Why is it that every time Mitt Romney or a member of his family tries to tell a personal anecdote it’s always a freaking disaster. The unflappable Mitt knew exactly what to do when the family dog strapped on the roof of his car lost his bowels all over the back window. The fun-loving Mitt tripped his daughter-in-law rather than lose a race to her. And this latest one is just unbelievable. Let’s reconstruct it.
It’s either Christmastime 2009 or 2010, Mitt can’t remember which. Someone sticks a flier in the Romney family mailbox down in San Diego. It’s an invitation to a neighborhood Christmas Party. The Romneys read the flier but they had no intention of attending the party until they noticed a gathering of people practically across the street. “Well, now, if it’s not such a long walk, why don’t we pop in after all, Ann?”
So, off the Romneys go to attend the neighborhood Christmas Party. They show up, but it turns out that it isn’t the neighborhood Christmas Party and they haven’t been invited.
“Turns out, this wasn’t the neighborhood party. This was a family having a party with their friends,” Romney said as his audience laughed. “We were a little embarrassed but they treated us well nonetheless and I got to meet some really interesting people.”
Who knows how long it took them to figure out that they were party-crashers? At least they probably didn’t drink their beer.
So, what did Romney do while he was at this party? Apparently, he walked around introducing himself to everyone three or four times, as if once would not have sufficed. Here’s how the friend of one guest told the story.
“He said it was very comical,” [Glen Doherty friend Elf] Ellefsen said, “Mitt Romney approached him ultimately four times, using this private gathering as a political venture to further his image. He kept introducing himself as Mitt Romney, a political figure. The same introduction, the same opening line. Glen believed it to be very insincere and stale.” […]
“He said it was pathetic and comical to have the same person come up to you within only a half hour, have this person reintroduce himself to you, having absolutely no idea whatsoever that he just did this 20 minutes ago, and did not even recognize Glen’s face.”
Maybe Romney was drinking their beer.
Of course, the only reason any of this came up is because Glen Doherty is one of the four Americans who died recently in Benghazi, Libya. Mitt Romney realized that he had met this man at the Christmas Party and decided to talk about how shaken he was to learn of his death. Mr. Doherty’s mother isn’t impressed:
“I don’t trust Romney. He shouldn’t make my son’s death part of his political agenda. It’s wrong to use these brave young men, who wanted freedom for all, to degrade Obama,” said Barbara Doherty, Glen’s mother.
It not clear how Romney could remember that he’d met Mr. Doherty two or three years ago when, on the night of their meeting, he couldn’t remember meeting him twenty minutes later, or twenty minutes after that, or twenty minutes after that.
This is not a normal person. A normal person doesn’t strap his dog to the top of his car and hit the interstate. A normal person doesn’t insult people’s raincoats and turn up their nose at their cookies. A normal person doesn’t dress in a police officer’s uniform and impersonate a cop. A normal person doesn’t crash his neighbor’s Christmas party and introduce himself to everyone four times before realizing he wasn’t invited.
Damn. I just posted this comment under the previous post, when it would be so much better here.
Meet The Roomney, the anecdote-collecting robot.
Mitt Romney, Sociopath.
What I want to see in the upcoming prez debate is Obama forcing him to refute a statement he has made which he denies that is clearly on videotape. There should be any number of examples. Have the campaign send the tape to every news outlet after the debate and show him to be a liar and fool.
What a fucking joke Mitt Romney is. And a complete dick on top of that. He’s the kind of politician that makes other politicians look bad, and that’s about the lowest bar there is.
This man is supposed to be a credible candidate for the Presidency of the United States? Please. Dubya is competent, dignified statesman compared to him.
I wouldn’t dignify Mitt with the label politician. His lack of political skills is cringe-inducing. He wouldn’t be a politician at all if he didn’t have a pile of money and the surname Romney.
No, he undeniable does have some political skills. He’s an excellent fundraiser. He’s great at lying, or at least lying without any shame. He seems to have an infinite capacity for public humiliation. And he’s very handsome – to a certain sector of the country he looks just like a President “should”. Central Casting circa 1956 couldn’t have done a better job.
He also beat Rick Perry, Rick Santorum, Michelle Bachmann, and the rest of the Seven Dwarves. He’s actually a far better politician than all of them.
