Tuesday, April 03, 2012 2:41:13 AM
A Quantum Theory of Mitt Romney
Fig. 1: The famous "Schrödinger's candidate" scenario. For as long as Mitt Romney remains in this box, he is both a moderate and a conservative.
Rachel Domm
Fig. 2: A Feynman diagram of an encounter between a Romney and an anti-Romney. The resulting collision annihilates both, leaving behind a single electron and a $20 bill.
Rachel Domm
By DAVID JAVERBAUM
Published: March 31, 2012
THE recent remark by Mitt Romney’s senior adviser Eric Fehrnstrom that upon clinching the Republican nomination Mr. Romney could change his political views “like an Etch A Sketch” has already become notorious. The comment seemed all too apt, an apparent admission by a campaign insider of two widely held suspicions about Mitt Romney: that he is a) utterly devoid of any ideological convictions and b) filled with aluminum powder.
The imagery may have been unfortunate, but Mr. Fehrnstrom’s impulse to analogize is understandable. Metaphors like these, inexact as they are, are the only way the layman can begin to grasp the strange phantom world that underpins the very fabric of not only the Romney campaign but also of Mitt Romney in general. For we have entered the age of quantum politics; and Mitt Romney is the first quantum politician.
A bit of context. Before Mitt Romney, those seeking the presidency operated under the laws of so-called classical politics, laws still followed by traditional campaigners like Newt Gingrich. Under these Newtonian principles, a candidate’s position on an issue tends to stay at rest until an outside force — the Tea Party, say, or a six-figure credit line at Tiffany — compels him to alter his stance, at a speed commensurate with the size of the force (usually large) and in inverse proportion to the depth of his beliefs (invariably negligible). This alteration, framed as a positive by the candidate, then provokes an equal but opposite reaction among his rivals.
But the Romney candidacy represents literally a quantum leap forward. It is governed by rules that are bizarre and appear to go against everyday experience and common sense. To be honest, even people like Mr. Fehrnstrom who are experts in Mitt Romney’s reality, or “Romneality,” seem bewildered by its implications; and any person who tells you he or she truly “understands” Mitt Romney is either lying or a corporation.
Nevertheless, close and repeated study of his campaign in real-world situations has yielded a standard model that has proved eerily accurate in predicting Mitt Romney’s behavior in debate after debate, speech after speech, awkward look-at-me-I’m-a-regular-guy moment after awkward look-at-me-I’m-a-regular-guy moment, and every other event in his face-time continuum.
The basic concepts behind this model are:
Complementarity. In much the same way that light is both a particle and a wave, Mitt Romney is both a moderate and a conservative, depending on the situation (Fig. 1). It is not that he is one or the other; it is not that he is one and then the other. He is both at the same time.
Probability. Mitt Romney’s political viewpoints can be expressed only in terms of likelihood, not certainty. While some views are obviously far less likely than others, no view can be thought of as absolutely impossible. Thus, for instance, there is at any given moment a nonzero chance that Mitt Romney supports child slavery.
Uncertainty. Frustrating as it may be, the rules of quantum campaigning dictate that no human being can ever simultaneously know both what Mitt Romney’s current position is and where that position will be at some future date. This is known as the “principle uncertainty principle.”
Entanglement. It doesn’t matter whether it’s a proton, neutron or Mormon: the act of observing cannot be separated from the outcome of the observation. By asking Mitt Romney how he feels about an issue, you unavoidably affect how he feels about it. More precisely, Mitt Romney will feel every possible way about an issue until the moment he is asked about it, at which point the many feelings decohere into the single answer most likely to please the asker.
Noncausality. The Romney campaign often violates, and even reverses, the law of cause and effect. For example, ordinarily the cause of getting the most votes leads to the effect of being considered the most electable candidate. But in the case of Mitt Romney, the cause of being considered the most electable candidate actually produces the effect of getting the most votes.
Duality. Many conservatives believe the existence of Mitt Romney allows for the possibility of the spontaneous creation of an “anti-Romney” (Fig. 2) that leaps into existence and annihilates Mitt Romney. (However, the science behind this is somewhat suspect, as it is financed by Rick Santorum, for whom science itself is suspect.)
What does all this bode for the general election? By this point it won’t surprise you to learn the answer is, “We don’t know.” Because according to the latest theories, the “Mitt Romney” who seems poised to be the Republican nominee is but one of countless Mitt Romneys, each occupying his own cosmos, each supporting a different platform, each being compared to a different beloved children’s toy but all of them equally real, all of them equally valid and all of them running for president at the same time, in their own alternative Romnealities, somewhere in the vast Romniverse.
And all of them losing to Barack Obama.
David Javerbaum [ ] is the author of “The Last Testament: A Memoir by God [ ].”
