Posted on 05/10/2012 8:50:48 AM PDT by SeekAndFind
Thankfully, our long national nightmare is over:
Mitt Romney apologized on Thursday morning for pranks he helped orchestrate in high school that he said “might have gone too far,” including an incident in which he pinned down a fellow student and cut his hair.
The presumptive Republican presidential nominee was responding to an article published a few hours earlier by The Washington Post documenting the episode with first-hand accounts from Romney’s classmates.
“Back in high school, I did some dumb things and if anybody was hurt by that or offended, obviously I apologize for that,” Romney said in a live radio interview with Fox News Channel personality Brian Kilmeade. Romney added: “I participated in a lot of hijinks and pranks during high school and some might have gone too far and for that, I apologize.”
Romney’s campaign hastily scheduled the radio interview for the candidate to call in from Omaha, where he is holding a campaign event later Wednesday, to respond to The Post’s report.
Politically speaking, this was the smart thing to do. Other campaigns would have tried challenging the veracity of the stories and/or the motives of the witnesses, but that’s a losing proposition. The more a campaign debates those points, the longer the story goes, and the more legitimacy it has in the media. Instead, the Romney campaign made it an old story before it began to grow legs by just expressing remorse over any cruelty that may have taken place in high school.
I eagerly await the next set of stories about how in middle school Romney refused to give cuts in line to kids from low-income families, or how he shamelessly violated the “exies-no-erasies” rule in elementary school with his female classmates.
For those who don’t know what the high school prank was, here’s Ed Morrissey explaining it:
___________________________________
I guess the Washington Post ran out of stories based on Seamus the Roof-Ridin’ Dog. Despite demonstrating zero curiosity over Barack Obama’s college transcripts to check on just how brilliant the academic actually was, the Post now has a big expose on Mitt Romney’s high school career as … a practical joker:
“Mitt Romney returned from a three-week spring break in 1965 to resume his studies as a high school senior at the prestigious Cranbrook School. Back on the handsome campus, studded with Tudor brick buildings and manicured fields, he spotted something he thought did not belong at a school where the boys wore ties and carried briefcases. John Lauber, a soft-spoken new student one year behind Romney, was perpetually teased for his nonconformity and presumed homosexuality. Now he was walking around the all-boys school with bleached-blond hair that draped over one eye, and Romney wasn’t having it.
“He can’t look like that. That’s wrong. Just look at him!” an incensed Romney told Matthew Friedemann, his close friend in the Stevens Hall dorm, according to Friedemann’s recollection. Mitt, the teenaged son of Michigan Gov. George Romney, kept complaining about Lauber’s look, Friedemann recalled.
A few days later, Friedemann entered Stevens Hall off the school’s collegiate quad to find Romney marching out of his own room ahead of a prep school posse shouting about their plan to cut Lauber’s hair. Friedemann followed them to a nearby room where they came upon Lauber, tackled him and pinned him to the ground. As Lauber, his eyes filling with tears, screamed for help, Romney repeatedly clipped his hair with a pair of scissors.
____________________________________
That is a pretty cruel prank. It’s one reason not to vote for a teenager for President. It’s not a story that will cover Romney in glory, but this took place almost half a century ago.
Has Romney apologized for “TANKING” Massachusetts?
Instituting endless fees?
Putting in Murderer-freeing judges?
Apologized for RomneyCARE?
Oh? Not so much.
Now, if he would take the apology one step further and withdraw from the GOP race, we might get somewhere.
Yes and the story goes well with their reporting on Obama’s extensive drug use and .... Oh, never mind.
See the double standard here? Obama can sit in a hate-filled church for 20 years and make financial contributions. And Obama can HIDE all his school records, but Romney needs to explain pranks from high school!
Cruel prank or not, it's pretty obvious that Romney wasn't some let-it-all-hang-out libertine.
That settles it................ Romney’s got my vote!
Once a Bully Always a Bully.
So when will we hear the dirt on O’suckyObummer? Wasn’t he an elite pot smokin, cocaine snorting, private school in Hawaii, Franklin Davis pupil?
Wait till after your coronation flop horse. The EnemaMedia is going to splash it every where.
And you'll still probably win.
Is this a joke?
Really?
Obama needs to apologize for EATING DOG!!!
This story finds a nice bookend with the NYT’s front page effort to portray George H Bush as a war criminal during WWII, because his diary indicated he strafed some Japanese after sinking their ship.
In case one wonders how the Washington Post just happened to stumble onto this story, it’s pretty clear after you read it:
The incident was recalled similarly by five students, who gave their accounts independently of one another. Four of them — Friedemann, now a dentist; Phillip Maxwell, a lawyer; Thomas Buford, a retired prosecutor; and David Seed, a retired principal — spoke on the record. Another former student who witnessed the incident asked not to be named. The men have differing political affiliations, although they mostly lean Democratic.
Buford volunteered for Barack Obama’s campaign in 2008. Seed, a registered independent, has served as a Republican county chairman in Michigan. All of them said that politics in no way colored their recollections.
You don’t suppose that Buford might have passed that story along to campaign leadership in case Romney won the nomination or got picked to be John McCain’s running mate, do you? Naaaaaah. I’m sure the Post got this story by perusing student records from Cranbrook and cold-calling everyone who went to school with Romney in that time.
In the meantime, the WaPo exhibits absolutely ZERO INTEREST in Obama’s past. No interest in his college days, his transcripts, what he wrote in school, etc.
High school pranks are so much more important than leftists wrecking American society.
Not true... I flushed my best friend’s shoe down the toilet one day (or tried) — as a prank, in 10th grade. We are still great friends even now, 40 years later!
Obviously orchestrated with Zero's evolution coming out yesterday.
Romney needs to respond with a strong defense of traditional man-woman marriage.
Apology is the wrong way to go with this. Romney's campaign has been pretty deft until now. They need to immediately go on the attack.
I hope you are joking.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.
