Despite all the computation, Mitt says a lot of dumb stuff (h/t lamh):
For his embarrassing partial quote of the day, Mitt Romney ended a speech in Detroit with an apparent attempt to reach out to the car-making community there, saying, “I actually love this state. This feels good being back in Michigan … I like the fact that most of the cars I see are Detroit-made automobiles. I drove a Mustang and a Chevy pickup truck. Ann drives a couple of Cadillacs, actually.”
Reporters have immediately jumped on the latter half of the comment as another example of Romney appearing “tone deaf” when making oblique references to his wealth among voters. (Think “I like being able to fire people” or “corporations are people, my friend.”) “Politically, I don’t there’s anything wrong with mentioning your wife drives a Cadillac. But it’s a little riskier if you mention she drives ‘a couple,'” writes The Hill’s Christian Heinze. “For the love of Pete,” tweets Politico’s Ben White. “… It would be better for that campaign if he didn’t speak.” “PROBLEM” adds Politico’s Dylan Byers. But let’s all take a step back. It could have been worse! Something like, “Ann used to drive two Cadillacs but that was years before we hired her a private driver.” Still, expect to hear the political hay over this little flap for at least a news cycle or ten.
Can you imagine how fucked Obama would have been if he’d said Michelle drove a couple of Cadillacs?
4thelulz
“Driving Ms. Romney”
Violet
Of course she would have bought her Cadillacs, along with her t-bones, with soshulist welfare giveaways of hard-working Murkin’s money. And she’d have strapping young bucks riding around in said Cadillacs. Totally different.
feebog
No see, we have one Caddy at the 6 million dollar home in La Jolla, and keep antoher at the lakeside chalet in New Hampshire. At our places in Utah and Boston, she just drives a Mercedes.
Glenn'syank13
At least he was able to close in on the number of cars. McCain is still looking into how many houses he has.
MeDrewNotYou
And those Cadillacs driven by the fictional first lady? Paid for by taxpayers! Also too, I don’t want to cause any alarm, but I’ve got it on good authority that Barack Obama has had t-bone steaks courtesy of your hard earned tax dollars!
MeDrewNotYou
@Violet: Beaten by a hair. Damn today’s crappy connection!
schrodinger's cat
She drives Cadillacs? how boring, in my mind they are such Grandma cars. I bet they are comfortable though. Who likes Cadillacs?
Violet
Seems like when Romney is in front of a microphone, at least 50% of the time he sticks his foot in his mouth. Totally unforced errors. How did this happen today? Didn’t he have a teleprompter? Wasn’t this speech screened and pre-approved? And if so, who the hell approved that anecdote?
cathyx
I think this is a huge gaffe. A couple of Cadillacs. Even the wealthy people I know have only one car for themselves. It’s an expensive one, but it is only one.
mistermix
That whole event was a complete failure. It was a scripted event where Mitt went off script in front of a few hundred people in a stadium that seats over 60,000. Mitt is a completely incompetent political disaster who’s hired a team of losers.
Billy Beane
Yea, the double standard is the real sad part. If Obama was even the slightest bit ‘Chicago thuggish’, or ‘uppity’, or ‘ghetto’ or whatever then all that horseshit they say about him would stick like glue.
Romney says it just about every day and it’s good for the late night monologues for a day or two and that’s about it.
Violet
@MeDrewNotYou:
Great minds. Plus, just how predictable are wingnuts that everyone knows what they’ll say before they say it?
cathyx
@schrodinger’s cat: She is a grandma.
Villago Delenda Est
“Actually, Ann loans out the Cadillacs to the Hispanic gardeners. She drives a Bentley down to the Kroger.”
schrodinger's cat
@Violet: I think all wingnuts from Bobo to the loon at RedState must get a memo in the morning from Frank Luntz about the talking points of the day. Since they all seem to regurgitate the same points again and again.
schrodinger's cat
@cathyx: I guess it is OK then!