© 2012 The New York Times Company (emphasis in original)
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/04/01/opinion/sunday/a-quantum-theory-of-mitt-romney.html
===
Romney declines to discuss religion on eve of Wisconsin primary polls show he’s favored to win
By Associated Press, April 2, 2012
AP GREEN BAY, Wis. — Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney faced a tough question about his Mormon faith while campaigning for Tuesday’s Wisconsin primary.
A Ron Paul supporter, 28-year-old Bret Hatch, asked Romney whether he agreed with a passage from the Book of Mormon that describes a cursing of people with a “skin of blackness.” Romney’s staff took away the microphone before the Green Bay man could read the passage.
“I’m sorry, we’re just not going to have a discussion about religion in my view, but if you have a question I’ll be happy to answer your question,” Romney said Monday.
Hatch then asked whether Romney thought it was a sin for interracial couples to have children.
“No. Next question,” Romney responded curtly.
Hatch was citing verses from Nephi in the Book of Mormon which describes a cursing of people with a “skin of blackness.”
The verse is often cited by critics who accuse the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints of racism and consider Mormon teachings heretical. Some Mormons may also have heard the verses in their community as an explanation of why men of African descent had been banned from the church’s priesthood until 1978.
Church leaders have said that interpretation is inaccurate. The church recently issued a statement from its offices in Utah denouncing racism and warning against what it called speculation about the origins of the prohibition.
“For a time in the church there was a restriction on the priesthood for male members of African descent,” the church said. “It is not known precisely why, how, or when this restriction began in the church but what is clear is that it ended decades ago.”
Romney often talks about the decade he spent as a volunteer Mormon pastor in the Boston area before becoming governor of Massachusetts.
Not long after Hatch’s question, Romney reflected upon that experience.
“This gentleman wanted to talk about the doctrines of my religion. I’ll talk about the practices of my faith,” Romney said, noting that his service as a pastor helped him connect with people on “a very personal basis.”
“Most Americans, by the way, are carrying a burden of some kind. We don’t see it. We see someone on the street, they smile and say hello, but behind them they’re carrying kind of a bag of rocks,” Romney said. “I want to help people. I want to lighten that burden.”
AP Religion Writer Rachel Zoll contributed to this report.
Copyright 2012 The Associated Press
http://www.washingtonpost.com/national/on-faith/romney-declines-to-discuss-religion-on-eve-of-wisconsin-primary-polls-show-hes-favored-to-win/2012/04/02/gIQAPyyHrS_story.html [with comments]
===
'Mad Men' George Romney Swipe Incites Tweets From Grandson Tagg
Mitt Romney with campaign poster for his father, George, in Spartanburg, SC, January 2012.
Charles Dharapak/AP
by: Neal Carruth
April 2, 2012
Was Mad Men [ http://www.amctv.com/shows/mad-men ] weighing in on Election 2012 from the year 1966?
That's the question many are asking today after last night's episode of the Emmy Award-winning advertising-world drama on AMC.
Henry Francis (played by Christopher Stanley), a supporting character, has advised both New York's Republican Governor Nelson Rockefeller and New York City Mayor John Lindsay, both men moderate Republicans
In one scene [ http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iRlOiVyowrE ], we hear Francis say over the phone, "Well, tell Jim His Honor's not going to Michigan." After a beat, he adds: "Because Romney's a clown and I don't want him standing next to him."
The stock-in-trade of Mad Men has been crafting winking, knowing parallels between 1960s America and the contemporary United States.
Everything from office relationships to smoking during pregnancy is slyly contrasted with today's standards.
Last night's episode, called "Tea Leaves [ http://www.amctv.com/shows/mad-men/episodes/season-5/tea-leaves ]," was directed by Mad Men star Jon Hamm and written by Erin Levy and Matthew Weiner, who's the show's creator.
Weiner told Bill Maher on HBO's Real Time this past Friday that he's a Democrat.
One can only speculate about what message the writers may have been trying to send about George Romney's son Mitt.
But given Henry Francis's association with moderate Republicans like Rockefeller and Lindsay, it would stand to reason that Henry's politics would be in line with the politics of George Romney. Romney was regarded as a progressive on civil rights, like Rockefeller and Lindsay. And Romney opposed his party's nomination of Barry Goldwater in 1964.
Mitt Romney's son Tagg responded to the episode today in a pair of Tweets. In the first [ https://twitter.com/#!/tromney/status/186825937315315712 ], he said, "Seriously, lib media mocking my dead grandpa?" And in the second [ https://twitter.com/#!/tromney/status/186827455863062528 ], "George Romney was as good a man I've ever known. Inspirational leader, worked for civil rights, promoted freedom. We need more like him."
The elder Romney who, like his son Mitt also ran for president, died in 1995 at age 88.
Copyright 2012 National Public Radio
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Fig. 1: The famous "Schrödinger's candidate" scenario. For as long as Mitt Romney remains in this box, he is both a moderate and a conservative.
