Presumptive Republican Presidential nominee Mitt Romney is insisting his birther joke about Barack Obama was nothing. He was only having some fun and of course he believes Barack Obama was born in the United States. But it reflects a pattern. And it’s clear the words didn’t just happen, and Romney didn’t look so pleased after he said it and got a laugh because it just slipped out. There was a political intent: to show he was one with his audience (born in the U.S.) and raise the issue about whether Obama was not (Obama was).
Now the Democrats have responded with this 15 second ad posted you You Tube:
Romney’s comments may not significantly hurt his chances with swing voters but it adds to a very dank, increasingly strong, political aroma coming from his campaign that suggests it’s increasingly clear that a President Romney would not challenge and stand up to the demands of his party’s far right or even to its conspiracy theory wing that makes you think of this song.
Rather, he’d try to placate them, prove he’s one of them to keep his Republican support intact and more than ever the person who would be calling a lot of the political shots since his opinion would matter most would be Rush Limbaugh.
There are many things that could be said about Mitt Romney that can be debated but this is not:
He won’t be included in any redo of the book “Profiles in Courage.”
Rather, he is a political version of THIS.
And, I suspect, a chunk of independent voters will conclude as much on election day.
If they haven’t already concluded it.
h/T: Huffington Post
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Joe Gandelman is a former fulltime journalist who freelanced in India, Spain, Bangladesh and Cypress writing for publications such as the Christian Science Monitor and Newsweek. He also did radio reports from Madrid for NPR’s All Things Considered. He has worked on two U.S. newspapers and quit the news biz in 1990 to go into entertainment. He also has written for The Week and several online publications, did a column for Cagle Cartoons Syndicate and has appeared on CNN.