Martin
@schrodinger’s cat: Well, that’s changed quite a bit. I don’t really consider a 550 HP, 0-60 under 4 seconds vehicle to be a grandma car. Cadillac really has changed quite a bit as they’ve gone after the Viågra crowd.
But I don’t see the problem with ‘a couple of Cadillacs’. Everyone knows the Romneys have at least two homes, so one at each house isn’t surprising, and you can pick up Caddies for under $40K new. Not cheap, but we’re not talking about a ‘couple of Bentleys’ here.
Amir Khalid
Romney’s a TRANSPARENT PHONY. He’ll never win.
Toleja so, toleja so, toleja so.
/m_c
schrodinger's cat
@Martin: Ok since I am shallow, I was basing my opinion on how they look. I have never understood the fascination for Cadillacs, that’s all.
chrismealy
Pretty sure Obama used to drive a gold Cadillac 300.
Brachiator
Does any reporter ever ask any actual voters what they think of Mitten’s gaffes? We need something more than reportage from the media echo chamber.
schrodinger's cat
@Amir Khalid: More spelling mistakes and weird acronyms needed, cudlip.
ruemara
I have it on good authority that Michelle O is too fat from eating caviar, lobster and waygu beef steaks while slacking on the taxpayer’s dime on vacation-to even fit behind the wheel of a cadillac. Must be true, because I saw it, nearly verbatim, on Facebook. I’m not sure why so many of my friends have teabagger friends, but that is a key meme.
Frankensteinbeck
@Amir Khalid:
The relentless, single-minded racism gets to even the most patient of us after awhile, doesn’t it?
DougJarvus Green-Ellis
@Brachiator:
I wrote about this because I’ve wanted to use that post title since forever.
schrodinger's cat
@chrismealy: I guess politicians have to drive American cars to prove how patriotic they are, so why not a Ford Focus or some other econobus.
pragmatism
if obama said that, there would be a cloud of cheeto dust from the winger bloggers racing to put together a sentence containing the words “black”, “cadillac”, “only” and “pimp”.
bemused
Mitt is a misfit. It may have a lot to do with living all his life in a bubble, wealthy and Mormon but I think that just reinforced his personality. He’s got some misfiring synapses.
Jager
@schrodinger’s cat: I doubt if she drives CTS Vs.
John Walters
Well, it’d be worse if Michelle Obama had a Cadillac. After all, it’s the official vehicle of the Welfare Queen.
earl in CA
nice velvet underground reference in the title. mittens will never be saved by rock-n-roll.
Violet
@Martin:
Of course if they’ve got more than one home they might keep a car at each location if the homes aren’t driving distance from their primary residence. It’s not the actual practicality of it. It’s the image it continues to cement in voters’ minds.
Most people don’t have more than one home. Most people don’t own more than one car. That’s a luxury that’s out of the budget of the average person. Romney just continues to remind people he’s not just rich, he’s verrrry rich. Way richer than you can imagine. And his life is so different from yours you can’t even begin to guess the ways. And the end result of that kind of thing makes voters think he can’t relate to their problems and issues. Which he probably can’t.
Tonal Crow
@mistermix:
He’s hired Mark Penn and Bob Shrum?
Gin & Tonic
@schrodinger’s cat: Because the Ford Focus is built by Turks in Germany.
4thelulz
@Amir Khalid: Needs more MORMON
Rick Taylor
To me this reminds me of the obsession with Al Gore supposedly self conscious and uncomfortable in his skin. It became a self-fulfilling prophecy, as he felt pressure to say things that sounded natural, and it felt more awkward. As soon as the pressure was off, it turned out he could be wonderfully authentic (I doubt the same will turn out to be true of Romney).
Also, it bothers me much more that Romney would engage in trying to scare the public with stories of Iran supplying nukes to Hamas members in Mexico who’d take them across the border to blow us up than that he says something insensitive about driving a Cadillac.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
Going by my wingnut friends driving any American made automobile is PROOF of socialism because American cars are made by union members. Apparently REAL Americans (white, male, Evangelical) drive Honda’s according to my wingnut friends.