Rachel Domm
Fig. 2: A Feynman diagram of an encounter between a Romney and an anti-Romney. The resulting collision annihilates both, leaving behind a single electron and a $20 bill.
Rachel Domm
By DAVID JAVERBAUM
Published: March 31, 2012
THE recent remark by Mitt Romney’s senior adviser Eric Fehrnstrom that upon clinching the Republican nomination Mr. Romney could change his political views “like an Etch A Sketch” has already become notorious. The comment seemed all too apt, an apparent admission by a campaign insider of two widely held suspicions about Mitt Romney: that he is a) utterly devoid of any ideological convictions and b) filled with aluminum powder.
The imagery may have been unfortunate, but Mr. Fehrnstrom’s impulse to analogize is understandable. Metaphors like these, inexact as they are, are the only way the layman can begin to grasp the strange phantom world that underpins the very fabric of not only the Romney campaign but also of Mitt Romney in general. For we have entered the age of quantum politics; and Mitt Romney is the first quantum politician.
A bit of context. Before Mitt Romney, those seeking the presidency operated under the laws of so-called classical politics, laws still followed by traditional campaigners like Newt Gingrich. Under these Newtonian principles, a candidate’s position on an issue tends to stay at rest until an outside force — the Tea Party, say, or a six-figure credit line at Tiffany — compels him to alter his stance, at a speed commensurate with the size of the force (usually large) and in inverse proportion to the depth of his beliefs (invariably negligible). This alteration, framed as a positive by the candidate, then provokes an equal but opposite reaction among his rivals.
But the Romney candidacy represents literally a quantum leap forward. It is governed by rules that are bizarre and appear to go against everyday experience and common sense. To be honest, even people like Mr. Fehrnstrom who are experts in Mitt Romney’s reality, or “Romneality,” seem bewildered by its implications; and any person who tells you he or she truly “understands” Mitt Romney is either lying or a corporation.
Nevertheless, close and repeated study of his campaign in real-world situations has yielded a standard model that has proved eerily accurate in predicting Mitt Romney’s behavior in debate after debate, speech after speech, awkward look-at-me-I’m-a-regular-guy moment after awkward look-at-me-I’m-a-regular-guy moment, and every other event in his face-time continuum.
The basic concepts behind this model are:
Complementarity. In much the same way that light is both a particle and a wave, Mitt Romney is both a moderate and a conservative, depending on the situation (Fig. 1). It is not that he is one or the other; it is not that he is one and then the other. He is both at the same time.
Probability. Mitt Romney’s political viewpoints can be expressed only in terms of likelihood, not certainty. While some views are obviously far less likely than others, no view can be thought of as absolutely impossible. Thus, for instance, there is at any given moment a nonzero chance that Mitt Romney supports child slavery.
Uncertainty. Frustrating as it may be, the rules of quantum campaigning dictate that no human being can ever simultaneously know both what Mitt Romney’s current position is and where that position will be at some future date. This is known as the “principle uncertainty principle.”
Entanglement. It doesn’t matter whether it’s a proton, neutron or Mormon: the act of observing cannot be separated from the outcome of the observation. By asking Mitt Romney how he feels about an issue, you unavoidably affect how he feels about it. More precisely, Mitt Romney will feel every possible way about an issue until the moment he is asked about it, at which point the many feelings decohere into the single answer most likely to please the asker.
Noncausality. The Romney campaign often violates, and even reverses, the law of cause and effect. For example, ordinarily the cause of getting the most votes leads to the effect of being considered the most electable candidate. But in the case of Mitt Romney, the cause of being considered the most electable candidate actually produces the effect of getting the most votes.
Duality. Many conservatives believe the existence of Mitt Romney allows for the possibility of the spontaneous creation of an “anti-Romney” (Fig. 2) that leaps into existence and annihilates Mitt Romney. (However, the science behind this is somewhat suspect, as it is financed by Rick Santorum, for whom science itself is suspect.)
What does all this bode for the general election? By this point it won’t surprise you to learn the answer is, “We don’t know.” Because according to the latest theories, the “Mitt Romney” who seems poised to be the Republican nominee is but one of countless Mitt Romneys, each occupying his own cosmos, each supporting a different platform, each being compared to a different beloved children’s toy but all of them equally real, all of them equally valid and all of them running for president at the same time, in their own alternative Romnealities, somewhere in the vast Romniverse.
And all of them losing to Barack Obama.
David Javerbaum [ ] is the author of “The Last Testament: A Memoir by God [ ].”
© 2012 The New York Times Company (emphasis in original)
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/04/01/opinion/sunday/a-quantum-theory-of-mitt-romney.html
===
Romney declines to discuss religion on eve of Wisconsin primary polls show he’s favored to win
By Associated Press, April 2, 2012
AP GREEN BAY, Wis. — Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney faced a tough question about his Mormon faith while campaigning for Tuesday’s Wisconsin primary.
