Good Riddance to Romney

He was a plutocrat who defended the interests of plutocracy and militarism, and he personally embodied a lot of what most Americans dislike about both American business and politics.

Mitt Romney is (finally!) retiring from politics. This bit from the report in The New York Times was amusing:

The announcement was in some ways the culmination of a long divergence between Mr. Romney, a genteel and wealthy former governor and traditional conservative [bold mine-DL], and the Republican Party, which has shifted under his feet and embraced a coarser brand of partisanship in recent years.

Romney represented much of what was wrong with the Republican Party in the first two decades of this century. He was a plutocrat who defended the interests of plutocracy and militarism, and he personally embodied a lot of what most Americans dislike about both American business and politics. He was politically craven and would pander to almost anyone, and after he adopted a new position he would become the smarmiest critic of others that had held the same position for decades.

The only reason that he is perceived as a “traditional conservative” today is that he spent the better part of a decade reinventing himself as one in his unsuccessful attempts to win the presidency. He successfully turned himself into a conventional Bush-era Republican just in time for it to become politically radioactive. The U.S. dodged a bullet when he lost the presidential election, but unfortunately we have still ended up with the “omni-directional belligerence” in foreign policy that he wanted.