Last week, Mitt Romney shot himself in the foot by answering a question about hunting. The guy who asked the question was tracked down by a Boston TV station. Here’s what he had to say, and it is brutal:
"Now I have some doubts."
"Flip-flop? Yeah, I see another John Kerry coming down the road."
"I think he may have shot himself in the foot."
Tags: Gaffe, Guns, New Hampshire, Romney
I’ve been a hunter pretty much all my life. I’ve never really shot anything terribly big. I used to hunt rabbits.
Monty Python’s Mosquito Hunter said:
I’ve been a hunter all my life.
Watch the vid:
Romney added: "Shooting a rabbit with a single-shot .22 is pretty hard, and after watching me try for a couple of weeks, (my cousins) said, ‘We’ll slip you the semiautomatic. You’ll do better with that.’ And I sure did."
Mitt Romney’s hunting problem continues.
Earlier this week, Mitt Romney said he had "been a hunter all his life." (see video here) But a reporter did some research, and Romney’s campaign admitted that Romney had only been hunting twice, once as a teenager and once for a fundraiser. Then Romney himself said that he was a "varmint hunter", not a "big game hunter."
Well, Romney’s foot is still firmly planted in his mouth. The AP’s Glen Johnson asked a simple question, "Did Mitt Romney ever have a hunting license." Romney hasn’t:
Officials in the four states where Mitt Romney has lived say the Republican presidential contender, who calls himself a lifelong hunter, never took out a license.
Romney tried to explain this away:
Romney says that’s because he has seldom hunted where he needed one.
Well, Glen Johnson did some research. And to hunt "varmints" in Michigan, New Hampshire, and Massachusetts, Romney needed a license:
Officials from Michigan, Massachusetts and New Hampshire, where a license is necessary to hunt such small game, said they could not immediately locate any license for Romney. An official in Utah said a change in state law last year blocked public access to license records.
In Utah, licenses are only needed for some kinds of small game. Perhaps Romney was careful about only shooting those:
Jack rabbits can be hunted without a license and killed without limit, but cottontail rabbits and snowshoe hares require a license.
Recall that Romney was confused about whether he owned a gun or not:
So Romney went from having a gun, to not having a gun, to having two guns. Except they are his son’s guns. At (one of) their vacation homes in Utah. That’s "his" gun.
This is important because it goes to character. Romney struggles to tell the truth and keep his story straight about basic facts about his own life. He also struggles to keep his story straight on issues like abortion, gay-rights, taxes, guns, embryonic stem-cell research, Ronald Reagan, the Contract with America, immigration, and campaign finance reform.
It is clear what Romney is doing. He is just making it up as he goes along. He is making himself up as he goes along. Is that the kind of man you want running your country?
Mitt Romney, changed his story on hunting … again. Here’s where he started:
Now Romney has clarified. He hunts "varmints":
Romney, a former Massachusetts governor, said during a fundraising stop Thursday that he had also hunted smaller animals in Utah.
"I’m not a big-game hunter. I’ve made that very clear," he said. "I’ve always been a rodent and rabbit hunter. Small varmints, if you will. I began when I was 15 or so, and I have hunted those kinds of varmints since then. More than two times."
Three times? Wabbits? Not mousetraps?
As I said when his hunting problem emerged, it reminds me of his gun problem. He couldn’t figure out whether he owned a gun or not:
So Romney went from having a gun, to not having a gun, to having two guns. Except they are his son’s guns. At (one of) their vacation homes in Utah. That’s "his" gun.
The issue is, of course, not really about whether he has hunted or has a gun or not. The issue is that he has so many stories about basic facts like whether he has hunted, whether he owns a gun, or what his favorite movie is. These shouldn’t be hard. These don’t even need to be poll-tested. He can’t figure out an answer to these questions… And he wants to run a country?
Mitt Romney has a problem with gun owners, and it is that he is like John Kerry.
John Kerry referred to his "trusty shotgun", which was actually a weapon he had voted to ban. This was seen as fabricated, and it was rightly mocked in the righty blogs.
Mitt Romney has a similar problem, his image on guns is a total Mitt-representation. He told Glenn and Helen (via the Boston Globe):
The Glenn and Helen Show," that he hopes states would continue to ease regulations on gun owners, and he expressed enthusiasm for guns and hunting. "I have a gun of my own. I go hunting myself. I’m a member of the NRA and believe firmly in the right to bear arms
Slowly those statements have been exploded. First, he didn’t really own a gun, from the same Boston Globe story:
Asked by reporters at the gun show Friday whether he personally owned the gun, Romney said he did not. He said one of his sons, Josh, keeps two guns at the family vacation home in Utah, and he uses them "from time to time."
So Romney went from having a gun, to not having a gun, to having two guns. Except they are his son’s. At (one of) their vacation homes in Utah. That’s "his" gun.
Next the point about hunting. Romney "fondly" describes two hunting experiences:
Romney also described himself as a sportsman who learned to shoot as a boy rabbit hunting in Idaho with a .22 rifle. … He fondly recalled shooting quail last year at a Republican Governors Association event in Georgia.
Now the AP reports that those are the only two hunting experiences he has had in his whole life:
Yet the former Massachusetts governor’s hunting experience is limited to two trips at the bookends of his 60 years: as a 15-year-old, when he hunted rabbits with his cousins on a ranch in Idaho, and last year, when he shot quail on a fenced game preserve in Georgia.
Then the NRA thing came out. Turns out Romney is a life member of the NRA… except that he joined in August. This was well lampooned today in Doonesbury:
Romney says he still backs the ban on assault weapons, but he won’t say whether he stands by the Brady Bill. And after the gun show tour, his campaign declined to say whether he would still describe himself as a supporter of tough gun laws.
You see, Mitt Romney’s problem isn’t that he is a flip-flopper, although that is true. It is that almost everything that he says about base issues in the Republican Party is a Mitt-representation. And gun activists, a pretty committed bunch, just aren’t going to buy it.
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