Benjamin Franklin
I can’t believe no one, in 35 comments, mentions that Romney opposed the bailout and repeated that on Feb 16th. WTF?
articles.latimes.com/2012/feb/16/news/la-pn-mitt-romney-gm-bailout-20120216
Zak44
Not that I don’t enjoy teeing off on Romney and the rest of that sorry lot, but this comment isn’t really meant as a criticism, but a serious question
Romney describes himself as a “numbers guy” and was known as a master of the PowerPoint presentation. But even his supporters will acknowledge that he has a problem expressing emotion, let alone empathy, and always seems to be reading off a sheaf of note cards filed in his head. For someone who’s been in the public eye for decades, he remains curiously tone-deaf and prone to inappropriate comments.
Facility with numbers. Lack of affect. Difficulty connection with people. Taken together, does it make you wonder if Mitt doesn’t have a touch of Asperger’s?
Guster
@Violet: So this.
And Americans love our Rich Assholes. It’s just that Mitt’s doing it wrong.
Tonal Crow
@earl in CA:
…Now do you believe in rock-n-roll? Can lying save your electoral soul? And can you teach me how to pander reaaaaal slow?
Amir Khalid
When I was a kid, a family friend had a monster Caddy with the huge tailfins up on blocks outside his house. (It may have been the legendary ’59 Eldorado, but I don’t know enough about Cadillacs to be sure.) Anyway, that’s the car I picture the Grim Reaper driving.
PurpleGirl
@cathyx: They need one car per house, since their houses are so spread out across the country.
Sebastian Dangerfield
@DougJarvus Green-Ellis:
Well you know it ain’t gonna help me at all
Not one tiny bit
techno
Oh. I can think of how it could have been WAY worse. He could have said, “Ann used to drive Cadillacs but she was always complaining that they were in the shop all the time. So I bought her a Lexus to get her out of my hair.”
THAT could have started a riot in Michigan!
jl
I think Mitt’s attempts to communicate his big crush on Michigan sound a little desperate. Whether that is because Mitt really does not give a hoot about Michigan, or because of his awkwardness on any kind of genuince communication, I do not know.
His expertise on ‘square foot’ of car was odd.
But this couple o’ Cads gaffe is a big deal? Sounds like the Village has decided that Mitt’s theme will be that he says everything wrong, and everything, and nothing, will be forced through that meat grinder.
MarkJ
Despite all the computation, Mitt’s campaign’s close to ruination. And it’s all right.
Violet
I wonder if he was supposed to say something like “Ann has driven several Cadillacs over the years. She loves them.” That would make sense. Many people stick with a make of car they like when they get a new car (or new-to-them car). Instead he probably told the truth, that she’s got several cars, and bungled the whole thing.
schrodinger's cat
@MarkJ: May be he borrowed McMegan’s calculator for his computations.
Ed Drone
@Amir Khalid:
What auto model is the first one mentioned in the Bible?
..
..
..
..
..
A Plymouth Fury — from Genesis:
“And God in His Fury drove them from the garden.”
Ed
gex
The best part is if you try to use Cadillac as an example of a really nice car with young people these days, they don’t know what the hell you mean. I’ve started referencing Lexus instead.
Brachiator
@DougJarvus Green-Ellis:
Hah! Good title. But I would imagine that Mrs Romney would inspire a nod to Curtis Mayfield, driving a great big Cadillac Gangsta whitewalls TV antennas in the back.
@bemused:
Or is that a Mittfit?
Rita R.
@Rick Taylor:
I might actually be tempted to feel a little sorry for Romney over the media hits he takes over how stiff, unnatural and uncomfortable in his own skin he appears and how he just can’t seem to stop sticking his foot in his mouth, if not for that fact that his entire campaign is based on nonstop, wholesale lying about President Obama, his record and what he believes. So fuck him.
