Mitt Romney’s endless string of campaign gaffes suggests that he has a staff problem.
Is there no one among Romney’s aides who has the job of making sure the candidate doesn’t strike the wrong note with the wrong crowd? Does no one caution him to avoid extemporaneous remarks that might play into the stereotype that he’s an insensitive rich guy?
These questions arise from situations like THIS:
Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney on Wednesday told a story about his father closing a factory in Michigan that he said tickled his funny bone.
Speaking to thousands of Wisconsin voters during a tele-town hall, the former Massachusetts governor recalled what he described as a “humorous” anecdote that left some Michigan workers without jobs…
“One of [the] most humorous I think relates to my father,” Romney remarked. “You may remember my father, George Romney, was president of an automobile company called American Motors. … They had a factory in Michigan, and they had a factory in Kenosha, Wisconsin, and another one in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. And as the president of the company he decided to close the factory in Michigan and move all the production to Wisconsin.”
“Now later he decided to run for governor of Michigan and so you can imagine that having closed the factory and moved all the production to Wisconsin was a very sensitive issue to him, for his campaign,” he continued, explaining that his father later participated in a parade where a high school band only knew how to play Wisconsin’s fight song.
“Every time they would start playing ‘On Wisconsin, On Wisconsin,’ my dad’s political people would jump up and down and try to get them to stop, because they didn’t want people in Michigan to be reminded that my dad had moved production to Wisconsin,” Romney chuckled.
