Romney’s financial success should be touted as a virtue in this election

The Democrats are pointing to Romney’s wealth as a reason to vote against him.  In keeping with their Marxist world view that the economy is a finite pie, they are arguing, both implicitly and explicitly, that he must have stolen his wealth from the little people.  Republicans, rather than sneering at this economic fallacy, are trying to back away from Romney’s wealth.  Their snappy comeback to Marxist financial illiteracy is that “Romney is a decent human being despite his wealth.”  This is typical Republican stupidity.

Romney’s wealth is the best thing going for him.  In a time of tremendous financial trouble, this is a guy who understands money, markets, and economics generally.  Just think.  If we elect Romney, in a single election, we can go from an economic illiterate to an economic genius.  But noooo.  We accept their narrative, and are embarrassed instead of proud.

Years ago, I worked on a will contest case.  A little old lady had died and left her largest asset to the woman who had cared for her for twenty years.  The little old lady’s not-so-great-niece sued, claiming that the caregiver had used undue influence on the lady.  The contestant’s single most important piece of evidence was a letter over the lady’s signature in which the lady lambasted both the great-niece and her mother, claiming that they were parasites who made her miserable.  The great-niece contended that the letter was proof that her great-aunt was under the caregiver’s malevolent influence when she wrote the letter because, they claimed, she loved her family too much ever to put her name to such a calumny.

It’s no exaggeration to say that we spent years of litigation trying to deny that letter.  We read it this way and that way to prove that it wasn’t really vicious, that the old lady didn’t really mean what she said;  that someone else had actually written it so it had nothing to do with the caregiver; and that the letter was entirely unrelated to the eventual will.  We couldn’t back away from that letter fast enough, and the great-niece raised it in practically every paragraph of every brief she filed.

And then one day, I had an epiphany:  Let’s embrace the letter.  Instead of being on the defensive, let’s go on the attack.  Let’s use the letter to show that the old lady was correct and that both the great niece and her mother were indeed avaricious, vicious, manipulative, unkind people who had a distant relationship with the lady and were trying to bully her into handing giving them her money. Once we viewed the letter as proof of their greed, rather than trying to deny it as evidence of our own client’s malfeasance, everything fell into place.  A lot of evidence that had been difficult to address suddenly gained meaning.

Needless to say, we won the case.

The Super Tuesday results haven’t been tallied, but I’m beginning to sense that Romney is indeed inevitable, and it’s time for us to love him for his virtues — his very real virtues — instead of accepting the Democrats’ efforts to define those same virtues as faults.

This guy is scary smart.  So what if it makes his delivery a little stiff.  That brain is busy processing information at levels we should appreciate and enjoy, not ridicule and resent.

This guy has a huge learning curve.  Yes, he’s fighting this election hard, because he learned in 2008 that he had to.  He’s the opposite of insane, if one accepts that the definition of insanity is to do the same thing over and over, while expecting a different outcome.

This guy lives a life of moral rectitude, decency, and charity.  Nobody has (yet) stepped up to claim that Romney has cheated on his wife, harassed women, abused animals, or stolen candy from babies.  We know that he donates sums of money to charity.  We also know that, when people are in need, he is there for them, regardless of the cost to himself.

This guy has increasingly embraced conservativism with age and who am I, a neocon myself, to find that trajectory unforgivable?

This guy is better than Obama.  Well, a chair is better than Obama, so I’m not sure whether this is true praise.  How about:  this case is way, extraordinarily, incredibly much better than Obama on every single political issue.

And most importantly, this guy understands money.  That’s a good thing.  A really, really good thing, and anyone who says otherwise may have an agenda that involves America’s financial collapse.

If Romney is indeed the Republican candidate, don’t feel as if you have to hold your nose to vote for him.  Vote for him with gusto.  He may not be the greatest president America has ever had, but he’ll certainly be a very, very good president.