Last updated on February 8th, 2013 at 12:42 am
This was day one of Mitt Romney’s “I’m ready to be President” tour.
Never before have we seen a candidate embarrass America so quickly. Yesterday, the British said Romney was worse than Sarah Palin. It was so bad that the hashtag #RomneyShambles was trending in the number one spot on Twitter for most of the day yesterday, on a day when the Olympics would have taken the air out of any minor gaffes. The Sun labeled Romney “Mitt the Twit”.
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The winner of 9 Olympic Gold medals said of Romney, “Seriously, some Americans just shouldn’t leave the country.”
Watch the Democrats “#RomneyShambles”:
Taking quotes from the papers and leading conservative politicians like Prime Minister David Cameron and London Mayor Boris Johnson, the video eviscerates Romney.
“Mitt Romney is perhaps the only politician who could start a trip that was supposed to be a charm offensive by being utterly devoid of charm and mildly offensive.”
The Mayor at Hyde Park, “There’s a guy called Mitt Romney, he wants to know, are we ready? Are we ready?”
The crowd yells back, “Yes we are!”
The Prime Minister suggested that Romney might not understand what it’s like to prepare for the Olympics in a major international city like London, because it’s not the same as organizing the Olympics in the middle of nowhere.
But it wasn’t just politicians who came for Romney.
Former U.S. track and field star Carl Lewis, winner of 9 Gold medals, told the Telegraph, “Every Olympics is ready, I don’t care whatever he (Romney) said. I swear, sometimes I think some Americans shouldn’t leave the country. Are you kidding me, stay home if you don’t know what to say.”
“Stay home if you don’t know what to say.”
I’m sure the Democrats are wishing they had gotten that little sound bite on #RomneyShambles, but there’s always tomorrow.
This could be just a really, really bad day for the Romney campaign, but coming as it does on the heels of Romney already angering the Australian Foreign Minister by misquoting him in order to criticize President Obama by proxy, it’s starting to look like a trend.
And unfortunately for Mitt Romney, he waded his gaffe prone self into the land of a real press, where they weren’t afraid to write on day one that Romney’s campaign’s comments about President Obama not appreciating the “Anglo-Saxon” heritage of Britain would be seen as racist. Our press is still pretending they don’t hear the dog whistles in “foreign” and “doesn’t see America as great”.
In America, when politicians say outrageous things, our press reports them devoid of judgment. Our press doesn’t factcheck either side, they just report what the politicians said. This is why Republicans keep up their 40 year “liberal press” whine – it keeps the press at bay.
In addition, our press has been infiltrated by a large conservative activism organization that provides “news” to papers for free without disclosing their funding or bias, and they make sure to tamp down normal reaction to some of the more egregious things said by Republican candidates. It’s ironic, but the truth is that our press is conservative, not liberal — literally, written by conservative activists and passed off as unbiased reporting. And that’s the news that makes it past the already existing corporate interests of our “news” outlets.
Mitt Romney got spanked hard yesterday by politicians and famous athletes alike. He got a dose of an unfettered by corporate interests press, and it wasn’t the easy ride he’s grown accustomed to on American soil. In just one day, Romney proved that he could bring America’s standing in the world back down to Bush levels (or even lower).
“Some Americans should just stay home if they don’t know what to say,” isn’t exactly a ringing endorsement for a man auditioning to be leader of the free world.
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