The Washington Post has a piece today on Mitt Romney's history as a teenage bully.
Mitt Romney’s prep school classmates recall pranks, but also troubling incidents
The center piece of this story is an event during his senior year of High School during which he (along with several other) assaulted a fellow student. According to multiple sources Romney was the leader of this assault.
“He can’t look like that. That’s wrong. Just look at him!” an incensed Romney told Matthew Friedemann, his close friend in the Stevens Hall dorm, according to Friedemann’s recollection. Mitt, the teenaged son of Michigan Gov. George Romney, kept complaining about Lauber’s look, Friedemann recalled.
A few days later, Friedemann entered Stevens Hall off the school’s collegiate quad to find Romney marching out of his own room ahead of a prep school posse shouting about their plan to cut Lauber’s hair. Friedemann followed them to a nearby room where they came upon Lauber, tackled him and pinned him to the ground. As Lauber, his eyes filling with tears, screamed for help, Romney repeatedly clipped his hair with a pair of scissors.
Normally I would say that an event almost 50 years ago would not have a last impact. But, given the timing and Romney's precarious position with the radical right, I can come to only one conclusion.
This is going to leave a mark.
Consider, Mitt has two choices. He can come out and say that what he did in '65 was wrong and the result of "youthful indiscretion, etc". Or he can remain silent and try and ignore it. The first will almost certainly infuriate the radical right (Bryan Fischer, thank you, seriously). The second will just further compound the image of Mitt as a cold, callous person with no empathy for others.