Associated Press
I sometimes think about something President Obama said in his inaugural address: "We remain a young nation, but in the words of Scripture, the time has come to set aside childish things."
If someone could let Obama's opponent know, I'd appreciate it.
For the second time in as many weeks, Mitt Romney's campaign taunted President Barack Obama outside a speech.
Romney's campaign bus circled Obama's fundraiser at Boston Symphony Hall Monday night several times, according to Romney deputy press secretary Ryan Williams and verified by several onlookers who said it was honking its horn as it passed.
Williams told BuzzFeed that the bus made "a few" laps before local police closed the roads around the venue before Obama's arrival. They plan on bringing the bus back after Obama leaves to attend another fundraiser.
Did the bus laps and honking disrupt the event? Actually, no -- the president's appearance was indoors and attendees couldn't see or hear the Romney campaign's antics. As Kevin Drum noted, "[T]he bus didn't interrupt anyone trying to speak, it didn't block any entrances, and it didn't harass anyone trying to get in."
So what was the point? Kevin thinks this is about the Romney campaign sending a signal to the Republican Party's right-wing base, which apparently revels in nonsense like this, that the GOP nominee hates the president every bit as much as they do. That's certainly plausible.
I also wonder, though, whether the Romney campaign is simply run by overgrown children who think the race for the presidency of the United States during a time of global crisis is qualitatively similar to a race for sixth-grade class president.
Indeed, as we discussed last week, the Romney campaign keeps doing this. Team Romney has a set of standard tactics, which include sending press releases, giving speeches, putting together ads, raising money, and apparently heckling. And instead of distancing himself from childish antics, the candidate himself has personally taken ownership of the tactics. Romney seems rather proud of the heckling.
I realize that efforts to disrupt opponents' campaigns aren't new -- they're about as old as elections themselves -- and that Democrats and their allies are hardly angels. No one side or ideology has a monopoly on virtue or vice.
But that's not really what I'm getting at here. Rather, the point is Romney is the first major-party nominee I can think of who's claimed credit for obnoxious hecklers on purpose.
Is it too much to ask that the Republican candidate bring at least some degree of maturity to the national debate?
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Two factors at play
1: Romney takes credit for these heckles, but also implies that the Obama campaign is doing it too ("what's sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander" which also implies that Obama is effeminate, the gander, but whatever). Therefore low-info voters are only seeing Romney's team acting like imbeciles but they're HEARING that both sides do it. So if you're inclined to think like a right-winger, you're thrilled that your party is acting like a bunch of morons. If you're not inclined to lean rightward, than you bemoan the lack of civility in our political discourse because both sides are apparently doing it. Then you stay home and don't vote on Election Day. And that's how Republicans win.
2: If Romney's team keeps doing it, then at some point, SOMEONE on Obama's team might respond in kind. It won't come as a directive from the top strategists, it'll be one low-level campaign organizer in a less-traveled part of the nation, but he or she will organize a similar stunt, it will be credited to "Obama" no matter how much he distances himself from the act, even if the organizer in question gets fired or removed from decision-making, it'll be "from Obama," and then right-wingers will be thrilled that they "broke Obama," turned him into a sniveling coward who sends his low-level flunkies to do his dirty work and then disavows any knowledge of the act. Mods will bemoan the lack of civility in our political discourse because both sides are actually doing it. Then they stay home and don't vote on Election Day. And that's how Republicans win.
Lol. Are you people for real? Romney gets heckling in his face at his events Code Pink style... and you all are going to whine about a bus that just honks occasionally? Really?
Perhaps you missed this part of the post:
Not at all equivalent to heckling from people not attached to President Obama's campaign operation.
The confused basketball fan never gets the point.
Don't bother. He's just an emissary from the Republican counterfactual epistemologically closed bubble where Everyone Knows that Obama people do this kind of thing all the time. Because ACORN! And teh gays! And don't forget the New Black Panthers. All integral parts of the Democratic coalition taking orders from the man behind the teleprompter.
He's impervious to fact and immune to logic.
Why are you assuming the Romney hecklers aren't attached to the Obama campaign?
How appropriate that your "avatar" is a lizard, Shooter. Advertising your lizard brain eh?
Nah, Steve, he's stupid. And maybe you're right, too but it's secondary to his congenital mental deficiencies. He's proved it over and over when he atteempt to discuss anything about economics.
"Why are you assuming the Romney hecklers aren't attached to the Obama campaign?"
Uhh, because the buses doing the circling are the official Romney campaign press buses filled with reporters assigned to his campaign who tweet about the heckling in real time? And because the people who heckled David Axelrod's speech were actual Romney campaign staff and aides, a fact which Romney proudly acknowledged?
Shooter - I can assure you, as a volunteer with the Obama campaign, that word is made very clear from the top down that we will be respectful of the opponent and his supporters. That means not devolving into arguments with them, not wasting their time (or ours), and moving on to others who are willing to listen to the President's plans and position on issues. If Obama got wind of a campaign staffer doing this kind of crap, he'd get rid of them faster than Mitt can deflect questions of substance.
I know that type of civility is unheard of in Republican circles, but it does exist.
Ah yes...and we SHOULDN'T bring up the 'BULLY story' because...? It's clear that Romney never grew up...in his 'practical jokes', his 'bullying', his lying. Uh huh.
Why don't the local police step in?
They have to be at these sites. Disturbing the peace is an offense in every place that I know.
(sarcasm on)
But doncha see...It's OKay If You're A Republican.
I see it as nothing more than an immature 50's 8th grade punk move.