Svensker
@chrismealy:
With a diamond studded pocket for his Kools!
PaminBB
The prior sentence is kind of weird as well. He “drove” the Mustang and the truck. So now other people drive him around all the time? Or is he now driving something not made in Detroit? Or doesn’t he even know?
It has the same ring as McCain being unclear on how many houses he owns, but in addition makes Mitt seem incapable of normal conversation.
wrb
@PurpleGirl:
This is the real story. Ann only gets a car of her own when they are at two of the houses. At the others, he ties her to the roof.
pseudonymous in nc
@Gin & Tonic:
The North American models are built in Wayne, MI. (The Fiesta’s built in Mexico to reduce costs, because you can’t sell a Fiesta at European prices.)
bemused
@Brachiator:
Much better.
lamh35
Um, this is um…I’m kinda not sure how to react to this song.
Are ya’ll “BARACK’N IT”???
youtube.com/watch?v=LGggrCSCQDQ
Douj J I dare ya to find a post to use this as the title. Open Thread don’t count.
comrade scott's agenda of rage
@Amir Khalid:
Replace “Biscayne” for “Caddy” and you’ve described the trailer park I spent a couple of years in. And trailer parks across this grand and glorious country of ours!
ET
What would have happened is some freak would have made racist comments that were veiled (or not so veiled) and when called on it the press would have tried to soft pedal it and conservatives would have been all “don’t be so sensitive.”
Violet
@Amir Khalid:
When I was a kid, the dad of one of the kids at my school drove some old car with the massive tail fins. We used to call it the Batmobile. It was awesome.
Legalize
Jager
@Svensker: Come on, the President drove a CHRYSLER 300 before he bought the Hybrid Ford Escape he had when he was in the Senate. And here’s the scary part, the 300 was designed by a blackety black designer.
JoyceH
Let’s just settle down, people. Sure, Mrs. Romney drives a couple Cadillacs. But you have to remember, she only drives them one at a time.
gbear
I’d bet $10,000 that Romney doesn’t know how many cars he owns. He’s most likely driven everywhere he goes.
Keith
I still think his worst line of the week was the one about once upon a time (before all those dang Japanese cars came around), Mitt could name any car just by looking at a random square foot of said car. It had a breathtaking amount of pandering in just a relatively few words.
Marcellus Shale, Public Dick
what no one mentioned is the drop kits on the cadillacs mrs raw money has, and her tramp stamp that says “ridin low and slow 4 life”
Gin & Tonic
@pseudonymous in nc: From Ford’s press release announcing the “Mk3” Focus:
So yes, final assembly of the North American model may be in MI, but it’s a stretch to call it an American car.
MarkJ
@Ed Drone: The first car I remember is my parents’ forest green plymouth fury. I can distinctly recall slamming my fingers in the door as a child, and boy did that hurt.
MarkJ
@schrodinger’s cat: Or he has a permanent case of gastritis. Although if I had to guess at the gastro-intestinal ailment he suffers from I’d guess constipation.
gnomedad
Anything bad about an Obama is one email away from being Truth.
Eric S.
@schrodinger’s cat:
I’ve got a 2005 CTS-V. I love it although it has some shortcomings when compared to my previous car, a BMW. The Caddy is most definitely not a grandma car although I’ve had a hard time convincing my non-car-loving friends and family of it. At least until I give them a ride. The V means it has the engine and transmission out of a Corvette. Definitely not a green car but since I drive less than 5,000 miles per year I don’t feel too guilty.
EDIT: I see at least one other person has brought it up.
4thelulz
@Ed Drone: Scrolling down the Wikipedia article on the Fury dispels any doubt that the American car industry only has itself to blame for its ’70s decline.
PPOG Penguin
@Gin & Tonic: “Look, I can’t drive a car built by MOOSLIMS. I’m running for office, for Pete’s sake.”
jl
@lamh35:
” Are ya’ll “BARACK’N IT”??? ”
No, not really. I hated the video and the production, music might be OK, though.
