The Romneys during hard times.
Love is a beautiful thing. It can be redemptive. People who love each other can inspire each other to grow as human beings. Unfortunately, the Romneys don't seem to inspire each other to grow as human beings.
When he was young, Mitt Romney was a bully who committed a hate crime against a presumed gay classmate, got his giggles by walking a blind teacher into a door, and protested for a war he knew he wouldn't have to fight. And while Ann Romney can gush all she wants about her love affair with her husband, his policies would prevent gay and lesbians from even having husbands or wives. To the Romneys, love is just grand, just as long as it conforms to their privileged and entitled definition.
Ann Romney seems to genuinely believe that she and Mitt struggled when they were young. They were both born into wealth and privilege, but they struggled. Because they couldn't entertain much. They didn't yet have multiple homes and she didn't yet have multiple Cadillacs and they certainly didn't yet have a car elevator in any of their homes that could help store her multiple Cadillacs. He was in school and she was raising the children. Neither held a paying job. They didn't have to. He had investments that he was able to sell a little at a time, so neither of them had to get a paying job. They didn't build that, they were given it. But to Ann Romney, that was struggling.
Mitt Romney built his fortune as a vulture capitalist, putting many people out of work while using every possible means to avoid paying taxes. For the last several years, while permanently running for president, he again has had no paying job. He has even joked about being unemployed, because unemployment is so funny, and he so well empathizes with those who actually are. Just as he empathized with those his vulturous business practices made unemployed. Just as he empathized with the people he joked about his father having put out of work. Which maybe explains why as governor of Massachusetts he had one of the worst records in the country, when it came to creating jobs.
To the Romneys, these past several years of not having paying jobs probably amounts almost to struggling again. Talk about their lavish vacation homes raises the obvious question— vacation from what? But it's not the wealth that is most telling, it's that while on permanent vacation, while trying to build their credentials as potential First Family, they apparently haven't done anything to help other people. Has anyone ever seen them making hands-on efforts to help the poor, the homeless, the unemployed, the sick, the elderly, the student who can't afford school, or anyone else in actual need?
My theory on the Romney tax returns? Among other things, I'm guessing that their returns will show little or no charitable donations other than to their church, despite it being basic Mormon policy for everyone, even those with much less wealth, to tithe 10 percent of their income. In other words, their donations to their church come not out of the generosity of their hearts, but out of their doing no more than what their church expects of all its members. About which Mitt nevertheless whines.
We know that the Romneys made some additional donations in the couple years from which they have released their tax returns, but how about all those many other years? Do the Romneys build schools or hospital wings or other types of philanthropic entities that so many people of extreme wealth often build? I'm guessing that they don't build that. We don't even know if they made any charitable contributions to anyone other than their standard tithing to their church over all those many years for which we have no tax returns.
The Romney economic and social policies will do great things for the Romneys, while hurting almost everyone else. They will cut their own taxes while making people from lower income brackets pay more. They will cut the social services that people in their income bracket don't need. They will cut the health care benefits that people in their income bracket don't need. The Romneys are all about the Romneys, and they seem always to have been. It's nice that Ann Romney loves her husband. It would be nicer if she and her husband cared at all about others.