But he’s also the Larry David (or Louis C.K., if you prefer) of American politics. He offends everyone he meets or who hears him, without fail. Except that Larry and Louie are at least decent guys trying to do the right thing. That’s what makes them lovable.
There’s nothing lovable about Romney. He’s worthy only of contempt.
I contend that there is no way that Romney remembered meeting this guy at all. I bet Romney doesn’t even remember the party itself. I bet An probably does. Some where along the line why gathering oppo research on the Benghazi attack for FP or attack ads or for stump talk, someone notified Mittens that hey, didn’t ya’ll live in this area or someone who does know the deceased, but who’s obviously NOT his mother or his best friend notified the campaign that, hey, ya’ll know this guy. And rather than first getting the permission of the family before name-dropping a family’s slain loved one, they just figured hey, let’s add it into our usual and go on our merry way.
It’s no surprised it came back to bite him in the ass.
That’s why he’s so hard to humanize. Lord knows he’s had his wife and kids and the entire republican party working on that for the last six months, yet he’s still stuck somewhere down around 49%.
That droid just ain’t put together right.
He should be somewhere around 25% with the other wingnuts.
Why isn’t he?
Not to get too terribly quantitative about this, I only meant to suggest something less than halfway-to-human.
In other words, a long way to go.
If you check the chart at that referenced Atlantic article, you will see that “humanoid robot” shows up right about the 50% mark.
Note further that “stuffed annimals” appear as more human by another 10% or so.
Gotta love it.
Because he’s still standing….
McCain got 46.5% of the vote even with the country falling down an elevator shaft, and running with a cartoon character as a VP pick.
Romney’s going to do worse?
Because apparently in a two person race and on a national basis 45% of voters would choose an incoherent, drooling, white Republican over any Democrat.
I have been saying he is not normal all along. He is missing a basic human element of sensing and empathizing with others.
Makes him perfectly built to be a corporate raider but perfectly wrong as a nations leader.
Like I said above, a Sociopath.
Yep. An inability to empathize – he actually thought everyone would find the story about his dog funny and humanizing – combined with an outsized sense of entitlement.
Romney is the sum total of his parts, and no part of him is worth anything.
His image has gone from just bland to incredibly brash, vain, and selfish. The more people talk about him, the less they like him, and even those who have known him a long time don’t particularly like him. He’s socially retarded, and we cannot have a president who can’t be gracious, kind and still stand firm with foreign leaders. He’s a horse’s ass.
If voters can’t or won’t admit that, we are in a world of hurt.
Brutal.
If forced to choose one or the other, I think I’d choose George W Bush over the current Republican nominee for President. Eight years ago, I would have thought that was virtually impossible.
OfA out with new ad
The Real Mitt Romney
http://youtu.be/St6QMIMzYGQ
Obama Internal Polls Still Show Leads in Swing States
Whatever possessed his campaign team to clear this anecdote for inclusion on the stump? Or was it more of Ann & sons taking control of the old man’s campaign?
This sound as plausible as Hillary’s story about dodging sniper fire:
Have to wonder if his script included the instruction to choke up before revealing who this man was. Did he think that just because this man is dead that nobody could contradict his tale?
As I have said before, Mitt is a monster. I was ready even to deny him any hint of humanity for his actions as a young bully with that pair of scissors, then being unable to recall his horrific act. Mitt is a combination of everything I have ever really loathed about truly bad people, people with no soul. No surprise he actually protested for the war after dodging the draft with his convenient missionary trip to France. No real surprise about any of this. Obama has not been beating Mitt, Mitt has been beating Mitt and there is no reason for it to stop now.
I am surprised so many people, especially women, are willing to give him a pass just because Obama took a nap during the first debate.
He’s white. He looks like all the other presidents — a guy who wears suits and makes president-noises — except maybe Johnson, and that was long ago. There’s an -R after his name. So there’s a floor under his vote-share, and that floor’s going to hold up a lot of women, as well as men.
A huge gender gap had opened up in Obama’s favor prior to that debate I think because of the Republican attacks on women’s issues. I could see no reason what so ever for that gender gap to close as a result of that debate. I actually thought Romney being such a lying dick would widen that gap. It went the other way to my surprise.
