Lord and Lady Romney meet the press
Lord and Lady Romney meet the press
The GOP nominee immerses David Gregory in a lukewarm bath of platitudes, a couple of lies and a splash of news
BY JOAN WALSH
With a “Juntos con Romney” placard placed strategically behind him, the presidential candidate currently attracting 26 percent support from Latinos told David Gregory he’s fighting for “the middle class that have been crushed under this president.” But he stumbled when asked if he ever spent time with the unemployed, telling Gregory “Well– actually– just– last night it was. I was with– a person who is facing some challenges.” He was then unable to describe those challenges.
In an interview widely derided for a shortage of follow-up questions, Gregory actually got Romney to make some news. Romney told Gregory he “likes parts of” Obamacare, and that he would leave in place the prohibition against excluding people with pre-existing conditions and the policy that lets young adults stay on their parents’ insurance policies “up to whatever age they might like,” Romney said, rather unbelievably. “I say we’re going to replace Obamacare. And I’m replacing it with my own plan. And even in Massachusetts when I was governor, our plan there deals with pre-existing conditions and with young people.” Ann Coulter has not yet called Romney a “moron” as she did his spokeswoman Andrea Saul when Saul likewise praised Romneycare.
Other than that, Romney’s half-hour with Gregory was like sitting in still-warm reused bathwater, with a film of half-truths and a couple of outright lies in the tub too. Ann Romney was present for the first half, mostly looking on worshipfully. The first spouse to accompany her presidential candidate hubby to “Meet the Press,” she wasn’t much of a factor, though she pushed back against claims that even after her convention speech proclaimed “I love you women!” people aren’t feeling much empathy from her or her husband.
Romney deserves credit for admitting that, despite her convention stories of using an ironing board as a dining room table and eating a lot of tuna and pasta as a young married couple, “our struggles have not been financial.” She pointed to her battle with multiple sclerosis as an example of hard times for her family. Yet her Lady Romney persona emerged anyway, when she called it “ridiculous” that people say she and her husband don’t have empathy for those who struggle. Again, it helps to show empathy, not merely tell voters you have it, and dismissing your critics as “ridiculous” didn’t soften her edge. She also complained that her husband has been “demonized” by his opponents, but didn’t comment on a GOP campaign that’s depicted the president as a Muslim socialist with Kenyan anti-colonial values who “doesn’t understand America,” or even her own husband’s brazenly false claim that Obama got rid of the work requirement for welfare to “shore up his base.” Sorry, Ann, the world’s tiniest violin is playing a sad song for you somewhere, but not at my house.
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http://www.salon.com/2012/09/09/lord_and_lady_romney_meet_the_press/
= new reply since forum marked as read
"double flush". Only the scabman could have done it better.