The Democrats have put up a new ad focusing on presumptive nominee Mitt Romney’s embracing the support of the country’s most famous birther, Donald Trump. The Team Obama ad contrasts Romney’s response with the response of Arizona Sen. John McCain in 2008:
MSNBC’s First Read poses these questions:
*** Playing the Trump card: Here’s a little thought exercise: What if a chief Obama surrogate/fundraiser happened to be the nation’s foremost critic of the Mormon faith, who argued that it was nothing more than a cult? Or what if the Obama campaign was holding a fundraising contest with a celebrity who believed that 9/11 was an inside job? Or even if Obama held a joint fundraiser with Bill Maher? It’s hard to differentiate those hypotheticals from Mitt Romney’s association with Donald Trump, who in recent days has said that hitting Obama with Jeremiah Wright is fair game and that there are still doubts about Obama’s place of birth. The Romney-Trump association tonight includes a fundraiser with “The Donald,” as well as an upcoming fundraising dinner contest with him. Why hang out with someone — multiple times — who could overshadow you, for all the wrong reasons? Could you imagine John McCain or George W. Bush doing something similar?
Actually, you can’t. It’s because they had backbone.
Increasingly, Romney most resembles this:
UPDATE: There is a lot of blog reaction to Romney refusing to distance himself from Trump HERE. I disagree with those who say it doesn’t matter. It’s going to chance off some independent voters who are turned off by the birther narrative — and not because of politics but because of the mentality it reflects and says about those who don’t repudiate it. Romney may raise some money by wooing Trump and in his choice of words basically legitimizing him; Trump will start grabbing some headlines since that’s what he does, Romney will be asked to respond and it’ll distract from Romney’s economic message.
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.