Man Up 

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“You wanna jump out of your seat and rush down to the debate stage and take a swing at him.” —Tagg Romney, describing his urge to slug President Obama during the second presidential debate

I wasn’t at all surprised when Mit(t)’s oldest boy got on the radio last week and started talking like a tough guy. For a long time now, Mit(t)’s No. 1 son has been itching for a fight—actually, a fake fight, since he has yet in his 42 years to so much as get a grass stain on his impeccably pressed chinos.

One might get the impression from Tagg’s remark about decking the president of the United States that his mom and the No. 2 son were holding him back, like a scene in some cheesy western where the cowardly drunk is growling, “Let me at him, I’ll show him who’s boss!” In reality, of course, the dutiful No. 1 son was sitting like a good boy next to his mom, wearing his usual deer-in-the-TV-lights expression, looking like a scaredy-cat version of George Stephanopoulos, for whom he’s often mistaken on the campaign trail.

Knowing Tagg as I do, the only way he would rush the stage and punch the president is if the rest of his brothers—Wham, Zap, Bam, Boink and Bluto—were pinning the president to the ground, much in the preferred Romney style, made famous by young Mit(t) at his prep school, when several of his fellow bullies immobilized a long-haired gay classmate while master Mit(t) snipped off the crybaby’s offending forelock.

It’s been sad for me to witness (I almost feel like an uncle to the boys) the devolution of Tagg from a tenderhearted sensitive young lad to the latter-day blustery bully he is today. It’s hard to pinpoint what set the No. 1 son on the road to bullyhood. But if I had to hazard a guess, I would point to the now-legendary family car trip, when the beloved Irish setter Seamus was tied to the top of the Romney station wagon for the 13-hour journey across the windy plains of Canada.

It was the “overly sensitive” Tagg who noticed liquefied s—t dripping down from the roof on to the back window in light-brown rivulets. The bowels of the unfortunate canine had let loose in terror as he surfed the wild Canadian winds. The crybaby No. 1 son somehow prevailed on master Mit(t) to pull over and rescue poor Seamus from the wind. Alas, Seamus was simply hosed off and hoisted back on top of the car. Father Romney’s exact words are lost to history, but his sentiments were reportedly similar to the ones he expressed with regard to the 47 percent of Americans who won’t take responsibility for their deadbeat lives.

“Seamus expects us to take care of him, and just because he plays the victim by shitting all over himself, and more importantly, all over my car, I can’t be bothered by him because nothing I say or do will make him buck up and be a real dog. As for you, Taggster, let this be a lesson. You can’t go through life as a whiny wuss. But, it is OK to be a whiny bully like me and browbeat people into giving you what you are entitled to, even if you’re not.”

From that moment on, according to close associates, Tagg adopted the Romney way, though it has been a struggle for him to be the manly man master Mit(t) wants him to be. Sometimes, late at night, Tagg will get wistful and open his heart to like-minded sensitive soul mates.

“You know,” Tagg will say, “sometimes I wish I wasn’t tagged with this macho Tagg moniker. Why couldn’t I, for instance, have been christened with a more sensitive name, something like Wally or Stanley or Norman. Heck, I would have been happy with Willard, which my dad thinks is the wimpiest name in the world. At least I’ll have a better name in the eternal world. As soon as I heard them intone my new secret name, I thought to myself, Floyd, yeah, I can live with that.”

Be that as it may, the Taggster, if his dad makes it to the White House, is destined to join the illustrious pantheon of embarrassing relatives of the president. I personally think he will easily outperform the doofus Roger Clinton, and, you never know, maybe he will someday be as beloved as Billy Carter.

D.P. Sorensen writes a satire column for City Weekly.