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Saturday, July 28, 2012

2012 Does Anybody Like Mitt Romney? Is There Anything to Like? Is There Anything There at All?

Posted by Paul Constant on Sat, Jul 28, 2012 at 11:31 AM

Garrett Morlan

I've been in the same room with Mitt Romney twice—in Des Moines and Bellevue. I've been in rooms full of people who voted for Romney in the Iowa and Washington State caucuses. I've shared disgusting hotel bathrooms covered in litter and puddles of questionable fluids with men wearing baseball hats and pins bearing Romney's name and Romney T-shirts awkwardly pulled over their very expensive Oxford-cloth button-down shirts. I've stood in line with people at cold ungodly hours of the morning as we all waited to be allowed into Romney rallies. And I have never, once, met a Mitt Romney fan.

I have looked far and wide, halfway across this country and back, and I have not found a human being who is genuinely fond of Romney and believes that, based on the strength of his character, he would make a great president. I'm not talking about an anti-Obama Republican; there are plenty of people who will vote for Romney because he's not Barack Obama. But I have not talked with one person who will vote for Mitt Romney because he's Mitt Romney. And I've tried. E-mails and phone calls to prospective Romney fans went unanswered. Google searches were fruitless. Hell, even our state's Republican gubernatorial candidate, Rob McKenna, hasn't made a public appearance with Romney.

This has been pointed out before: Republican support behind Romney, the candidate running against Obama, is strong, but Republican support of Willard Mitt Romney, the alleged human being, is practically nonexistent.

And at no other time has this been more evident than in the battle over Romney's tax returns...

(Keep reading.)