A Ron Paul supporter, 28-year-old Bret Hatch, asked Romney whether he agreed with a passage from the Book of Mormon that describes a cursing of people with a “skin of blackness.” Romney’s staff took away the microphone before the Green Bay man could read the passage.
“I’m sorry, we’re just not going to have a discussion about religion in my view, but if you have a question I’ll be happy to answer your question,” Romney said Monday.
Hatch then asked whether Romney thought it was a sin for interracial couples to have children.
“No. Next question,” Romney responded curtly.
Hatch was citing verses from Nephi in the Book of Mormon which describes a cursing of people with a “skin of blackness.”
The verse is often cited by critics who accuse the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints of racism and consider Mormon teachings heretical. Some Mormons may also have heard the verses in their community as an explanation of why men of African descent had been banned from the church’s priesthood until 1978.
Church leaders have said that interpretation is inaccurate. The church recently issued a statement from its offices in Utah denouncing racism and warning against what it called speculation about the origins of the prohibition.
“For a time in the church there was a restriction on the priesthood for male members of African descent,” the church said. “It is not known precisely why, how, or when this restriction began in the church but what is clear is that it ended decades ago.”
Romney often talks about the decade he spent as a volunteer Mormon pastor in the Boston area before becoming governor of Massachusetts.
Not long after Hatch’s question, Romney reflected upon that experience.
“This gentleman wanted to talk about the doctrines of my religion. I’ll talk about the practices of my faith,” Romney said, noting that his service as a pastor helped him connect with people on “a very personal basis.”
“Most Americans, by the way, are carrying a burden of some kind. We don’t see it. We see someone on the street, they smile and say hello, but behind them they’re carrying kind of a bag of rocks,” Romney said. “I want to help people. I want to lighten that burden.”
AP Religion Writer Rachel Zoll contributed to this report.
Copyright 2012 The Associated Press
http://www.washingtonpost.com/national/on-faith/romney-declines-to-discuss-religion-on-eve-of-wisconsin-primary-polls-show-hes-favored-to-win/2012/04/02/gIQAPyyHrS_story.html [with comments]
===
'Mad Men' George Romney Swipe Incites Tweets From Grandson Tagg
Mitt Romney with campaign poster for his father, George, in Spartanburg, SC, January 2012.
Charles Dharapak/AP
by: Neal Carruth
April 2, 2012
Was Mad Men [ http://www.amctv.com/shows/mad-men ] weighing in on Election 2012 from the year 1966?
That's the question many are asking today after last night's episode of the Emmy Award-winning advertising-world drama on AMC.
Henry Francis (played by Christopher Stanley), a supporting character, has advised both New York's Republican Governor Nelson Rockefeller and New York City Mayor John Lindsay, both men moderate Republicans
In one scene [ http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iRlOiVyowrE ], we hear Francis say over the phone, "Well, tell Jim His Honor's not going to Michigan." After a beat, he adds: "Because Romney's a clown and I don't want him standing next to him."
Obviously Francis wasn't talking about Mitt Romney, but rather George Romney, the moderate Republican governor of Michigan from 1963 to 1969.
The stock-in-trade of Mad Men has been crafting winking, knowing parallels between 1960s America and the contemporary United States.
Everything from office relationships to smoking during pregnancy is slyly contrasted with today's standards.
Last night's episode, called "Tea Leaves [ http://www.amctv.com/shows/mad-men/episodes/season-5/tea-leaves ]," was directed by Mad Men star Jon Hamm and written by Erin Levy and Matthew Weiner, who's the show's creator.
Weiner told Bill Maher on HBO's Real Time this past Friday that he's a Democrat.
One can only speculate about what message the writers may have been trying to send about George Romney's son Mitt.
But given Henry Francis's association with moderate Republicans like Rockefeller and Lindsay, it would stand to reason that Henry's politics would be in line with the politics of George Romney. Romney was regarded as a progressive on civil rights, like Rockefeller and Lindsay. And Romney opposed his party's nomination of Barry Goldwater in 1964.
Mitt Romney's son Tagg responded to the episode today in a pair of Tweets. In the first [ https://twitter.com/#!/tromney/status/186825937315315712 ], he said, "Seriously, lib media mocking my dead grandpa?" And in the second [ https://twitter.com/#!/tromney/status/186827455863062528 ], "George Romney was as good a man I've ever known. Inspirational leader, worked for civil rights, promoted freedom. We need more like him."
The elder Romney who, like his son Mitt also ran for president, died in 1995 at age 88.
Copyright 2012 National Public Radio
===
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Greensburg, KS - 5/4/07
"Eternal vigilance is the price of Liberty."
from John Philpot Curran, Speech
upon the Right of Election, 1790
F6
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