Romney's conformity problem

Daniel Luzer notes that Romney's bullying behavior back in boarding school matters, not just because he's an asshole and always has been, but because of what it says about Romeny's world view.

But Mitt Romney’s bullying matters. It’s not that he’s was making fun of the (apparently) gay student for being kind of wimpy. This, unfortunately, is a fairly common behavior among high school students (Romney apparently did that also, mocking one effeminate student with “atta girl,” whenever he spoke up in class). No, this is troublesome because of the reason why Romney assaulted the student. According to the Post article:

John Lauber, a soft-spoken new student one year behind Romney, was perpetually teased for his nonconformity and presumed homosexuality. Now he was walking around the all-boys school with bleached-blond hair that draped over one eye, and Romney wasn’t having it.

“He can’t look like that. That’s wrong. Just look at him!” an incensed Romney told Matthew Friedemann, his close friend in the Stevens Hall dorm, according to Friedemann’s recollection. Mitt, the teenage son of Michigan Gov. George Romney, kept complaining about Lauber’s look, Friedemann recalled.

A few days later, Friedemann entered Stevens Hall off the school’s collegiate quad to find Romney marching out of his own room ahead of a prep school posse shouting about their plan to cut Lauber’s hair. Friedemann followed them to a nearby room where they came upon Lauber, tackled him and pinned him to the ground. As Lauber, his eyes filling with tears, screamed for help, Romney repeatedly clipped his hair with a pair of scissors.

Right, around the same time college students were burning draft cards and taking LSD, when young people began to experiment with marijuana and premarital sex, Romney was worried about unconventional hair.

Conform! young Mitt demands. I will not have that creative, alternative hair in my line of sight. Obey the rules and be normal.

Indeed, conformity is what drives Romney's entire "Fight for the America We Love" campaign.  He can't articulate a coherent foreign policy, his economic arguments make no sense, and he can't really say why he wants to be president.  But he never tires of returning America to some hazy past, before men wore their hair over their eyes and before someone named "Obama" could be president.