The Republican is using a three-day Florida swing to make a direct emotional appeal to voters. He is for the first time speaking more candidly to voters about his good deeds on behalf of others, a trait he has stubbornly shied away from during the majority of this campaign even as Democrats have painted him as an unfeeling corporate raider.
Starting on Friday night, Romney devoted nearly one-third of his stump speech to telling three revealing and personal stories that have been related before by other Romney allies — his wife, his friends — but never by himself.
It’s a dramatic, and seemingly intentional shift for the Republican, who until now had avoided such personal sharing in favor of portraying himself as a competent economic manager.
Oh yeah nothing transparent about this!
Here look at how HARD Mittens worked in order to dredge up some emotion for the press to witness.
He recalled seeing a friend from graduate school, Billy Hulse, at an event in Atlanta a few weeks ago. After an accident paralyzed him, Hulse devoted himself to supporting medical research. The governor said that when he saw Hulse, he leaned into his friend’s wheel chair, put his arm on Hulse’s shoulder and whispered into his ear.
“I said, ‘Billy, I love ya and God bless ya’,” Romney said.
The sprawling crowd of 6,200 applauded. Some cheered.
Romney then added, “I got a call from a friend that he died the next day after that visit.”
The deflated crowd let out a collective moan: “Awwwww.”
“It’s rare that you get the chance to tell someone how much you love them while you still can,” Romney added softly.
This Romney, the man engaged in a sort of call-and-response with the audience, telling them personal stories about his hard-luck friends, is a far cry from the the stiff candidate who has often made awkward jokes on the stump or gotten off stilted lines such as “the trees are the right height” when describing his nostalgia for his home state of Michigan. He seems more comfortable on the stump.
“I thought back to a time a little earlier in my life when I was serving as the pastor of my congregation,” Romney continued.
Then he told the story of knowing a boy, David Oparowski, who became afflicted with leukemia at 14. David’s parents first told their story at the Republican National Convention in August, and Ann Romney has referenced it, but this is the first time Romney himself has related it.
“I spent time with David,” he said. “We became more and more friendly. I asked him what would he like more than anything else in the world. He said fireworks. So I bought some. We had a big box of fireworks and … lit them off.”
I'm sorry but if I had been telling these kinds of personal, heart wrenching stories in front of an audience, you would have had to mop me up afterwards. All that would be left of me would be a puddle of tears and a broken heart. Hell I almost choked up reading Romney's stories.
So how did Mitt respond?
Romney sounded as though was on the verge of choking up, but he didn’t.
Yeah, that's what I figured.
Look I'm not going to call the man a liar (Even though we have caught him lying NUMEROUS times.). but this is one of the most hackneyed and transparent manipulations that politicians ever use.
And in Romney's case I would be surprised if even his MOST aggressive supporters would buy into it.
This is how MOST people respond to Romney on an emotional level.
Never!