Probably ‘Do the Romneytron’ would be more fun.
And I would like to see the ‘Rih Rumba’ or Santorum Samba’, but won’t see those, since they involve Satan dance sin sex bad bad bad immorality musics.
Legalize
@cathyx:
Exactly right. Older folks pride themselves on retiring and getting ONE nice Caddy (or at least they used to). It is the only car they have; and they have little else of flashy value.
But Mrs. Willard drives “a couple” of them.
This is why whenever Willard opens his mouth, even GOPers have to fight the urge to kick him in the shins.
Mnemosyne
@PurpleGirl:
Meh. My parents have a pretty good chunk of money in retirement and have become snowbirds (winters in Arizona, summers in Illinois). They always drove their cars cross-country between the two houses.
(I’m not sure what the plan is this year because my dad can’t do the drive anymore due to his poor health, but I think they’re flying and my brother is going to drive the car over. I’m 90 percent sure the plan is NOT to buy another car just for Illinois, but who knows?)
ETA: Also, too, one of their cars is a Cadillac, but my mom is a grandma of 9, so she can justify it. :-)
Benjamin Franklin
It used to be the only car you need. I had a ’65 with documented 500k on the odometer. Ran like a sewing machine.
Commenting at Balloon Juice Since 1937
Lucky for Romney, NOBODY heard the speech. Somebody thought it would be grand to have it in Ford Field and nobody came. Check out the pictures of the big empty stadium over at Wonkette.
Gwangung
@ET:
oh, come now…this is not much of a comment when it happens with unveiled racist comments and liberals have been “don’t be so sensitive”.
Mnemosyne
@Commenting at Balloon Juice Since 1937:
I really hate all of the talk about “optics” but, Jesus, that looked terrible. Didn’t the stadium have a slightly smaller space they could use?
Linnaeus
@MarkJ:
The Plymouth Fury’s name didn’t happen to be “Christine”, did it?
dedc79
If Obama said he or michelle drove cadillacs, the next day Fox news would have a headline along the lines of “Secret Muslim Symbol On Obama’s Cadillac?”
Violet
@Mnemosyne:
Apparently the place they were supposed to have it was too small because too many people wanted to attend. It would have been far better to have it there anyway, turn people away because of “high demand” and/or having standing room only attendance. Then any photos would have made it look like a huge crowd.
Romney’s team is just stupid.
Jay C
@Commenting at Balloon Juice Since 1937:
SRSLY – Gaffes about cars are pretty much what one expects from the RomneyTron 3000, but that photo says volumes: (?)400-500 people (including media) jammed into one end of that vast (empty) field? And no doubt the Romney campaign will be airing vids of it shot (only) from in the crowd so it will look like a Nuremberg Rally?
The only Cadillac the Obamas will have to deal with is the limo taking them to the Inauguration next January: it’ll be easy to spot: it will be the one flying the Presidential flag…
Mnemosyne
@Violet:
Apparently it was a fundraising event ($75 per person), so I can see why they wouldn’t turn people away given how desperately the campaign itself needs money, but it was still a really, really bad decision. No high school gyms were available?
jl
@dedc79: Tanks, I never noticed that secret symbol on the Cads because, well, Caddys are old person cars, and so who cares?
Sad to say, that means I should care in a few years.
I also notice a UN/World Gummint/New World Order aspect to it.
Yikes, more evidence for a terrifyingly vast world conspiracy. Even GM is involved, and has been, for over a century!
Elizabelle
@Rita R.:
Amen to your comment 53.
Surreal American
VICTORY!
/BJ troll.
Mnemosyne
This may be the flu delirium talking, but for some reason this scene keeps going through my head.
Death Panel Truck
@chrismealy: Nah.
Buick Electra. Deuce-and-a-Quarter.
(I had a ’62 model. Best car I ever owned.)