It's walking down the hall with a pack of cigarettes rolled up in a tee shirt taunting 7th graders while hoping to impress the other 8th graders until a teacher walks by and slaps the punk in the face so that the 9th graders can get back to their studies. Mittens the ex male cheerleader now acts like a low-grade inauthentic 8th grade James Dean wannabe. Imagine a man with the personality of a log and into dressage trying to be get his mid-60's adolescent punk on!
Childish, immature, pointless, and most of all, telling.
Is this what America wants? The Republican act has morphed into nothing more than a version of Wrestlemania, with all attendant authenticity and class.
Dead-on comment.
Your description of R-Money is spot-on, but my experience with and observation of those on the right is that they nearly always admire people like that. Seriously.
This just look like impotent rage. I like the 'sixth grade' description of its terminal silliness.
Best response I've seen elsewhere to counteract this nonsense is for Obama supporters to show up at rallies with signs saying, "Honk if you love Obama."
Even better (and funnier) would be if they were holding the same signs while the Rmoney bus was honking it's horn trying to disrupt an Obama fundraiser, speech, ... (unless that's what you meant).
Yes, that is what I meant. Hold up the signs while the bus is honking.
That's funny. Have Obama supporters done this, or were you saying it was some other campaign.?
That is the funniest idea suekzoo1 - brilliant! I hope the Obama supporters pick that tactic up. Thanks for the laugh!
Out here in suburban Chicago we made a big banner that said "Honk For Healthcare Reform" and stood on the parkway at a major intersection in front of our local R congresswoman's office (Judy Biggert). Some rightwing idiots would honk to catch our attention so they could flip us off. What's they did that is I'd blow them kisses. Really infuriated them and the other drivers would just laugh.
"It's not a race for sixth-grade class president"
Is too!
You forgot "Neener, neener, neener."
Yeah, sounds like Romney hasn't matured much from the guy who bullied that kid in high school.
Are those stories so irrelevant, now?
'Is it too much to ask that the Republican candidate bring at least some degree of maturity to the national debate?'
It is too much if he doesn't have it to bring, and this Republican candidate IMO obviously doesn't. Also like the 2008 candidate, he seems unwilling or unable to grow.
High school mean girls don't grow up...they just become republican campaign workers.
No, they become "Republican wives".
And one became the Republican nominee for Vice-President.
There's a difference?
I could have sworn there are vehicle codes that cover when you can honk your horn. CA-DMV cautions that you should only do it for safety to avoid a collision.
Honk to support a cause, while popular, have allowed cops to issue citations against those TPTB don't like.
Anyone who was ever involved in college student government politics against College Republicans and/or fratboys has no problem recognizing what's going on here. This kind of stuff is just hardwired into them. Rich entitled white males who get into politics at a young age just seem to have serous boundary issues that they never grow out of and that manifest themselves in ways both trivial and serious.
Comes out in ways that range from the merely baffling and irritating, like this stuff Romney's doing, to troubling, like the "voter fraud" fraud, the cynical open racebaiting of 2010 and the Republican Rent-a-Mob Kenny-Boy Ley flew into Florida to intimidate vote counters in Miami, to the completely illegal and actively sinister, like pretty much the entirety of Nixon's reelection campaign. Donald Segretti, Lee Atwater, Karl Rove, Carter Wrenn. They're all schooled in the CR school.
The key word in your post is "entitled" which describes these conservative elitists. Their sense of entitlement is what allows them to disregard all the rules of society because they think they are above the law, much like celebrities, athletes and people in Hollyweird who think the same. Isn't it odd that these same people rail against the poor and middle class government entitlements while they themselves have an inflated view of their entitlement.
Isn't it funny how the word "entitlement" for the rich means something completely different than the word "entitlement" for the poor.
The only thing being forgotten is that they're used to getting their way because they've never not gotten their way.
It's truly life playing out the roles of the snottiest little dicks in prep fraternities that everybody despises in the movies. Except this time, in real life, the dicks have the riff raff Useful Idiot salt-of-the-earth morons running interference for them to continue getting their way while the dicks piss all over them.
Only in America. For now. Until the rest of the world copies our malignant act.
No, not odd at all. I don't see how it could be any other way. People who do not feel a sense of entitlement aren't likely to project entitlement on other people.
This is from a man wanting to be president of the exceptional United States of America? Is this how he'll act overseas when he is forced into the company of other world leaders with whom he does not agree? Is this how we can expect him to act inside the beltway, among those who will both agree and disagree with his supreme self? Is this how he will act toward minorites, women, the disabled, vets, anyone who isn't his wealthy buddies or campaign contributors calling in favors?
If Mitt doesn't care how he appears now, why should we expect him to care when he represents us to the rest of the world?
Given that most Republicans never grow emotionally or psychologically past the 8th grade, it's unsurprising that Romney would do this.
What he's really telling the GOP, "Stop being a f###ing dinosaur and get a job."
This remind you of 8 years of Bush calling names and trading insults with N. Korea Kim Jong IL (Pysho vs Cheerleader).... Now we have a school boy brat, who never grew-up because he never had too (daddy & mommy cover his a#@ )... He never really accomplished much on his own, grew-up under his father shadow.... Now to prove he's a achiever (something his dad never achieve), Myth does what he does best lie, pander, suck-a#$, steal, to get the golden prize....
But now, he's doing under the cover of millionaires and billionaires who is willing to paid billions of $$$ for a puppet in the WH....
What a turd!
I'm voting for Marcia because Greg is a dork.
"Is it too much to ask that the Republican candidate bring at least some degree of maturity to the national debate?"
Yes. Next question, please.