Well said.

What they should be asking him is how his stance toward gay marriage uploads the equal rights for all fought for by MLK.

Nice post, Ezra. The way some have reacted, I thought his father was actually opposed to MLK.

Thanks for being the voice of reason on this one, Ezra.

Romney's only problem is that he dug in his heels a little too firmly over this. The question is, how does one best disarm the feeding franzy of a press trying to get excited about nothing? Give them nicknames and flick their ears, W-style? I have no idea.

There was this one time I was convinced that there was a face in a cloud looking down at me. I was very young, before kindergarten.

However, I am so impressed with Mitt Romney's defenders that from now on I will say that I have communicated with the people who live in clouds, especially when I run for President and am reading speeches which I've gone over carefully and re-read many times with other experts.

Why not?

Exactly! People are forgetting the central tenet of the Democrat Party - always bring a knife to a gun fight. Or something made of Nerf.

that's a good point and we should be careful when we jump to the defense of the media by suggesting a gaffe like this demonstrates a character flaw. the media was convinced Gore had a character flaw - that he was a liar - and anything he said that might have illuminated that became fair game. Romney has a character flaw - that he's a panderer - but it's enough to show that his positions change depending on what zip code he's in, or that he all but asked Tim Russert to tell him what to say that we don't need to make a fuss about an exaggeration of an event that happened when he was a child.

People are forgetting the central tenet of the Democrat Party - always bring a knife to a gun fight. Or something made of Nerf.

and i guess it's a tenet of the Republican party that elections are gunfights?

"and i guess it's a tenet of the Republican party that elections are gunfights?"

That is the problem, no isn't it? It is true that the country would be better off if the media focused on substance rather than trivia. So how is that working out?

It's a complete farce.

The candidate can't admit that he told a lie and the media can never bring themselves actually to accuse a candidate of telling a lie so we have to do this dance where the candidate comes up with increasingly bizarre explanations for his remarks and the media is overcome with schadenfreude as they watch the candidate try to wriggle their way out of a rhetorical cul-de-sac.

And all because nobody can't mention the "L" word.

I too think that Romney is objectionable but he should fail because his political manifesto is atrocious and quite wrong for the country. However, we can't have a serious debate about such things because that would require the media to do, you know, actual journalism. Instead, we have to put up with this nonsense which, while possibly salacious and amusing for the journos, leaves the voter absolutely no further forward in their electoral decision-making process.

I totally disagree. The question that was posed to Romney dealt with African-Americans not being allowed to become priests in the Mormon church. Russert asked Romney if he disagreed with the church position which changed in 1979 way way after Civil Rights, Voting Act, Brown etc had been passed. Romney deflected the question and brought up his father marching with Martin Luther King, his father walking out of the convention of 1964 because of Goldfather's position of Civil Rights and him crying on the side of the road when the church finally changed his doctrine. In the meantime, we're finding out two things. Most of what he said may not have been true and second HE DIDN'T answer the question. I could care less about Romney actually being there to see his dad march with King BUT I do care if Romney has the stuff to disagree with his church. We've seen catholics politicians disagree with chruch doctrine so there is a precendent. That's what the media should push Romney on because he himself has said he believes in the faith of his forefathers.

You have a point, in that the press might have been making too big a deal about it, but fibs like Romney's should not go uncorrected.

all true. . . unless it's part of a trend of lying.
http://www.typepad.com/t/trackback/2224950/24413142

http://andrewsullivan.theatlantic.com/the_daily_dish/2007/12/it-gets-better.html

Huh?

The issue isn't whether or not Mitt actually saw his father march with MLK.

The issue is that his father never marched with MLK.

when your enemy is drowning--throw him an anvil. Y'all can be as high minded as you want and tut-tut about the press haring off on "gotcha" stories instead of covering Mitt the way Al Gore deserved to be covered but *Al Gore will never get the coverage he deserved* and neither will any democrat *regardless* of how we urge the media to take the high ground when dealing with Republicans.