Why do women stay with and even get attracted to men who abuse them? That’s what women who vote R are like. “It’s my fault.” “I shouldn’t have upset him.” “He says he loves me.”
At the risk of sexism, I suppose deep down women respect strength. The lying interrupting crude rude Romney displayed strength and resolve. The withdrawn servile Obama hanging his head like a chastised schoolboy displayed weakness and lack of resolve. Women choose the strong abuser over the weak loser, even if they have more sympathy for him.
I think you may have something there but not for just women. What we’re really talking about is a very strong and disturbing desire for an authoritarian leader. You’re right, Obama hanging his head like a chastised schoolboy did the trick. Just today when Obama was asked if he had handed the election to Romney during that debate he gave a loud definitive NO. Ask if he was going to win the elections, in same the same tone he gave a resounding YES. Maybe he does have this, I certainly hope so.
I think you are reasoning from a false premise. Everything suggests that Romney’s post-debate bounce came almost entirely from rallying his dispirited base. There was no movement even among independents. According to one of the most respected polling-analysts:
“Two bits of evidence suggest that Romney’s post-debate gains have come from inspiring partisan voters, as opposed to flipping nonpartisans. First, according to a recent PPP poll in Wisconsin, gains have come in the form of an increased enthusiasm among Republican voters – but not among independents. Second, the RAND survey, which tracks individual sentiment, does not show a massive wave of one-way mind-changing, which is what occurred after the Democratic convention.”
http://election.princeton.edu/2012/10/08/romney-inspires-the-faithful/
My first reaction to the debate was that Obama had deliberately let Romney run his mouth, laying a trap to attack him later, especially considering all the bold face lies and reversal on every conservative issue Romney had articulated. That hope was dashed as now Obama says he just had a bad night. The polls began to shift, as your link suggests, too large for a post debate bounce including extrapolating to a Romney landslide by election day. I also hope and think this is a shallow bounce already starting to level off but it still makes me nervous.
I do wonder about other factors. Was the bounce due to Obama’s performance allowing Romney to paint him as the Republicans have tried to do from the beginning, as weak, in over his head. Or was it Romney’s sudden shift to a moderate position, not really a moderate position but still sounding like it appealing to these voters. I tend to think it was the former if this is due to energizing partisan voters. Will the conservative base make him walk back even more positions as they have already done on abortion allowing Obama to not only paint him as a flip-flopper but as the serial liar he really is? Coupled with the future things Romney will surely say that will sink him, I really hope Obama and Biden can reverse the momentum of this race.
My first reaction was related to yours – Obama was obviously tired, but also letting Romney stack up 38 minutes of lies for the record and I still think that, though he’s tiredness and looking down worked against him. Not sure what the story is with the polls,
I think Bill Clinton got it right. As “Moderate Mitt” got up before 70 million Americans and lied his ass off to “close the deal” that “Severe Conservative Mitt” had been laying out for the last two years: “if I’d been the President, I might have said, “well, I hate to get in the way of this.”
The fact that Obama was tired no doubt made him all the more reluctant to try to “get in the way of this”.
Jason Easley has a good take:
“Bill Clinton has the Romney strategy perfectly diagnosed. Romney is going to spend the next month being all things to all people. He is going to say anything. Yesterday, moderate Mitt became pro-choice. Later his campaign walked back his remarks on abortion a couple of hours after he made them.
” . . . . This is an intentional strategy on the part of the Romney campaign to muddy the perception of their candidate. I suspect that the Obama campaign will be prepared for the two Romneys, and I would be looking for President Obama to draw the distinction between moderate Mitt and severe conservative Mitt.
“The gentle lighthearted tone Bill Clinton demonstrated is probably the best course in dealing with a perpetual avoider of the truth like Romney.
” . . . . if [Obama] can untangle Romney’s web of lies without seeming heavy handed or getting caught up in trying to debunk a rapid fire quagmire of falsehoods, he could have a great deal of success at the next debate.
“The trump card for Obama is that people like and trust him more than Romney. If the president uses this to his advantage, he will have a very good night.
” . . . . Bill Clinton showed Obama how to address Romney’s serial lies, without getting tangled up in them.
