Mitt Romney's Character Problem »
“If Romney loses, Republicans and the political right will act as if Romney was something that happened to them, when the truth is that Romney is something the Republicans did to themselves. Romney is the final outcome of a party that subjects its prospective nominees to one increasingly unhinged litmus test after another, that will not abide anyone who would accept a single dollar of raised tax revenue for ten dollars of spending cuts, anyone who would acknowledge that deporting twelve million Latinos is impractical if not wrong, anyone who would recognize that the weather has gotten just a bit peculiar lately if not freakish, anyone who would condemn the furor over the president’s birthplace as racist at its sanest and insane at its insanest, anyone who would concede that God really might have taken longer than seven days to create the world. A Jeb Bush—the closest thing to a slam-dunk candidate that the GOP could have nominated this year—declined to offer himself not only because of his last name but because he didn’t want to run that gauntlet, and may never want to. The first test of character, and the one that counts most, is taking responsibility not only for what one says and does, but who and what one is.”