Violet
@Mnemosyne:
Or hotel ballrooms? The kind that can be partitioned to be larger or smaller, as needed. There are so many options for that kind of thing. Having it in the largest stadium around when the number of people that show up can’t even fill the chairs, let alone the stadium seats… that’s just stupid.
ThatLeftTurnInABQ
@Zak44:
He’s doomed then. Everybody who works in an office knows that PowerPoint jockeys are the spawn of Satan vomited forth from hell. Never mind Soccer Moms, he’s lost the Dilbert Dads.
MeDrewNotYou
@Violet: I’m wayyyy late in responding since I had to comment and run, but I think that with the BJ crowd a welfare queen joke is expected. We aren’t great minds because neither of us nailed it in the very first comment. I’ll settle for ‘pretty good minds,’ though. ;)
RSA
@Jager:
“The Romney campaign later said Ann Romney drives two Cadillac SRX’s (model years 2007 and 2010), one in California and one in Massachusetts.” (WP)
Jay C
@Jay C:
OK, my bad: TPM sez there were about “1200” folks at the Mittster’s Ford Field rally. Still, the braintrust who thought it would be a good idea to hold it in a 65,000-seat stadium really should be looking for other work…
PurpleGirl
@wrb: (Even if the thread is dead)… LOL. I love what you did with my comment, the perfect expansion.
TenguPhule
Two Republicans One Cup.
PPOG Penguin
Aaand… it turns out Ann’s “Detroit-made” Cadillacs aren’t made in Detroit after all: guardian.co.uk/world/2012/feb/24/santorum-romney-michigan-republican-live?newsfeed=true#block-15
KS in MA
Sure takes your mind off what’s being done to Michigan by its gov and legislature… Oh, wait– maybe that’s the point!
bondirotta
I can only imagine how much it annoys the Romneys to have to buy Cadillacs. Those are so vulgar – all the other quasi-billionaires drive Maybachs or Bentleys or Bugattis or Alfa Romeos. Or all of them.
But the endless presidential death march of Mitt has forced Ann to slum around in a tacky old Cadillac.
The upside here is that Mitt is now close to self-sabotaging himself out of the running permanently. In a few months, the marques in the Romney garages are going to start shifting in a very abrupt manner.
PurpleGirl
Does anybody know if the Romney’s still have a house in Michigan — either a condo apartment in Detroit or a lake-front cabin in the hinterlands or on Lake Michigan? After all he’s trying to tell us how much Michigan feels like home and he loves it so much… (And I don’t mean the extended clan.)
Keith G
Meh.
Talk about empty calories served up while trolling your own blog….
These two guys offer vastly different claims to public legitimacy. So such a statement would be evaluated with different criteria, like it or not.
That said, I doubt that there would be any significant chatter beyond a day or two from all but the most revved up usual suspects.
harlana
i saw the pics of Mitt “looking perfectly normal” and i agree, he looked perfectly normal, natural and relaxed. but come to think of it, he was with his family in all of those photos. he adores his family but can’t relate to anyone outside his “tribe” because that’s just the way Mormons roll.
Violet
@PurpleGirl:
GOS did a rundown of Mitt’s houses today. Nothing in Michigan, despite how much he loves those trees.
Citizen Alan
@bemused:
I’ve been having a vigorous “armchair psychiatrist” debate with a FB friend over Romney’s “I Like Trees” speech. My friend has concluded that Romney is a high-functioning Asperger’s case because concern for the proper height of trees is the sort of thing an Asperger’s sufferer would fixate on. I think he’s a compulsive liar and was put into a situation where he had to list things he “liked” about Michigan but was so terrified of offending someone who for whatever reason didn’t like something he listed that he just had a total meltdown. Consider the part where he said he loved “the Great Lakes” but immediately had to say that he also loved the smaller inland lakes. You know, just in case there was someone in the viewing audience who lived on an inland lake and was jealous of how much more attention the Great Lakes received.
earl in CA
@Citizen Alan: @Citizen Alan:
you’re right – your FB friend is wrong. take it from me – i run a company that works with autism and aspie kids day in day out. romney is not nearly as smart as most of the kids we work with. he’s a much better opportunist and the kids don’t have multi-million dollar bank accounts to fund their narcissism.
