Mitt Romney Channels Dan Quayle, Orwell


1192718661Mitt Romney is in rare form today. Taking a page from Dan Quayle’s playbook, Romney assailed single mothers to the delight of the conservative Christian movement he is trying so hard to court. But our boy isn’t only using maneuvers from 1992—he’s also looking to the future. If he becomes president, our former governor would attempt to link college aid to the worthiness of the student’s potential career.

Let’s look at Romney’s retro view on single mothers first. In yesterday’s warm-up for a speech the candidate will give a group of Christian conservatives today, he tried out his material.

“Number one on my list is we have to teach our kids that before they have babies, they should get married,” Romney told supporters at a hotel here. “Marriage comes first. . . . At least where I spent the last 30 years in Massachusetts, boy, if you could have more married couples in the inner city, wouldn’t it be a huge plus for our kids?”

Do you hear that, Roxbury and Dorchester? All you need is to get married and all the violence will just melt away. You don’t need more police officers. All you need is a free trial membership to eHarmony.com. Why eHarmony? Because they don’t allow the gays. Romney’s vision of inner-city marital bliss doesn’t involve you. Sorry.

Next on the block is philosophy majors. Yesterday, Mitt told reporters he’d like to tie financial aid to the line of work a student wants to pursue:

. . . Mitt Romney said yesterday he wants to link the amount of financial aid college students get to the kind of jobs they pursue after graduation.Romney offered no specifics on what careers would warrant more money for a student during their undergraduate years, such as whether a future lawyer, doctor, teacher or social worker would receive more aid than a future economist or engineer.

“I like the idea of linking the level of support that we’re able to provide to young people going to college to the contributions they’re going to make to our society,” Romney said.

This is hilarious coming from the guy who got his MBA and law degree from Harvard, and then went on to make boatloads of money by buying and selling troubled companies with Bain Capital. Maybe Mitt can justify his bottom-feeding career choice like he explained why his sons aren’t fighting in Iraq—it’s a trickle-down form of contributing to society. The question lingers: Whose society?