[See also here: I figured that trolling money out of the Fark link/hate mail the update deserved its own post.]
Interesting, if true. I think that it is: it would explain why Obama unraveled twenty years of careful political persona development in four months. However, while I think that Glenn Thrush may be correct in the symptoms of Obama’s hatred of Romney I suspect that he – and everybody else, since I feel like being quite appallingly arrogant – has gotten the wrong idea of the diagnosis of Romney’s hatred. I think that it’s very simple: it’s not that Mitt Romney was born rich, gave it away, and got rich again that infuriates Barack Obama so.
It’s that Mitt Romney had a father who loved him.
And that is a thought that fills me with a terrible pity towards Barack H. Obama, Jr.
Moe Lane
(Via Instapundit)
Damn Moe, harsh. Probably true, but harsh.
Oooff. That is harsh on an EPIC scale, Moe. You’re a political knife-fighter to the very MARROW of your being. And God bless you for it.
Told ya so, three years ago.
Heh. “President Daddy Issues.”
Oh, President SCOAMF. No doubt there’s a bit of a daddy issue, the basic racism and commie class-envy that has permeated his life, and a big old dollop of bully-boy petulance now that he’s faced by an opponent who (unlike McCain) will actually fight back and call him on his bullshit.
I don’t know if that’s *all* there is to his daddy issues. I think Obama is also suffering from the knowledge that a lot of people are hating his surrogate daddy. The only daddy that stood by him his whole life when the others ran out on him and his mom.
Mitt gave away his fortune and got rich again? I’m gonna need some kind of citation, because that would be a STRONG point of his with his interactions with the middle class. Never once been mentioned by him or his staff.
Rob: it’s weird: I thought that it was fairly common knowledge that Romney made his own fortune via capital management, and that he gave his inheritance to charity. Apparently not, though.
I seriously doubt it. I doubt Obama spends any time thinking about Romney’s father. Obama was raised to hate “the rich” – and yes, he is rich but he doesn’t think of himself that way. Obama was raised as a communist, today he is a communist, he is simply aware that coming out with it would effectively end his political career. So there he is, suffering in silence..
You mean gave 10 percent of his income to his church that he obligated to give, or else he doesn’t get into Mormon heaven? It’s not really giving it away, when it is a tax to stay out of hell. You word it like he gave away his money and lived penniless like Gandhi. He has never been anywhere close to doing without a silver spoon. He has never lived anything remotely close to a middle class life. Let alone destitute because he gave it all away. Many reasons to vote for the guy, but this angle is not true at all.
Rob: I mean ‘click the link next time, Sparky.’ And by ‘next time’ I’m implying ‘somewhere else,’ because I don’t grade on a curve.
I think you’ve hit pretty close to the bullseye here, but where does that leave his surrogate mommy, Valerie Jarrett?
The whole “Dreams From My Father” thing supports what you say Moe.
I always found it curious that Obama’s first autobiography, Dreams From My Father, was all about his quest to find and connect with and identify with the father who more or less abandoned him–with far less identifying with the family who didn’t bail on him, the mother and grandparents he actually grew up with. They are just as much a part of his heritage, and far greater contributors to his success, than the bozo who ran out on him.
Rob–You’re wrong. He didn’t only tithe to his church–he gave away EVERY LAST PENNY
that he inherited from his father. I wouldn’t be so sure that he’s never had a middle-class lifestyle, either. I recently read part of an interview with Ann Romney, where she talked about how the family managed after she got MS. She said that Mitt took over many of her usual tasks–buying food, cooking meals, taxiing the kids all over town. No doubt, they also used hired help, but they were voluntarily living something that resembled a “normal life”.
Not everyone who is born with a silver spoon in his/her mouth is comfortable with it. While Mitt Romney certainly grew up with a lot of advantages, his giving away his inheritance suggests that he wanted, as much as possible, to do something on his own.
This seems to me a much more admirable approach to privilege, than say, that of John Kerry, who was born into a blue blooded, well-connected family, and then acquired wealth by marrying it, twice.
The notion that someone who is born into wealth is necessarily indifferent to, and unable to identify with those less fortunate, is nonsense–and is a charge only leveled at Republicans. FDR, the Democratic hero of the Great Depression, was a man of both wealth and aristocratic background, as was his wife. The Kennedys, often regarded as champions of the working man, never led normal lives–far from it. The media has approvingly followed the glamorous career path of Chelsea Clinton, but has been amazingly quiet about the Bush daughters, who have spent much of their adult lives in public service. (Barbara Bush spent a year in Africa working with AIDS patients, while her sister Jenna teaches at an inner-city charter school in Baltimore).
