Free Republic

In politics, timing is everything. And so it might be with gaffes. Mitt Romney’s declaration that 47 percent of Americans -- all of President Obama's supporters -- want handouts from the government, secretly caught on tape during a private fundraiser earlier this year and published Monday by Mother Jones, is the latest errant remark in a presidential race replete with them. But unlike previous gaffes, the timing of this one could be more troublesome -- because there isn't time for it to fade. Romney’s campaign has been besieged by reports of internal disputes and worrying poll numbers, and was already...

Oops. Mitt Romney made a minor slip-up at a campaign event here Wednesday afternoon when he mixed up the name of a pipeline project favored by Republicans and the name of the Obama abminsitration-backed solar firm that the GOP argues has become symbolic of the White House’s failed policies.

He was joking. Everyone laughed. They got the joke. No harm done.But let’s never hear this joke again, okay, Romney staffers? Mitt Romney sat at the head of the table at a coffee shop here on Thursday, listening to a group of unemployed Floridians explain the challenges of looking for work. When they finished, he weighed in with a predicament of his own.“I should tell my story,” Mr. Romney said. “I’m also unemployed.”He chuckled. The eight people gathered around him, who had just finished talking about strategies of finding employment in a slow-to-recover economy, joined him in laughter.“Are you on...