'Mittstorm': Romney plays race card

By Emily Theroux
"Romney isn't using birthers and bigotry against Obama. It just looks that way," wrote Will Saletan of Slate in "Pin the Tale on the Honky," his send-up of the Mittstorm-of-the-Week: the deplorable birther "joke" that Willard told last Friday during a Michigan campaign stop.

"No one has ever asked to see my birth certificate. They know that this is the place that we were born and raised,"  Mitt snarked, just before Twitter went wild with writers furiously typing "#futureMittjokes."

RNC propagandist-in-chief Reince Priebus has the unenviable job of following in Mitt's footsteps to scrape up whatever fresh heap of elephant dung the candidate deposits on the campaign trail each time he rolls out a new crock of "strategery."

"Have we really gotten to the point where we can't have any levity at all in politics?" Reince wheedled, in defense of the indefensible, on CNN's State of the Union.

His shaky premise didn't hold up to minimal scrutiny. Mitt's descent into the cesspool of birtherism was a calculated effort to turn the page on Todd Akin's "legitimate rape" imbroglio before it engulfed the GOP ticket. How better to put out a conflagration about women's reproductive rights than to change the subject to race, the third rail of American politics?

Asked by Candy Crowley during the same program whether he thought Romney's birther comment was "code" for "appealing to the white vote," Democratic Gov. Martin O'Malley of Maryland replied, "Look at the number of Republicans that have signed bills that make it harder to vote. When you have a party that ... makes totally false ads up saying the president is trying to undo welfare reform, I think you're going to see a lot of ... coded messages from the Romney-Ryan campaign that it (are) not in keeping with an America that is ... becoming more diverse."

Priebus tried again the next day on Morning Joe to shrug off Romney's deliberate dog whistle to white Obama haters — targeted by an opportunistic pol who's stooped to humoring bigots in order to reach a new strategic goal. In order to win in November, Romney must now capture at least 61 percent of the white vote — a figure that will not only be extremely difficult to attain, but which will only snag Mitt "a slim national majority" if Obama isn't able to improve on his 80 percent share of the 2008 minority vote.

'Tweety' eats Reince's Wheaties
When one of Joe Scarborough's panel members, Chris "Tweety" Matthews, artlessly chomped Reince's Wheaties over Romney's shameless racial pander (camouflaged though it was as a lighthearted comedic "Mitt Moment"), nobody there was laughing. Joe, Mika, Tom Brokaw, and the gang were clearly anxious as hell over how Tweety's outburst might look to viewers and critics. They kept trying to "shush" the garrulous Hardball host or, failing that, to succeed at talking louder than his rant.

Funny that the crowd in Michigan last Friday didn't laugh, either, as Lawrence O'Donnell of MSNBC pointed out. "They cheered," he observed, as if Mitt had made an important policy pronouncement. They applauded the new knowledge that Romney was willing to go there, to be on record as not merely the Republican who was running for president but the white man who was running to win back the White House for white voters.

Priebus muttered, "Garbage," under his breath at the end of the cable segment — to which Matthews countered, "It's your garbage." A headline for the right-wing site Townhall.com's story about the on-air tiff, however, read, "Chris Matthews Loses It, Calls Reince Priebus Garbage." Neither combatant had characterized the other person as "garbage," but only what he had said.

You can bet that the headline will go viral in the Nutbag-o-sphere, especially since blogger Katie Pavlich's "story" consists of one paragraph referring indignantly to what she believed to be unwarranted criticism of "Mitt Romney's joke about a birth certificate."

How low will Mitt go to attain his 61 percent goal?
Unfortunately, Mitt will find no easy path to cobbling together a national majority, after burning almost every bridge once open to him among black, Latino, and women voters. That, of course, all went up in smoke when he talked trash to the NAACP, excoriated the DREAM Act, and paid lip service to everything from passing a "fetal personhood" bill to shutting down Planned Parenthood. Now, Mitt needs to woo and win three out of every five white voters, and he's not polling anywhere near as well as Obama does (at nearly 60 percent) among the very "college-educated plus" white women who feel the most threatened by the Republican "war on women."

What Romney needs, therefore, is the stereotypical Republican: the white, older, working-class male seething with racial resentment, whom Mitt believes he can rely on to vote against his own economic interests rather than reelect the hated "Obummer" —

• despite the Romney/Ryan plan to raise his taxes so they can even further reduce the taxes of people so rich and greedy, they'll croak before they've even touched their principal, even as he dies a virtual pauper;
• despite their plan to turn Medicare into a voucher system that will start out costing him $6,300 more a year for health care than he pays now, and escalate in each successive year he's still alive;
• despite their plan to turn Medicaid into a block-grant program, so that when his wife needs nursing home care and he can't afford long-term care insurance, he has no way to pay for it.