The LDS church does an enormous amount of humanitarian work, and has extensive relief services for its less fortunate members. As a Mormon Bishop, Romney would have assisted and counseled people in all kinds of difficulties. Romney has done some extraordinary things for people in distress, and I hope he is willing to display this side of himself at the convention.
You could have put a period after “father”. As a fatherless son myself, I think the mere fact that Mitt had a father PRESENT IN HIS LIFE is enough for someone with as many issues as BHO. George Romney didn’t have to be Ward Cleaver to evoke resentment. He just had to be.
Cassandra: I often thank God myself for my parents. I’ve seen what can happen to people who didn’t have good home lives, growing up; I’m very fortunate that I always had the support and acceptance that I needed, in the bad times.
Mitt has done a HORRIBLE job of running from his personal financial record. He should be championing it! So his tax rate will be in the single digits for several years in the 00s… yeah, because he quit his job to run the olympics, your tax rates are typically pretty low if you have no salaried income.
This sort of embarrassment about success cedes the field to the class warriors. Romney should be out beating the drum for success, it proves that he is competent. Money never hurt FDR or Kennedy. This country needs somebody that understands business, why run from that?
And if Moe is right, Romney can have a perfect opportunity in the debates to bring up the ‘You didn’t build it’ and mix in a quick tribute to his father. Obama might come unhinged right in front of the country and again tell people what he really thinks.
I think the simplest explanation of Obama’s hatred of Romney is likely the correct one: Romney stands in the way of Obama’s continued political power.
I tend to think that Obama’s hatred of Romney is based on the fact that Obama pretends to be everything Romney really is, and when you see the genuine article, it makes the fake obvious.
“And that is a thought that fills me with a terrible pity towards Barack H. Obama, Jr.”
ALL people with Narcissistic Personality Disorder acquired it from traumatic deprivation of love during childhood.
So you do feel sorry for them somewhat, but they’ve become such jackasses in the meantime that the pity is short-lived.
She said, having been raised by an NPD.
Moe
Romney also had something else Obama never had- a mother who loved him. Obama’s mother largely abandoned Barack to fly off and chase her whimsies. He was raised by his grandparents. I think it’s Romney’s having two parents who loved him that irks Obama.
Father issues probably have a lot to do with it but liberals don’t dislike people who inherit their money or marry into it. Romney earned his money. Their the worst kind.
Do you remember the story when Lolo Soetoro asked Barack’s mother to accompany him to a party attended by American Oil executives and she refused to go, saying, “These are not my people!”
I see that same visceral revulsion from Barack towards whole sections of American society, particularly the productive class. There may be father issues here, but there’s also the standard leftist antipathy towards those who are perceived as impediments to “progress”.
First Clinton and now Obama, issues with their respective fathers. Have the Democrats become to home for mis-fit toys, so to speak?
I think it maybe that, but more likely its everything about Mitt that tees off Obama. Rich by his own efforts, sober, white, well educated with the grades to prove it, inherited a fortune, gave away inherited fortune, came from loving, stable parents, handsome, and raised his own successful family. Deep in his psyche, it’s everything Obama wanted for himself. The chip on his shoulder could sink a continent.
The simple fact the Obama will be regard as our Worst. President. Ever. isn’t helping his psyche, either.
Like Moe I’ve seen what happens to some people (not all–some can handle it) with absent fathers or unhappy home situations. It’s not good. I got lucky insofar as my parents were concerned; I saw the damage that had been done to some friends of mine, and I swore that I would never let that happen to my kids when I got married. I like to think that I kept my promise to myself.
So–I can see Barack’s problem. But feel sorry for the sumbitch? Can’t go that far. He’s created more grief for millions of people than most anybody since Jimmuh Carter.
Hey this sounds like the plot of Harry Potter: So if Mitt is the boy who was loved and Obama is he-who-shall-not-be-named, we know the end right?
The Plague of Dads strikes ALL houses. http://www.megapotamus.com/wp/?p=270
@Moe Lane: My observation (admittedly sensitized by circumstances) is that much/most of the anger that fuels the left is daddy issues. The further left someone is (and the more oikophobic) appears to be in direct proportion to the depth of such issues.
This is so commonsensical as to be arsenic to the elite.
Obama’s hatred of Romney will pale in comparison to Obama’s hatred of America once he gets soundly bounced out of office and has to stand there and watch Romney take The Oath. Michelle once offered that as an adult, she had never been proud of America…that is until a majority of Americans saw her husband as our lord and savior. Both she and he will have to go back to being ashamed of AmeriKKKa in less than 100 days. So much the pity.
