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Thursday, October 25, 2012

2012 Mitt Romney Refuses to Answer Questions About Richard Mourdock

Posted by Paul Constant on Thu, Oct 25, 2012 at 1:07 PM

Mitt Romney refused to answer reporters' questions on Thursday about his support for Indiana Senate candidate Richard Mourdock, who has become the latest Republican to find himself in hot water over comments about rape and abortion.

Romney and Sen. Rob Portman (R-Ohio) stopped by a Cincinnati diner on Thursday morning. Bloomberg's Lisa Lerer and Reuters' Sam Youngman noted that when they attempted to ask the GOP presidential nominee about Mourdock, he repeatedly ignored their questions. Specifically, Romney avoided answering whether he wanted the ad pulled and if he would disavow Murdock's rape comments.

The Romney campaign thought they could get away with hiding their candidate from press questions through Election Day, but the timing of this Mourdock thing made that impossible. This problem is not going away. This could be one of those occasions where Romney throws a hasty press conference, takes one question about Mourdock, releases a boilerplate statement, and then ignores every other question. That won't play well on the evening news. A Fox News interview won't cut it. I think Romney is going to have to do a major news show to address this question. And Romney taking questions from a reporter is the Romney campaign's worst nightmare.

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Comments (10) RSS

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I don't understand the thinking behind keeping Romney/Ryan away from the press right now. The president is going to be all over the media for the next couple weeks. Surely the risk of a total Romney fuckup is smaller than the risk of not having any direct input into the media narrative during the final stretch.

Posted by blip on October 25, 2012 at 1:37 PM

You are off your rocker if you think Romney is going to say anything. This is the man who refused to release his tax returns despite vocal, bipartisan demands for him to do so. And subsequent events proved this to have been the right strategy. Very few voters outside of Indiana are going to be influenced by the Mourdock story, and Indiana is not a swing state (or rather, if it swings, then it is a landslide anyway).

Posted by minderbender on October 25, 2012 at 1:39 PM

@2 "Indiana is not a swing state (or rather, if it swings, then it is a landslide anyway)."

Yes, Mitt will likely take IN, but it doesn't hurt to remember that Obama won the state in 2008. With the right conditions Indiana can be a swing state.

Posted by stinkbug on October 25, 2012 at 1:48 PM

hiding out in Cincinnati, the curdled white heart of conservative Ohio. what a coward.

Posted by Max Solomon on October 25, 2012 at 1:52 PM

@3, Obama won a lot of states in 2008. The question is not whether he could conceivably win it again (he could), but whether in those circumstances it would make any difference (it wouldn't). There is not much point allocating resources to a race that won't matter. (That said, I do think there is a material risk that Obama will lose the popular vote, so I think it makes sense to spend some resources getting the vote out everywhere.)

Posted by minderbender on October 25, 2012 at 2:13 PM

Which is more important? Reprimanding a candidate's hateful, insane, and go nowhere remarks or a President of the United States settling the case once and for all with the American People on own knowledge of the events in Benghazi?

Posted by Gay Dude for Romney

on October 25, 2012 at 3:01 PM

@6: Your two questions reminded me of Colbert's hilarious segment from last night: http://www.colbertnation.com/the-colbert…

Thanks for the re-laugh.

Posted by stinkbug on October 25, 2012 at 3:03 PM

@6
So you're back to defend racists and bigots.
Nice work.

"Reprimanding a candidate's hateful, insane, and go nowhere remarks ..."

Romney has made an ad supporting that candidate.
Romney has not removed his support for that candidate.
Therefore, Romney does NOT find those statements by that candidate to be that bad.

"... or a President of the United States settling the case once and for all with the American People on own knowledge of the events in Benghazi?"

And so far there is no evidence that Obama has been hiding anything on that.
The same people who demanded his birth certificate because he was hiding something.
The same people who demanded his long form birth certificate because he was hiding something.
The same people who demand his school transcripts because he is hiding something.
Are the same people who claim he is hiding something on Benghazi.

This isn't about Libya.
This is about racists and bigots who will NEVER admit that they were wrong.
Because they know that they were right.
And now they will just move on to a new subject.

And with your sad, little life you have chosen to defend them.
Just so you can be told how stupid you are by strangers on the internet.

Posted by fairly.unbalanced on October 25, 2012 at 3:25 PM