That boy ain't right

So Willard Mittens Romney is gone now, he's "suspended" his campaign. Is suspended Mormon speak for "quit?" Or is it the new right wing buzz word?

It really should come as a shock to anyone that he spent so much money and got so little in return for it. Look at the guy, what does he look like to you? He looks like a used car sales manager to me. He looks like the guy who "approves" the great deal the other slimy slaesperson just made you on that '79 Cordoba you've had your eye on. I'll say one thing for him though, he gets his "pack up and quit" gene from his father. He's his daddy's boy in that regard all right.
Willard's daddy was a Michigan businessman who ran for Governor of my home state in the 1960's. He won and for all the world for a time he looked like just the man to break the grip LBJ and the Democrats had on this country. He talked openly about how he'd use his business acumen to fix this nation if he were President. He started going around key states in 1967 on speaking tours and he finally confirmed later that year that he was going to run for President in 1968.

But then one hot summer night in 1967 in Detroit something happened that made the bottom fall out of his Presidential plans, the city erupted in race riots. A Rutger University website about the riots gives this nice summary of the early events, "The Detroit Riot of 1967 began when police vice squad officers executed a raid on an after hours drinking club or “blind pig” in a predominantly black neighborhoods located at Twelfth Street and Clairmount Avenue. They were expecting to round up a few patrons, but instead found 82 people inside holding a party for two returning Vietnam veterans. Yet, the officers attempted to arrest everyone who was on the scene. While the police awaited a “clean-up crew” to transport the arrestees, a crowd gathered around the establishment in protest. After the last police car left, a small group of men who were “confused and upset because they were kicked out of the only place they had to go” lifted up the bars of an adjacent clothing store and broke the windows. From this point of origin, further reports of vandalism diffused. Looting and fires spread through the Northwest side of Detroit, then crossed over to the East Side. Within 48 hours, the National Guard was mobilized, to be followed by the 82nd airborne on the riot’s fourth day. As police and military troops sought to regain control of the city, violence escalated. At the conclusion of 5 days of rioting, 43 people lay dead, 1189 injured and over 7000 people had been arrested."

I was alive during those riots and I remember how the city was on lockdown for months afterward. It was like a war zone and everyone's nerves were frayed as we all waited for the other shoe to drop. Almost over night white folks began their flight out of the city and into the suburbs and as things grew more and more tense in the city itself people began to question George Romney's handling of the crisis. He showed himself to be a friend of the upper classes when he saw to it that places like Grosse Pointe were heavily defended against the maurauding black folks while the inner city, which was where I lived at the time, was left to smolder and burn.

Not long after the riots ended the national press wrote off Romney and he quietly scaled back his speaking tours as he tried to mend his reputation by attending to things in Michigan. No one blamed him, well no one in their right mind anyway, for being behind the riots but many blamed him, and rightly so, for his clumsy handling of the situation during and after the riots.

So basically when the going got tough, George Romney bailed on his Presidential plans, just like his son did. Sometimes it's too true that the apple doesn't fall far from the tree. So long Mitt! I'm hoping you'll come back for the 2012 or 2016 Presidential race, maybe by then you'll be the left wing independent you were back in the days of Saint Ronnie and when you tried to run to the left of Ted Kennedy. Either way, I know the blood of a long line of quitters and losers runs through your veins.