post-college newly wed days- it was now "time to fish or cut bait".
Mitt, being a life-long outdoorsman and renowned slayer of varmits, chose to fish.
And fish he did."
Mitt co-founded Bain Capital with some interesting fellas from South America, where he quickly cornered the tuna market and in doing so, created a worldwide supply shortage of tuna. Additionally, many American jobs were shipped overseas as a result of Bain's rapid growth, which pleased Romney's various business contacts to no end.
There didn't seem to be any empty nets; it was like "shooting varmits", er, fish in a barrel.
It was at this point in time that faceless and nameless business investors started to see some raw, true potential in the youngest Romney kid, causing many to revise their former and long held views of George's kid as a "Stanford drop-out, draft-dodging wanna-be goody two shoes" and look upon "Papa" J. Willard Marriott's godson as their potential "political prodigal son".
"Why, he could be just the empty-suited shill we need!" thought many.
So after some private discussions with these fine men with no names or faces, Mitt Romney switched the Bain and Company's focus from the fishy dealings of the past to something far more ambitious and streamlined in focus: to simply eliminating small companies altogether in a Borg-like wave of assimilation and elimination- raiding their coffers. This move was advantageous in more than one way, as his personal bankers in the Caymans and Switzerland complained weekly of the rotting fish smell emitting from Romney's various "stashes".
From here on out, Mitt Romney was completely committed to leaving his fish days behind him, with the sole exception of his love of "eating caviar out of the can".
(Skimming past Mitt's time as Governor of Massachusetts, including a pesky SEC investigation, and as single-handed savior of the 2002 Winter Olympics...)
When Mitt decided in 2011 to run for president (again), one of his first moves was to return to his roots- by retroactively resigning from Bain and retroactively leaving his newly purchased La Jolla CA home and moving into son Tagg's Belmont MA unfinished basement.
It was from this humble place that the future 2012 Republican Party presidential nominee would reside long enough to be able to vote for Scott Brown, who won the senate seat of Romney's rival, the late Senator Ted Kennedy in the 2009 special election. While unconfirmed, this same basement is considered the birthplace of Mitt's November 2008 NYT article: "Let Detroit Go Bankrupt".
(Sidenote: That there appears to be a tremendous fissure in the space-time continuum centered in Massachusetts (see video) that has yet to be explained or studied by NASA- or the IRS).
One of the first groups to endorse Romney in 2012 after his acceptance of the Republican's uncontested presidential primary was the organization formerly known as GOProud, who immediately changed their name to "Tunas for Romney". It made sense (to them) to take this action and was consistent with their long standing practice of endorsing candidates, companies (most recently, Chick-Fil-A) and parties who worked against their interests.
Ann, ever the skilled homemaker, was during the primary season an important "Tuna Helper" for Mitt, and could roll with the schedule of speaking to various groups. With 6 homes to care for, she was adept at multi-tasking on a large scale.
Occasionally the grueling demands of life on the campaign trail caught up with her and rather than insult those in attendance, Mrs. Romney would refer to her audience as "You People".
It was a theme she would continue into her RNC 2012 speech, where she gave an impassioned shout-out to the members of her gender: "I love 'You Women'!"
While unconfirmed, rumor has it that she tried to inspire her dressage horse, Rafalca, in the stables- but standing on a bale of hay and talking to "You Horses" was sadly lost upon her equine audience.
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Okay. Obviously the above is a spoof.
Here is the REAL Mitt Romney video: "Mitt Romney: A Human Being Who Built That".