And you know, there is a *huge* difference between manufacturing stories about Al gore and accurately pointing out that for purely selfish, instrumental reasons, Mitt has (once again) faked his own personal history to make it more convenient for mitt the candidate. There's no shame in admitting that you were a conventional, suburban, white, elitist racist when it was convenient and you were young but that now that you need the votes you might have changed your mind. There *is* something wrong with blatantly using an assassinated hero's coat tails to imply that you and your family weren't comfortable middle class racists when that was what you were.

Mitt should not only be hounded, he should be sued by the MLK family for infringing their copywrite.

aimai

Update on my comment just a couple above:

The issue is also apparently that Mitt Romney never marched with MLK either.

And that claim was made almost three decades closer to the claimed march, which makes the memory excuse a lot weaker.

So when Romney said that he himself marched with MLK through Detroit, should we give him a pass?

George Romney evidently marched in Grosse Point, Michigan for open housing, days after Martin Luther King left the state. That would have taken courage. Something his son appears to have NONE of.

If Martin Luther King were marching today, Mitt would get together with his pollsters, conclude that his base hated King, found a way to viciously oppose him, and then trash Huckabee for being too soft on the protesters.

Mitt, you're no George Romney.

Uh oh -- I take back what I said. Matt Y has your ass on this.

Romney flat out lied about something he surely realized would be exposed as just that- a bald faced lie. He didn't care. With good reason, too, judging by the "no big dealers" willing to dismiss it as a meaningless exercise. The lie, of course, was designed stand in counterpoint to the racist dogma of the Mormon Church during the era in question.

"When your enemy is drowning, throw him an anvil". I like that one. Never heard it before, but I'll remember it.

I kinda agree with you Ezra, but I still think we should capitalize on any chance we get to destroy a Republican.

Other than that I would just like to note that Coretta Scott king was a staunch supporter of gay rights. I would like to see Romney asked about his gay rights position in this context.

What The Big Rodent said upthread a ways.

This strikes me as more like the stuff they nailed Biden on, during his Presidential run 20 years ago, than the stuff they tried to make stick to Gore.

I appreciate the logic underlying this post (though I think the comparison to Gore is overdrawn -- Gore's problems were almost entirely media-created.) However, I think it's silly -- I don't care how Romney gets beat. I don't care if he's unfairly branded a liar -- though from what I've seen he clearly lied. I want him beat, if not now then later in the General Election. (personally, I believe him to be the Most Dangerous Republican Nominee.)

This is why we get beat so much. You can't fight by the rules against opponents who have no scruples. If Romney were a Dem, he'd now and forever be branded an inveterate liar. So he should be. If he gets the nomination our Convention should highlight his "complete" lack of veracity -- maybe have everybody wear stickers shaped like pants on fire -- as in "liar, liar, pants on fire."

Alternatively, we can be serious and give our opponents credit where due and Ezra can spend another 8 years writing about how we need to move to universal healthcare -- in the Sweet By and By.

This is why we get beat so much. You can't fight by the rules against opponents who have no scruples.

I don't think this was the point of Ezra's post at all. I don't think he was saying: Well, this would really help the Democrats, but we shouldn't pounce on it because it would be unfair to Mitt.

Rather, I took him to be saying, essentially: we shouldn't encourage this kind of trivial nit-picking, because while we may like the results of it once in a while, in the end it hurts us more than it helps us.

A fundamental truth that even some smarter Republicans acknowledge: if the campaign is about policies, we win. If it's about personalities, maybe we win, maybe we don't.

If the press sees its job as a matter of pouncing on every slight misstatement, this is very bad for our side, because journalists and pundits, cowed by conservative attacks on the "liberal media," will be much more likely to find these "gaffes" coming out of the mouths of Democrats.

Totally agree with you here.

I disagree. The media hatchet-jobbed Gore for making an accurate statement about his role in passing Internet legislation. He didn't exaggerate and it wasn't a big deal in the first place. Romney is associating himself - via his parents, not anything he's done - with the legacy of MLK Jr. It's on an entirely different level.
As Derik pointed out, its not like it was an innocent blurb, he was using MLK to deflect criticism.

Much of Romney's media coverage is driven by their devotion to narrative but this doesn't even approach what they did to Kerry, let alone Gore!