In 2007, when Mitt Romney sat down with the Wall Street Journal editorial board, the candidate for the Republican presidential nomination was eager for the influential paper’s blessing. What he got, instead, was their bemusement.The paper’s account of the interview begins with a three- word quote from Romney: “I love data.” The Journal editors go on to slyly note, “Mitt Romney has been speaking for less than two minutes when he makes this profession.” They then quote him again. “I used to call it ’wallowing in the data.’ Let me see the data. I want to see the client’s data, the competitors’ data. I want to see all the data.”The Journal’s conservative editorial board didn’t want to see the data. They wanted to see the ideology. They wanted to know whether Romney was one of them. But he seemed uncomfortable with that line of questioning.“When asked whether his ‘nuts- and-bolts’ approach can possibly succeed in an ideological, divided age, he returns to the nuts and bolts.” Pressed by the board, Romney begins to stammer. “Obviously, I have — just like in the consulting world — I have ’concepts’ that I believe.” You can almost see the flop sweat.
i love it when they think they are getting the free ride and the free lunch, then the go into that Porky Pig persona da da da da, that's all folks!
Wrong Data
This has made Romney’s politics something of a puzzle. Washington has its empiricists and its data-hounds, but most who enter public service do so because they want to apply that data to a grand purpose. They like their data, but they’re in politics because they care about ideology, or a party, or at least a particular issue. “Concept” doesn’t begin to describe it.
Romney’s apparent disinterest in an animating ideology has made him hard to pin down — for the Journal editorial board, for journalists, for Democrats and Republicans, for campaign consultants, even for Romney’s closest confidantes. It has led to the common knock on Romney that he lacks a core. He’s an opportunist. He picks whatever position is expedient. He is a guy with brains, but no guts.
and still they parade those who claim to really know this guy which is it they don't or they are lying?