Quincy
I’m beginning to wonder if the media really will embrace Mitt. He’s so bad at the media relations part of running for president and to them, that’s the most (only?) important part. Politics is sport to them and Mitt is one of the worst in-game managers we’ve ever seen. They lose far more respect for him over something like the Ford field fiasco than they do when he panders about immigrant hating or Obama’s anti-american soshulist ways. They’ll certainly use Mitt and the race to pressure Obama to be serious and responsible about increased oil drilling and massive entitlement cutting, but they’ll never out-and-out support a candidate like Mitt who is so bad at playing the media games they care so desperately about.
Omnes Omnibus
@Citizen Alan: He simply has no ability to ad lib. He is stiff when he is on script, but he, at least, delivers the correct words. The moment he goes off script things go “dog on car” very quickly.
Jonny Scrum-half
DougJ — I generally really like your posts, but 2 of the last 3 have invoked the lazy conservative “just imagine how our side would be skewered if we did what the other side is doing” argument. It’s great as propaganda, because it’s impossible to disprove the imaginary bad things that would have happened in your hypothetical, but it doesn’t really prove anything except the absence of actual arguments justifying the statement.
Trentrunner
@Jonny Scrum-half: Hmm, just off the top of my head:
“…clinging to their guns and religion…”
“…God bless America? No, no, no! God DAMN America!”
“…What happened to Skip Gates has happened to African American men for decades, and so we have to look at why this seems to happen…”
Those were not imaginary fucking freakouts. Shit.
Benjamin Franklin
Indeed. Their strength is the power of focus. Romney has none.
chopper
@DougJarvus Green-Ellis:
it was all right.
Bruce S
This is part of a continuing series of “Can you imagine how fucked Obama would be if…(insert some shit some GOPer has done)?”
There is absolutely a double standard. It’s especially extreme in Obama’s case although he walks that tightrope very skillfully, but it actually also applies when you consider stuff like Mitt’s compulsive opportunistic turn-abouts vs. the caricature drawn of John Kerry.
Elie
@earl in CA:
Though it is prob unlikely that Romney is Asperger’s, there is definitely something wrong with his ability to relate and communicate that does not seem he is able to learn. Like a piano with a dead key, no matter what tune you play, something always comes up off tune… So whatever the reason, the guy “aint right”. In the lives most of us live, people who know and love him just say, well that’s Mitt and there is a normalization of his “deviance”. But in the high visibility realm of modern politics, his “peculiarities” jump out and his inability to ride with it and “settle in” to a self that can be accepted, highlights an exceptional problem for him — and the Republicans.
pluege
what could be stupider or more pathetic than a person raised as a rich kid, completely isolated from doing or accomplishing anything on their own, oblivious to the world around them, incapable of any self-awareness or cognition of experience beyond their manufactured stifled constipated bubble.
Ohio Mom
@earl in CA: Mom of a HFA teen here, and my autism-radar has never gone off for Romney. So I agree with you.
I’ll also agree with Elie, that something’s “ain’t right” with him. But then again, Romney did suceed in being elected governor. How’d he manage that? Have to admit I wasn’t paying attention to him back then…
pseudonymous in nc
@Gin & Tonic:
Which is not a bad thing, given that Ford’s been winning awards for its European models for a while. (One Ford is why Ford’s doing pretty decently.) My point was just that it’s not an import.
Can't Be Bothered
This shit doesn’t matter. God, political media coverage is abysmal. Jesus christ, fuck “gaffes” already. The persona and policies of romney are plenty shitty without this pettty, ridiculous, news-cycle driven BS.