Mitt Romney is so wrong for the Republican base on so many issues, he’s made a lot of enemies within his own party. Now that he’s running for president, each one of those enemies can find a national platform to slam the helmet-haired flip-flopper. But Romney has a solution: pay everyone to shut up.
In The Nation, Max Blumenthal writes that Romney has made large donations out of his personal fortune to the National Review Institute, the Federalist Society, and the Massachusetts Family Institute, which is a local affiliate of James Dobson’s Focus on the Family. Each of these entities disagree with Romney in principle, and said as much until they received $10,000+ from the candidate. Now they sing his praises.
Maybe this is how politics is practiced by the very wealthy. In the end, though, not even Romney has enough money to buy off everybody.
