BY JOEL J. OROSZ

In the early 1990s, I was privileged to work for several years with Mitt Romney’s father, the late George Romney, when I was a grantmaker at the W.K. Kellogg Foundation, and George Romney was one of the Kellogg Foundation’s grantees. He was a man of integrity; when he sought the Republican nomination in 1968, he lost to Richard Nixon because he wouldn’t compromise his principles (he was for civil rights and against the war in Vietnam). Whatever the cost, George Romey went toe-to-toe against bullies and always did the right thing.

Willard Romney (Mitt’s real first name, by the way), I am told, idolizes his late father. Too bad he utterly lacks his late father’s integrity. When Tea Party extremists overthrew the rational leadership of the Republican party in 2010, he didn’t stand up to fight their fanaticism as George Romney would have; instead, he folded like a cheap suit.

Earlier this year, when a homophobic televangelist outed one of Mitt’s foreign policy advisors who was gay (a lynching offense in today’s intolerant Republican Party), Mitt Romney didn’t have the decency or the courage to defend a friend and employee who had served him well — so a respected, capable, and honorable public servant was forced to resign with Mitt’ Romney's knife sticking out of his back. Do you think that a cowardly lion like Mitt will have what it takes to go eyeball-to-eyeball with the dictators of China and Russia when he quakes in his boots before a hate-spewing, second-string TV preacher? Do you think that a Romney administration will be anything but a government of the radical rich, by the radical rich, for the radical rich, who have bought him by picking up the obscenely expensive tab for his campaign?

It was particularly nauseating to hear Mitt Romney begging for contributions from a group of hate-filled high rollers by calling 47 percent of America’s citizens freeloaders and moochers. Most of these good people pay taxes, and those who don’t were downsized from decent jobs into poverty by vulture capitalists (Texas republican Governor Rick Perry’s term), like Mitt Romney himself. Mitt Romney has flip-flopped on everything he once believed in — health care for every American, a woman’s right to choose, civil rights for immigrants, human rights for gays — to beg for the support of the unholy alliance of far-right fanatics and bigoted billionaires that has turned today’s Republicans from the Grand Old Party into the Greedy Old Party. Mitt Romney says that we shouldn’t attack his financial success. Fine.

Let’s attack the way his spinelessness has betrayed his father’s legacy. Let’s attack his lack of courage. Let’s attack his slippery character. Let’s attack his eagerness to harm the helpless people George Romney dedicated his life’s work to protecting. Let’s all agree that Willard Mitt Romney is morally unfit to be the President of the United States.

Joel J. Orosz is a distinguished professor of philanthropic studies at the Johnson Center for Philanthropy at Grand Valley State University in Grand Rapids. He is a resident of Kalamazoo.