Everybody knows that the "MittWit" has become so desperate to break away from President Obama in the polls that the only pathway to the presidency he can envision is appealing to the "basest, racist" instincts of the lowest common denominator. White male voters may not be wild about Mitt Romney, but they hate Barack Obama so much more than they love anything — even America — that they're willing to vote for literally anybody else.

Didn’t ‘You People’ get the retweet? We’re all ‘Anglo-Saxons’ now

Across the digital divide that polarizes online political adversaries into two camps — “libtards” and “wingnuts” — the Leftie cyber-rabble prowled the #Interweb, brandishing “twitchforks” and calling for Marie “Ann”-toinette’s head. The #TwitterRumble went down shortly after Ann Romney called all those pinkos “you people” on national TV.

On Twitter, clashing hashtags trended ever higher — among them, #MittHatesThisHashtag (because, e.g., “he can’t make it stop asking for his tax returns”) and #YouDidn’tBuildThat, a gag line favored heavily by @Reince, @GOP, and @NRCC, the last of which tweeted this zinger: “We didn’t build this tweet. Somebody else made that happen.” (No one said conservatives couldn’t ever be clever — as long as you remember to count out #WittlessMitt, whose brain has remained “severely scrambled” ever since Eric Fehrnstrom ran corrupted Al Green files from iTunes during Mitt’s last #Etch-a-Sketch erasure.)

I haven’t found a similar hashtag yet for Willard’s imperious wife — although #YouPeople think of everything, even #FreeStuff ! Here’s a good one — Dogs Against Romney @Grrr Romney: BREAKING: Dogs across America have volunteered to help Mitt Romney find his tax returns (photo). http://pic.twitter.com/jCKNeIMH #YouPeople aren’t #Anglo-Saxon.

Back to Lady Ann, who lost her patience in a very public forum over yet another request that #The Mittholder release more tax returns. At first, Ann played along when Good Morning America‘s Robin Roberts grilled her about money (which is so tacky!). The couple’s’ philanthropic donations, she conceded, consist of a modest 10 percent standard tithe to their church (chump change for the fabulously wealthy.) “Do you think that is the kind of person that is trying to hide things, or do things? No,” Ann asserted, as if someone who “gave back” so bounteously couldn’t possibly ponder a little #BarelyLegal tax avoidance, if not white-collar shenanigans, to make back his investment in the hereafter.

What Ann Romney said next dripped entitlement
Then Roberts pried just a tad too long, and Ann lost it. “We’ve given all you people need to know and understand about our financial situation and … how we live our life,” she snapped.

The Cybertubes lit up like a Roman candle over what virtually everyone heard her say. Like Ross Perot 20 years earlier, Ann Romney had apparently had the execrable taste to utter the words “you people” (the subject of a longtime movie meme, “What do you mean, ‘You People’?) — and even worse, she said it to an African-American TV anchor. (Whether her intended target was “you media people” or “you class warmongers” became grist for the late-night irony mill.)

Mrs. Romney stumbled a little over the tactless taunt, almost choking back the “you” part, but I, for one — along with Joan Walsh of Salon.com, several bloggers, and countless anonymous comment posters — definitely heard the “ooh” sound after the “y–.”

Even with the “you” left out, her statement dripped entitlement. She sounded snarky, put-upon, rude, and arrogant when saying her husband had disclosed quite enough, and nobody was getting a single page more. As of the latest count, at least 20 prominent conservatives and a National Review editorial begged to differ. All of them called for the very arrogant Romneys to release their tax returns for multiple years. “There’s no whining in politics,” said Republican strategist John Weaver. “Stop demanding an apology; release your tax returns.”

The cardinal rule of blog threads: ‘Never feed the trolls’
One extremely persistent “fib-flogger” spent the weekend haunting the Salon comments section, repeatedly posting some variation on the following theme: “Pardon me? This article is based on Joan Walsh’s claim that Ann Romney used the term ‘you people’ during an interview. ABC, the network that actually did the interview, reviewed the tape, and it’s (sic) verdict: ‘Our ruling after reviewing the original audio is that she did not include the you.’ And The New Yorker agrees. Joan Walsh was wrong. Joan Walsh should apologize. See how simple that is?”

I really did try to refrain from posting a reply, but it was a losing battle. I ended up storming the rhetorical Bastille with a rant that I’m hoping might have pleased my late father, a professor of symbolic logic and the philosophy of science:

I see how simple it is, and that’s the problem. Your argument is fallacious.

The flaw in your reasoning is that you continue to assert that ABC’s decree about what Ann Romney said was a matter of fact, not self-serving opinion, and that Joan Walsh was therefore wrong — even though ABC had neither the objectivity nor the omnipotence to make that stubborn little word, however badly it was enunciated, vanish into the ether.

