So Mitt Romney fired accepted the forced resignation of an openly gay member of his foreign policy staff. Yes, it was almost two weeks ago, eons in the collective memory, but its recollection bleeds into "This Week in Gay Marriage", in which Obama is yanked out of the closet even as his protagonist pushes past him and forces his way in.
Oh yeah, Mitt also bullied a gay kid when he was in high school.
Reading that story almost makes strapping an Irish Setter to the roof of your car for a ride to Canada sound like a normal thing, doesn't it?
At least the Log Cabins are unswayed. So he hasn't lost the entirety of another voting bloc. But let's back away from the snark for just a moment.
There's a whole lot of excuse-making on the Right in the wake of these developments. "Everybody gets/got bullied in high school", "I was a bully; I got bullied; it's just a part of growing up, a right of passage'. I believe most of us know better than that today. Just as many of us know better than to vote for civil rights discrimination as codified into the state constitution. But mentioning gay anything lathers up the Christian conservatives so badly that they leap out of the pews and mob their e-mail accounts, or the phones, threatening to do the same thing at the polls. So the GOP knuckles under.
As for Mitt, he's left with "Can't we just talk about the economy, please?"
Hey, they're YOUR base, buddy. You get 'em in line.
Update: Cenk Uygur had a more expansive report on this topic last night: "(W)hat looks like a lifelong pattern of Mitt Romney’s mean-spirited behavior, from allegations of bullying a prep school peer, taunting a blind English teacher, hazing classmates at Stanford and, later, pressuring a pregnant woman whom he counseled not to have an abortion, even if it risked her life."
So the record shows it's a lot more than just bullying gay kids or family pets. I doubt Mitt is going to be able to talk much about the economy for the next few days.
Oh yeah, Mitt also bullied a gay kid when he was in high school.
Reading that story almost makes strapping an Irish Setter to the roof of your car for a ride to Canada sound like a normal thing, doesn't it?
At least the Log Cabins are unswayed. So he hasn't lost the entirety of another voting bloc. But let's back away from the snark for just a moment.
This story is resonant because one can, all too easily, see Romney walking away even now, or simply failing to connect, to grasp hurt. How he talks about this incident will be impossible to divorce from how he talks about same-sex marriage in the wake of President Obama’s announcement, and about questions of basic dignity for gay and lesbian Americans. But unless he deals with it soundly, it will also be present as people wonder about his compassion for anyone not as well situated and cosseted as he has always been. Who else might he walk away from? Until now, the campaign has talked about his fondness for pranks as a way to humanize him; his wife called him wild and crazy. Is this what they think that means?
There's a whole lot of excuse-making on the Right in the wake of these developments. "Everybody gets/got bullied in high school", "I was a bully; I got bullied; it's just a part of growing up, a right of passage'. I believe most of us know better than that today. Just as many of us know better than to vote for civil rights discrimination as codified into the state constitution. But mentioning gay anything lathers up the Christian conservatives so badly that they leap out of the pews and mob their e-mail accounts, or the phones, threatening to do the same thing at the polls. So the GOP knuckles under.
As for Mitt, he's left with "Can't we just talk about the economy, please?"
Hey, they're YOUR base, buddy. You get 'em in line.
Update: Cenk Uygur had a more expansive report on this topic last night: "(W)hat looks like a lifelong pattern of Mitt Romney’s mean-spirited behavior, from allegations of bullying a prep school peer, taunting a blind English teacher, hazing classmates at Stanford and, later, pressuring a pregnant woman whom he counseled not to have an abortion, even if it risked her life."
So the record shows it's a lot more than just bullying gay kids or family pets. I doubt Mitt is going to be able to talk much about the economy for the next few days.