“The Obama campaign now realizes that this election is all about Mitt Romney, and their effectiveness in dealing with Romney’s compulsive lying may determine the outcome of this contest.”
http://www.politicususa.com/bill-clinton-hammers-romney-warns-voters-fooled-lies.html
The very next day after the debate while still in Denver, Obama was having fun talking about how this other guy showed up at the debate who knew nothing of the positions Mitt had ran on for the past two years. Obama was clearly having fun with this. That actually was my first conformation this could a trap, even if it was one Mitt had laid for himself. It may still be a trap, even if unintentional. Al Sharpton pointed this out the night of the debate.
So back to the character issue of this post. If you corner a weasel, they will just lie. This is a universal truth that cuts across all ideological lines. All Obama has to do is mock him, laugh at him, ridicule his multiple positions with no need to be repetitive because this ground is fertile. This could be way more damaging than the 47% truth fest Mitt was caught it. I wonder if Mitt will lose it. Pass the popcorn.
On one level that’s a bad thing, because we want to take down the entire Republican Party. If Romney loses, he might be a successful sacrifice for the GOP.
Don’t worry. The two things are sufficiently connected.
True.
A MAJOR part of the action was the Chicken Little Liberals like Chris Mathews and the rest of the lefty punditry (kudos to AngryBlackLady for not falling into the pit of flaming hair).
Hair on fire, sky is falling and Fox News lapping it up and sending it world wide. THAT’s what changed the meme from poor Romney to Obama’s losing it.
Thanks a lot guys.
The only voice of reason on the MSNBC pundit stage that night was Al Sharpton pointing out how Romney’s lies would come back to haunt him. Chris Mathews was worse than he had ever been since commenting on Al Gore or his man crush on George Bush’s cod moment on that aircraft carrier. What an idiot but what else is new? Ed Shultz was a close second. I think Ed Shultz is actually a bit embarrassed by his performance because later he says maybe we needed to cut Obama some slack. Chris on the other hand will never admit his error to just say dryly, I have a different job to do. Yes indeed. Both of these people just lowered themselves into the bucket of ignored radical talk radio personalities. Having said that, the real problem was Obama’s performance and he knows it.
“Al Sharpton pointing out how Romney’s lies would come back to haunt him.”
He ought to know.
My theory–electing a black President was a counsel born of desperation, when the country was plummeting down an elevator shaft, we’d try anything.
Now, though, extreme measures like that are less necessary, and we can begin to return to normal white.
The Christmas party story is truly bizarre. That is so weird. How could they make a mistake like that?
My anecdote about Obama: met him twice, he remembered my name the second time I met him…without introducing myself.
Got your letter a couple of days ago. Thanks much.
That’s pretty amazing that Obama can do that. I can’t repeat the name of someone I’ve just been introduced to.
I’ve always been good with names myself. When I was substitute teaching at elementary schools, I remembered every kid’s name by the end of the day. On report card day at the end of the day when I handed them out, one girl was like, “How do you know our names already?” Heh.
You’re welcome! If my background check goes through, expect more.
I can’t repeat the name of someone I’ve just been introduced to.
I’m the same way, and I worked for 2-1/2 years as a substitute teacher in a large public school system.
It’s so much fun to try to keep control of a classroom when you can’t call anyone by name.
I find people’s names to be the least interesting thing about them.
Not consciously. I hate hate hate that I can’t remember names. It’s just how I am and I can’t shake it. When I meet someone, I take in all kinds of information about them, but my brain just doesn’t give a shit what they are called.
I wish it were not so.
I can remember all the names at a party. All the dog names, that is. It gets embarrasing when you talk to the person 40 minutes later and all you can say is “so, Kelso’s person? What do you do when your not partying?”
Heh. Change “party” to “barn” and “dog” to “horse” and I’m right there with you.
A bit of a tangent here:
An old coworker of mine’s cat had not come home, so she went through the neighboorhood looking for it. She asked a neighbor she’d never talked to before, “Have you seen my cat?” and started to describe it, and the neighbor answered, “Oh, you mean Nike?” I laughed. The cat managed to become well known despite her introverted people.
I’m hoping that the new management team will “let Romney be Romney.” That should do it.