And yet, from his own personal memory, he "saw" his father marching with MLK.
It's not true. It never was true. And based on the fact that he revised his previous lie, he knew it wasn't true. But he went with it anyway, to make the event sound grander, when the simple truth would have served the same point and not have risked controversy.
Considering this all happened in the "vote for me or else you're a bigot, you slack-jawed evangelicals" speech, I guess I'm just a bigot for commenting on the lies.
If I were watching a 10,000 person march, and MLK was in the march, and I saw my father in the march, I would say “I saw my father marching with MLK. If someone actually was confused by that, they might ask “was he actually standing next to MLK”, and I would say “no, he was in the same march”.
But if it turned out that MLK wasn’t IN that march, I would be incorrect. However, if I thought MLK was in the march, and I said “I saw my father marching with MLK”, my use of the word “saw” wouldn’t mean I should have KNOWN MLK wasn’t in the march.
Now, let’s look at the conspiracy theory. In 1967, Mitt Romney, knowing in 2007 he would run for President, somehow tricked Broder into writing a book which said his father marched with MLK. He then went silent about it until 1978, when he told a reporter that his dad and him marched with MLK.
He then went silent again, until the appointed time, but turing those years he decided that putting himself in the story wouldn’t fly, so he went to just having his father marching, while he was watching.
And knowing it was a lie, he used it in a speech on faith and religion, knowing that someone could check the records and find out it was a lie.
It takes a leap of faith to believe any of that. It is perfectly rational to believe that Romney had come to believe his father marched in a march with King, that he used the story because it illustrated how his father was with King in the civil rights struggle, and in fact conveyed a message that was entirely truthful.