"Oh, look, honey! What a beautiful little village! Can we buy it?"
From ABC News
Ann Romney, who will soon cheer on her dressage horse and trainer at the London Summer Olympics, is making a side trip this weekend to Porthcawl, a seaside resort on the south coast of Wales, the Romney campaign confirms to ABC News.
Romney’s grandfather was a Welsh coal miner, and she and her husband often mention him on the stump.
“My grandfather never saw the sun for six days a week, and it was on Sunday when they spent a lot of time in church that he saw the sun,” Ann Romney said at a campaign event in Michigan in February. “I think of that and I think of the heritage that I come from, and how my grandfather made the sacrifice to bring his family to this country for hope and opportunity.”
See? Ann's one of "you people"! Just another child of adversity, whose ancestors slaved away in life-threatening (and life-shortening) working conditions so that they could provide a better life for their family in "America the Beautiful", land of opportunity. Who could imagine the transformation from the land of weary, sooty draft horses to the rarified atmosphere of Olympic dressage and prancing tax deductions? It's enough to make one positively giddy!
She and her husband have made similar comments since, bringing up her family’s humble roots to blunt Democrats’ depiction of them as out of touch.
Memo to Romney campaign: It's entirely possible to be "out of touch" when you only vacation in your own mansions. When you don't recognize common items of food consumed by the lower classes. When you make a $10,000 bet with Rick Perry during a debate (knowing full well that he's been combining red wine and pain meds). It's not about what you're long-suffering ancestors did. It's about you, and your continuing tone-deaf pronouncements.
Mrs. Romney’s grandfather, David Davies, came to Michigan from Wales in 1929. She not only mentions his humble roots on the campaign trail, she bakes her famous Welsh cakes while on the road.
Well, that's nice. But then again, if you're going to suggest that people eat cake, the least you can do is bake it. That's only fair.
Mitt Romney will begin his overseas trip to England, Israel, and Poland on Wednesday when he arrives in London. He will meet with British leaders, including Prime Minister David Cameron, on Thursday, then attend the opening ceremonies of the Olympics with his wife on Friday before traveling to Israel this weekend. Mrs. Romney will return to London from Wales to watch the horse she co-owns, Rafalca, perform in the dressage competition, also known as “horse ballet,” with her trainer Jan Ebeling. The Guardian first reported the news of Mrs. Romney’s trip to Wales.
Horse ballet? Well, that's the first time I've heard that term. What's wrong with "dressage"? It already sounds sufficiently
bourgeois, sufficiently French. Will there eventually be other formats of horse dancing, such as Horse Interpretive Dance? Horse Break Dancing? But... I digress.
In an interview with the newspaper, Roddy Evans, Romney’s 77-year-old second cousin, said the would-be First Lady is “just a lovely Welsh girl.”
“You couldn’t meet a nicer family,” Evans said in the interview. “Mitt and Ann are incredibly warm and loving. It is a hugely romantic story that this little Welsh family in despair get up and go to America.
"Incredibly warm and loving", eh? "A hugely romantic story"? Pass me the freakin' Kleenex, will ya. Geez.
I've got nothing against people coming to America. My mom and her parents came here from Germany during WWII, and it was definitely a very good move. My dad's folks came over from Sweden and England long before that. While Mitt may hail our "common Anglo-Saxon heritage", he's missing the point entirely. Our shared bonds as Americans unite us, regardless of our ancestors' countries of origin or financial or personal circumstances. They came here seeking what we seek today: opportunity.
“Ann’s father was always extremely conscious of his Welsh connections,” he added. “I think it was important to him because it must have been such a big thing to him when he emigrated at such a young age. It would be an extraordinary event for Nantyffyllon if that happened [Mitt's election]. It tickled me pink just to think about it.
“I can remember we were down in Florida and Ann and Mitt discovered we were there and they got on a plane and flew down for lunch,” he added.
Oh, how lovely! But then again, when you've got your own fleet of private jets, flying to meet someone for lunch in Florida is as routine foe Mitt as trudging trudge over to the company cafeteria on our 15-minute lunch break is for us.
I'd love to believe that Mitt and Ann are such charming and delightful people, everything we've seen, heard, and read notwithstanding. I wonder though, why have they chosen to hide this side of themselves throughout the campaign? Why have they made so little effort to downplay their extraordinary wealth (at least until now, when they're building up their "impoverished roots" street cred)?
I don't begrudge Mitt and Ann their amassed wealth. As someone laid off thanks to the cold-blooded calculations of Bain & Company, I have some serious questions about how they acquired it, but despite Mitt's sputtering protestations, I am not "envious" of what they have. Until his tax returns (and the grand jury investigation) prove otherwise, I am willing to give him the benefit of the doubt that his wealth acquisition was legal, if not ethical.
However, I'm growing weary of the uber-rich co-opting the hardscrabble lives of their ancestors as evidence of their own worthiness. Mitt and Ann have lived "well" all their lives. Very well. Oh, there was a time when [gasp!] Mitt had to sell some stock to pay their expenses in the early days, but whose family hasn't had to do that at some point?
Mitt wouldn't last a day in a coal mine or on an assembly line. He might buy these entities, lay off the workers, and pocket a few million dollars in the process. More likely, both Mitt and Ann looked at their ancestors and thought: "I am SO not going to wind up like THAT! Thank heavens we have our trust fund, our investments, our steady stream of income, our mansions, our domestic staff, and the cash flow to keep us from ever having to work at all."
Then again, what do we really know about Mitt and Ann's forbears? Maybe they were just retroactively baptized as average working class people for purposes of campaign "optics". With Mitt, you can't tell what's real and what's jus one more Etch-a-Sketch moment.