Your implication that because the interview was hosted by ABC, their “verdict” must be correct, represents a “false attribution to a biased source.” Tacking on another media outlet’s opinion offers evidence that you are additionally making an “appeal to authority.” (If a big TV conglomerate and a glossy magazine say so, they must know better than we mere mortals do. That would make them the final arbiters of empirical truth — which is complete nonsense.) Opinions are like ***holes; everybody has one.

(FYI: Each time you repeat this post, you include, “And The New Yorker agrees.” It wasn’t The New Yorker; it was New York magazine. Please, before copying and pasting yet again, correct your template.)

No hiding Mama Romney’s ‘Leona Helmsley’ snobbery
Ann Romney’s attitude came across loud and clear, whether she said “you people” or, as New York magazine suggested, “(stumble) people” — which reminds me of Rick Santorum’s pathetic attempt to convince his critics that he really said “blah” people, not “black people,” the last time Republicans tried to backtrack when one of their anointed “misspoke.”

(This Old English term has, since the Watergate era, been appropriated by politicians caught making demonstrably false statements they soon live to regret — not because they didn’t mean whatever weasel words they used, but because all those people who are now howling in indignation about such “untruths” might actually have voted for these idiots, had they simply kept their lying mouths shut).

Mitt Romney is running for president, not Holy Roman Emperor; he has no “divine right” to unilaterally change the conventional rules about what information voters are entitled to see — at least not if he wants to win. If the Romneys have nothing to hide, then why have they remained so adamant about concealing their financial records from voters in every election since Mitt’s failed 1994 attempt to take down Teddy Kennedy?

Sorry to have to break it to you, Princess Ann, but if your husband wants to be president of all of the people, “how you live your life” is probably going to be more of an open book than a permanently sealed ledger of potentially dodgy financial dealings, stashed in the offshore bank vault where you both deposited what was left of your moral compass so many moons ago.

Crikey! Romney adviser makes racial ‘gaffe’ in London
This just in from across the pond: The Atlantic Wire, ThinkProgress, and Slate have reported that an unidentified Romney foreign policy adviser made an astonishing observation about his boss to Britain’s Daily Telegraph: “We are part of an Anglo-Saxon heritage, and he feels that ‘the special relationship’ is special. The White House didn’t fully appreciate the shared history we have.” So Mitt’s “special” — and frankly, #WeAreGobsmacked, as they say in the Old Dart.

The Telegraph warned readers that the adviser’s statement “may prompt accusations of racial insensitivity,” as this obvious diplomatic neophyte suggested that “Mr. Romney was better placed to understand the depth of ties between the two countries than Mr. Obama, whose father was from Africa.”

The Romney campaign’s reaction to The Telegraph’s story was categorical denial. “It’s not true,” declared Romney’s press secretary, Andrea Saul, in an email to CBSNews.com. “If anyone said that, they weren’t reflecting the views of Gov. Romney or anyone inside the campaign.”

As you might have expected, Saul “did not comment on what specifically was not true” — or whatever became of that hapless policy advisor, who must have come down with the equine epizootic from flying over in cargo with Ann Romney’s dancing horse. Hysterical at the thought of Rafalca having to tangle with Edward Gal, the gay dressage champion, the poor sucker didn’t know what he was saying. (Can’t say I’ve seen him around the Olympic stables lately, either.)

And the rest, comrades, is revisionist history!
One intolerant cretin who spoke his mind in the comments section of The Atlantic Wire story actually had the cojones to inquire: “Does the writer have no clue? Romney’s adviser was speaking of the long historic ties between the U.S. and the U.K. which Obama has downgraded. … What is racist is denying the fact that the U.S. was settled primarily by English followed by other Europeans who remain the overwhelming majority.” (I wouldn’t be so sure about that; 2040 and the demise of “majority-white ‘Amercia’ ” is just around the corner, if we can make it past 2012 without a second Civil War.)

Of course, Genius-Boy just couldn’t resist topping off his #ReverseRacist shout-out with: “The multiculturalists may want to change this fact by flooding these countries with Third World immigrants but that doesn’t change history.”

“You know what’s really clueless?” I asked him (rhetorically, of course, as I would hate to run into “his kind” some night in a dark alley). “Denying the fact that President Obama is also ‘part of an Anglo-Saxon heritage.’ The president is a 13th-generation direct descendant from genuine Mayflower Pilgrims, as Anglo-Saxon as someone with your prejudices might ever feel comfortable meeting — including his maternal ancestor, Deacon John Dunham of the Plymouth Bay Colony.

“Can Mitt Romney say that? Can you?”