This is the remark Mitt Romney made today which reduces his level of seriousness as a presidential candidate down to that of Donald Trump:
Now, I love being home in this place where Ann and I were raised, where both of us were born. Ann was born in Henry Ford Hospital, I was born in Harper Hospital. No one has ever asked to see my birth certificate. They know that this is the place that we were born and raised.
The emphasis is mine, though logically, where else would it be?
But if no-one has ever asked to see his birth certificate, why in the world did he feel the need to release it when he did?
Cast your minds back about 3 months when the (self-proclaimed) great Donald Trump was doing all he could to help Willard M. Romoney's presidential campaign.
What this uniquely-coiffed "mogul" was able to do for Mr. Romoney was to give him his garish endorsement at one of the "fabulous" Trump properties in Las Vegas.
I know, CLASS!
What else "The Donald" (that title makes me want to throw up) could do for Mittney was to keep talking up the (non)issue of where president Obama was born.
Now that was some rather old, tired, and silly shtick from a rather old, tired and silly man.
But on that day, Willard M. Romoney decided to play along, and release his birth certificate. Why would he do that? Nobody ever asked for it (as he glibly pointed out today!) Why do you think?
Check out this excerpt from Mark Hosenball's Reuters article that day:
WASHINGTON | Tue May 29, 2012 7:30pm EDT
(Reuters) - Finally, there is definitive proof: The presidential candidate was born in the United States, and his father was not.
Yes, Republican Mitt Romney appears eligible to be president, according to a copy of Romney's birth certificate released to Reuters by his campaign. Willard Mitt Romney, the certificate says, was born in Detroit on March 12, 1947.
His mother, Lenore, was born in Utah and his father, former Michigan governor and one-time Republican presidential candidate George Romney, was born in Mexico.
So on a day when real estate and media mogul Donald Trump was trying to help Mitt Romney by stirring up a new round of questions about whether Democratic President Barack Obama was born in the United States...
And so despite Willard's protestations, his claim to be "just joking" and such, today was
not his first foray into
birtherism.
And just like today, Romoney's birth certificate release on that day, which
no-one asked for and which seemed completely irrelevant then, was in fact purposeful.
Just as he was trying to do today, Willard was trying then to distract, to change the subject from one which almost certainly cast him in a bad light.
And what was the subject then?
Why it was the release of 2 years of his taxes, which turned out to be the release of only a single year (2010), and some vague "estimations" for 2011.
And what we found out from that very limited (incomplete) release was bad enough for Mr. Romoney to want to try in his own lame way to deflect by attempting to place some negative attention on the president.
It was a fairly subtle and of course ineffective tactic. How could it have been otherwise?
And it may have gone unnoticed, but for the fact that Mitt Romney does not have the sense to stay away from the rabid craziness to be found in the Teapublican Party. So he quite foolishly said what he said today.
It's almost as if he wants to blow the dogwhistle, but doesn't have the sense to know what it looks like, so he instead blows the one everyone can hear.
Mitt Romney is a man who puts his foot in his mouth before shooting himself in that same foot.
He is not even remotely presidential material.