The Critical Mom's Guide to Mitt Romney

So does he ever take off his face and reveal his mask?* But I may be giving the man too much credit.  Maybe he's not planning anything, just winging it.   He'll take the mask his prop man or lady hands him every day.

This week on Univision, the Spanish-language TV network, he appeared with surprisingly orangey-brown skin:  Silvia Killingsworth posted a comment with the aptly cute title: "Hispandering to Univision."  Yeah, the man panders, but he didn't quite hit it this time.  He had the skin, but he forgot the hair.  They didn't dye it black and he didn't really go for border-bending: faking Tex-Mex is beyond him.  Even so, he messes with Texas the way he messes with everyone--increasingly, his own campaign.  The Houston Post commented:

When Romney said 47 percent of Americans don't pay income taxes, he was apparently tapping the Tax Policy Center, which found that 46.4 percent of Americans in 2011 had either zero or negative tax liability. In other words, people who don't make enough money to fork over anything to the federal government. We think. Tax policy is confusing.

What isn't confusing? A whole bunch of those folks live right here in Texas. The average income per household in the state, according to the U.S. Census Bureau , is around $50,000 per year. Nearly 70 percent of that group doesn't owe any federal income taxes, says the Tax Policy Center. Which means: Mitt Romney just insulted more than two-thirds of average, everyday Texans.

Them fightin' words.

As everyone now knows, at a private fundraiser in May, Mitt Romney said: “There are 47 percent of people. … who believe that they are entitled to health care, to food, to housing, you name it. That it’s an entitlement, and government should give it to them.” 

People like his Dad, who, as his mother revealed in a video posted to You-Tube on September 7, was on Welfare for the first few years of his life.

Who is Mitt Romney?  Does he know?  Do we want to know?  Back when Ross Perot ran for president, a cartoon appeared portraying him giving his inaugural speech, as the top of his head flipped open and a bug-eyed, antennaed alien appeared, waved, and announced, "I am Twerlop of the Zingobankeplik galaxy," or words to that effect.  I foresee cartoons like this appearing about Mitt Romney.  Despite all his faces, he's opaque.  Generic opportunist, yes:  but there are so many.  Who is he, really?  Maureen Dowd weighs in: 

We thought Romney was secretly moderate, but it turns out that he’s secretly cruel, a social Darwinist just like his running mate. 

She adds that we're in search of the real Mitt Romney,

but disturbingly, so is he.   

She's mistaken.  Giving him credit where it ain't due.  Searching?  Even soul-searching?  Him?  Please.  She's making the classic mistake of very smart people:  assuming that he--like she--actually thinks.  Cogitates, considers, analyzes, interprets, the way she does.  As opposed to quick conniving.  What if he's just going with the flow, riding on the emptiness of his soul?  He's all things to all people as long as he's empty.  When he's full of your votes, what then?  Don't let him get there.

Buyer Beware:   We don't want a president whose head will flip open revealing some warlord who caters to the 1% and forces the rest of us to build pyramids for him.

*Apologies to Oscar Wilde