The Rude Guide To Mitt [NOOK Book]

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Overview

Mitt Romney will be the Republican nominee for president in 2012 -- but his alien weirdness makes him a very difficult candidate to get to know. Mitt not only thinks it's perfectly fine to put a dog in a crate strapped to the top of a speeding car for a 12-hour nonstop trip, but he repeats the story years later with a chuckle. Millionaires, Mormons, unimpressive scions and ideologically fungible panderers have run for president before, in spades, but only Romney combines all those elements in one robotic package,...
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The Rude Guide To Mitt

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Overview

Mitt Romney will be the Republican nominee for president in 2012 -- but his alien weirdness makes him a very difficult candidate to get to know. Mitt not only thinks it's perfectly fine to put a dog in a crate strapped to the top of a speeding car for a 12-hour nonstop trip, but he repeats the story years later with a chuckle. Millionaires, Mormons, unimpressive scions and ideologically fungible panderers have run for president before, in spades, but only Romney combines all those elements in one robotic package, topped off with appropriately immobile hair.

"The Rude Guide To Mitt" tells the true story of how:

Bain Capital didn't actually do much venture capital work. Mitt Romney hates risk. Venture capital is very risky. Instead, Bain made its name, and made its investors' fortunes, with leveraged buyouts: seizing control of companies with huge sums of borrowed money and flipping them a few years later for a massive profit.

Mitt Romney didn't really save the Salt Lake City Olympics. He simply raised ticket prices 14 percent above the previous games and auctioned off the best tickets on the Internet. He promised Bank of America executives that they'd get paid back before taxpayers if they extended more credit. And most important, he lobbied Congress, at least until George Bush entered the White House and put Olympic spending right in his budget.

Mitt Romney did not save the Massachusetts state budget. Conventional wisdom has it that he inherited a massive budget deficit and turned it into a massive budget surplus without raising taxes. Romney did raise taxes, but he called them "fees"; the deficit ended up not being as big as projected; and half the supposed "surplus" was an accounting trick. He managed to cut 600 jobs from the sizable Massachusetts state government payroll, which he now paints as a massive and unprecedented reduction in the size of state government. (You're allowed to brag about firing people when you fire public employees.)

Mitt Romney is very weird. He seems incapable of natural conversation and frequently uncomfortable in his own skin. He's simultaneously dorkily earnest and ingratiatingly insincere. He suggests a brilliantly designed politician/android with an operating system still clearly in beta. All video of him attempting to interact with normal humans is cringe-inducing, as a cursory YouTube search quickly demonstrates. (Martin Luther King Day, Jacksonville, Fla., 2008: Mitt poses for a picture with some cheerful young parade attendees. As he squeezes in to the otherwise all-black group, he says, apropros of nothing, "Who let the dogs out? Woof, woof!") He seems to have been told that "small talk" is mostly made up of cheerfully delivered non sequiturs.
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Editorial Reviews

Kirkus Reviews
A quick-and-dirty evaluation of the Republican nominee. Readers expecting a "fair and balanced" look at Romney--whether or not they subscribe to the FoxNews version of the term--will likely know better than to think this book is unbiased. Any notions otherwise are dispelled in the introduction, which Salon writer Pareene leads off with the story of the Romney car trip during which they crated the family dog on the roof. Fortunately, this upfront indictment serves as a sort of throat clearing for the author, who then turns to an outline of Romney's childhood and adolescence, noting his staunch neutrality throughout the 1960s and his wholehearted embracing of Mormonism as a young man. Romney's style of governing followed his ascension to the upper echelons of investment through the slash-and-burn acquisition tactics of Bain Capital. His early efforts in achieving higher office were derailed in an ill-advised contest against Sen. Ted Kennedy, who trounced him, and Romney was forced back into management, where he put his money-raising abilities to good use in heading the Salt Lake Organizing Committee for the Olympics. Pareene veers back and forth--much as Romney has--in detailing the candidate's successes and failures. Ultimately, this is a book for both liberals and conservatives. Democrats will share it with their friends as a damning inducement to vote Democrat, while Republican voters will point to it as another example of the liberal media bias. Clearly, Pareene also hopes that moderate voters will turn away from Romney. Ample ammunition for both the left and the right wing as Romney gears up for his battle with Obama.
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Product Details

  • ISBN-13: 9780985472801
  • Publisher: Salon Media Group
  • Publication date: 4/17/2012
  • Series: NONE
  • Sold by: Barnes & Noble
  • Format: eBook
  • Edition description: Digital Only
  • Pages: 36
  • Sales rank: 1,129,058
  • File size: 192 KB

Meet the Author

Alex Pareene is a staff writer at Salon and the author of "A Tea People's History"
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  • Anonymous

    Posted August 26, 2012

    Pareene has an astonishing for finding the weak spot in any poli

    Pareene has an astonishing for finding the weak spot in any politicians
    armor - especially if its empty underneath. From his days digging
    through the 43 administration while at Wonkette to his run at the home
    base of Gawker, Alex has often called any number of political party's
    and media hack's bluff - and this "children's treasury" of
    classic Mittens lore is a great place to start or just get more informed
    about the current Republican nominee.

    Was this review helpful? Yes  NoThank you for your feedback.   Report this reviewThank you, this review has been flagged.
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