Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney's oldest son Tagg Romney visited Boston College Monday night to address students and recruit volunteers for the Students for Mitt program. This program encourages students to get involved in Romney's presidential campaign through fundraising and offers incentives for their efforts. Students are awarded 10 percent of whatever they make, as long as they make over $1,000. The motivation behind the program is to get otherwise apathetic young people involved in political activity; and so far it seems to have worked. Tagg said that he knew specifically of one young man who has raised over $100,000 so far for Romney's campaign. Tagg's visit to BC was one of at least two visits on the night, the next stop being Harvard University. The crowd was predominantly Republican, and the event was sponsored by the College Republicans and The Observer. At around 6:30 p.m. - when the event was slated to begin - a few pizzas were brought in and Romney's campaign video started. After watching around five to 10 minutes of the video, Tagg addressed the students by saying, "Well that was cheesy wasn't it? The first time I saw that video I started laughing." The video painted Romney as an American savior, as having a Midas-like touch when it came to resolving scandals, corruptions, and especially huge budget deficits. The first example the video gave was his role in reviving Bain & Co., the financial consultancy firm that he brought back from near bankruptcy. The second example was the Salt Lake City Olympics, which became plagued with corruption and scandal in the late 1990s. Romney reclaimed the tainted games by erasing more than $379 million in budget deficits, not to mention his work in mobilizing thousands of security personnel for the games after Sept. 11. Thirdly, Romney - as Massachusetts's governor - stimulated the state's sluggish Massachusetts economy with a $3 billion deficit in 2003 by balancing the budget and leaving it with a $700 million budget surplus in 2006. The rhetoric of salvation is very attractive to voters around the country, liberal and conservative alike, after six years of war and vexing debates over terrorism, immigration, and universal health care in the United States. The gathering reflected the public's discontent over the way the Bush administration has handled corruption and scandals over the past years, and Romney aims to feed off this discontent by "cutting out the mountains of waste." Tagg added another story, one that seems to epitomize his father's place among the Republican candidacy. One of the former governor's business partners called him one day in 1996 and said that his 14-year-old daughter had gone missing. Tagg said that while others would normally just offer their sympathy and say they would help if they were needed, his father acted differently. Mitt shut down his office at Bain Capital for a week and took all 60 of his employees to New York City, where they rented out a hotel suite and turned it into a "war room". He then split the city up into sixty quadrants and assigned each employee one quadrant to look for the missing girl. The girl was found three days later. Tagg said on Tuesday night that his father "saved" Bain & Co., he "saved" the Olympics, and he "saved" Massachusetts. And Romney's campaign commercial says he "can't wait to get his hands on Washington". It's statements like this that appeal to BC students, who see Romney as the republic candidate who can bring a breath of fresh air to Washington.
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