Joe Klein: “I fear that I went too easy on Mitt Romney with regard to his high school bullying escapades. It’s not the incident itself that troubles me — though it was, obviously, outrageous and disgraceful — so much as his current response: He doesn’t remember it. This is patent nonsense. How could he not remember it? Obviously, he remembers it or he wouldn’t have been so quick to issue his blanket apology yesterday for any and all hurt he may have caused at Cranbrook. And this transparent fudge once again raises questions about his character.”
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Andrew Sullivan: “I do not believe Romney has no memory of this. I believe he is lying. His absurd statement that he has no memory of the event but that he didn’t target the boy for being gay is hilarious for its self-contradiction. A boy who routinely snickered ‘Atta girl!’ when one young gay kid in his class spoke up is not just bashing hippies. I went to an all boys high school in the 1970s. What Romney did was a gay-bashing.”
I think it is going to become so acceptable as conventional wisdom that Romney is a liar, and Romney will continue to tell the most outrageous and pathological lies over the next five months, that President Obama will actually be forced to call him a liar to his face during the debates.
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First Read: “But this story exposed a bigger problem for Romney. The first thing anyone running for office has to do is own their own narrative; they need to define themselves before the other side does it for them. And the bigger issue here is that the story brings to light how Romney – despite running for president for five years – is still not completely defined; his narrative is still being formed. The question of, ‘Who is Mitt Romney,’ is still out there. Just because you have high name ID, doesn’t mean people know who you are. It’s the great mistake that John Kerry made in 2004. When you first start running as a presidential candidate, you’re usually a two-dimensional figure. By the general election, you’re 3D; you’re fully formed. Romney’s STILL not yet fully formed despite fact that he’s run for president for so long. The story’s a reminder of how easily others are trying to fill in the blanks. Which begs the question: why is Romney still not fully-formed in the minds of the public?”
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Bloomberg reports that almost two-thirds of private-sector job growth in the past five decades came with Democrats in the White House.
“The BGOV Barometer shows that since Democrat John F. Kennedy took office in January 1961, non-government payrolls in the U.S. swelled by almost 42 million jobs under Democrats, compared with 24 million for Republican presidents… Democrats hold the edge though they occupied the Oval Office for 23 years since Kennedy’s inauguration, compared with 28 for the Republicans.”
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