Mark Buehner, he also did not take a paycheck while he was governor from 2002 – 2006…
Monica: name a communit leader who is not rich. They use resentments and envies to fan the flames and grab power. After that, they purge the rubes, their ideological supporters, and grab money and power with the unlimited coercive power of the state.
Off topic but I have always wondered how lonely,desperate and pathetic the women who married Kerry are. I mean, the guy is a walking cemetary plot.Teresa needs to get out more,or maintain the dosage john has her on I guess.
I just figured it’s because Obama is a malignant narcissist and can’t stand the idea of someone taking what he sees as rightfully his. It just so happens to be Romney, but he feels that way about anybody who thwarts his will.
But your theory works too. Could be some of both.
Moe, with all due respect, I’d like to see some evidence for that. Certainly Obama has father issues, but he’s hardly alone among presidents in that regard. In fact, if you look at past presidents, it’s striking how many of them had father issues:
– Clinton, born posthumously, stepfather a drunk
– Reagan, father was the town drunk
– Ford, father abandoned the family when he was an infant
– Kennedy, father was a woman-chasing lout
They all compensated in one way or another, but none to my knowledge was consumed with rage toward opponents who grew up in an intact family.
Obama’s problem, I think, is simpler: He has never, in all his life, faced someone who fought back. In the few elections he’s participated in, he’s always won by having his opponents knocked out of the race, or faced men to gentlemanly (and I do mean that as a compliment to Senator McCain) to fight back against Obama’s knee-to-the-groin politics. Barack Hussein Obama is a bully, the kid he tried to rough up just slugged him, and he doesn’t know what to do. It’s as simple as that.
It’s at times like these I wish that the immortal Jane Austen had been reincarnated as a political blogger.
And that is a thought that fills me with a terrible pity towards Barack H. Obama, Jr.
At the very least, someone has pity for the guy because seeing him get stomped on in November would really make my day.
Man, fark has gone downhill. I know a guy who hangs out there a lot, ever since he lost his last job a couple years ago & hasn’t been able to get another one. He sounds a lot like these asses when politics comes up nowadays – nasty, envious, hateful towards the religious and successful, and so superficially self-confident that it’s clearly a sort of cognitive dissonance which protects him from the self-awareness of understanding just how much he’s screwed up his life.
If a significant percentage of Americans are like my friend and these apparently typical denizens of fark, we are all well and truly farked.
Bulleye, Mr. Lane. Read initial Thrush item and thought the very same. And f@#k sugarcoating it–this is war.
It is not parents, or no parents. It is how you deal with life’s ups and downs. Even the big ones.
I agree that Obama has a huge chip on his shoulder. But lots of people with the same or far more terrible experiences turn out fine.
No pity here. He’s doing massive damage to my country. I don’t care why, jst want him to stop.
@Rob, Romney didn’t let go of his entire fortune, but he did give his inheritance from his father to charity.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mitt_Romney
“When his father died in 1995, Mitt donated his inheritance to BYU’s George W. Romney Institute of Public Management and joined the board and was vice-chair of the Points of Light Foundation (which had incorporated his father’s National Volunteer Center).”
JWnTX — ding ding ding! I think that sums it up nicely.
Mr. Lane, you may well be right. However, there are reasons and there are results. Obama’s reasons for hating Romney, or being the person he is, don’t really concern me. I just want him away from the levers of power as soon as possible because he is destroying America. One thing I am absolutely certain about: America will not begin to recover until this individual is gone from the White House.
I’ll feel pity for Obama when he’s out of office. In the meantime, I’ll save my pity for unemployed Americans, dead Mexican cops, dead Egyptian and Nigerian Christians, dead Iranian gays…
Moe,
I’d never even thought about it. I suppose if I had read either of his novels I might have come to the same conclusion. But to read his fictionalized accounts of his life would have, in some small way, caused revenue to flow in his direction, something of which I will have no part.
Its not hard to see why he would hate someone from a culture such as Mitt’s. I suppose that if I had been born of a philandering father and a shallow, ditzy mother so reckless as to marry such a man, I’d probably harbor the same kind of resentments.
It also explains how he has chosen to comport himself like the Sultan of Brunei rather than The President of the United States with his lavish vacations and countless rounds of golf while the nation struggles to recover not just from a serious financial disaster but one made far worse by the crushing burden of a regulatory regime run amok at his behest.