Mitt Romney Is Some Sort Of Crazy, YouTube-Watching Ninja

Everyone knows that presidential aspirant Mitt Romney is some sort of Bain-capitalizing technocratic manager-genius par excellence, right? No one denies this! But what you might not have known is that Romney is actually a constantly evolving, Bain-capitalizing technocratic manager-genius par excellence. Actually, I might be overstating this, as it's likely that the storied history of Romney's flipping and flopping have all but made it clear that he's "constantly evolving."

But what I'm trying to say is that today I found out that Mitt Romney has become the master of the "gotcha" moment, and it's made him "the candidate most prepared to take down his rivals' records." This I learned from a three-page story in Politico that attests to Romney's mad "gotcha" skillz. And in all sincerity, it's a very fine chronicle of how Romney has succeeded in meticulously zeroing in on his opponents' vulnerable spots and drawing blood, especially at the numerous candidate debates.

That said, there's nothing about the story's lede that is not hilarious. The scene opens on Wednesday night's debate in Mesa, Ariz. Romney, we are told, is caught in a "make or break" moment, locked in battle with Rick Santorum over contraception. Fortunately, he "clicked on a classic piece of opposition research for a peek." Wait. Did he literally "click on" a piece of opposition research during the debate, because he is actually a MacBook Pro in human form, running Google Chrome? Not exactly.

"Senator, I just saw a YouTube clip of you being interviewed where you said that you personally opposed contraceptives but that you, you said that you voted for Title X" -- the federal family planning program, Romney told Santorum during Wednesday night's CNN debate in Arizona. "You said this, you said this in a positive light, 'I voted for Title X.'"

Aww, yeah! "Boom: roasted!" and all of that, right? Totes. We are told by Reid Epstein and Zachary Abrahamson that this was a "classic gotcha moment." What's more is that this was "also a snapshot of the new Romney." And that snapshot? "The 'gotcha' candidate."

Right, OK, if you're peeping the piece online, you sort of saw that coming, because the headline is "The 'gotcha' campaign," which primes the readers to expect something about someone -- probably Romney, since he's pictured -- as the guy running that "gotcha" campaign. See, I was able to surmise all of that ahead of time because I looked at the Internet and made note of things. But here's what's so totally "kewl" about that. I was using the exact same skill set as Mitt Romney:

"To do last night effectively, you had to have done very careful research and then the candidate has to master the information and think through how and when to use it," a campaign adviser said Thursday. "And the campaign has to remain disciplined around a message and a strategy."

See, until I read the paragraph where a Romney adviser described this process of "observing things" and "remembering stuff," I had no idea that the act of watching a YouTube clip and recalling the contents of said YouTube clip was actually a complicated, white-knuckled feat of political derring-do! It's just not something anyone can do. And you can totally understand why this Romney adviser wanted to be anonymously quoted, right? Who wants to be known as the guy who praised Mitt Romney for being able to absorb information from YouTube?

At any rate, here's hoping that Mitt Romney will go on "Meet the Press" soon so that he and David Gregory can have an epic "Men Who Stare at YouTube" showdown.

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Comments

[Richard Choffe]

08:15 PM on 03/06/2012

Dubya's Blowhole, El Rush BoZo &
El Rush Bo Zo's Republiclowns !
The best they got is Mitt Romney ???
They come off so delirious,
When they try to be serious;
The can't even take a strait pee !

[Richard Choffe]

09:39 AM on 04/09/2012

Republiclowns El Rush BoZo,
LameSow Dubya's favorite blowhole;
The best they got is Mitt Romney ???
They come off so delirious,
When they try to be serious,
They can't even take a strait pee;
Nit Wit Mitt does Gordon Gekko,
Greed glorified & Zombiefied;
Swill their coolade of greed with pride;
Go with their clown car for a ride ???

[Richard Choffe]

08:10 PM on 03/06/2012

Republiclowns El Rush BoZo !
Also known as Dubya's Blowhole !
Nit Wit Mitt does Gordon Gekko,
Greed glorified & Zombiefied !
Go with their clown car for a ride ???
Swill the coolade of greed with pride !

[pedernales]

07:09 PM on 02/25/2012

ok

[fb0252]

03:53 PM on 02/25/2012

It's called working at what ur doing something understandably confusing to Obama giddying journalists.

[expattam]

07:11 PM on 02/25/2012

It's called "punctuation", something understandably confusing to a drooling Faux News watcher.

[ThatsTheTheWayItIs]

03:06 PM on 02/25/2012

Political office is a job, like at a corporation. Voters hire, you report to them and do their bidding.

In a democracy, politicians are followers. It is a secular position, not religious. We don't want our politicians to be moral leaders. POTUS is a completely different job than governor of MA or Senator from IL, with a much larger constituency.

Politicians do what we tell them. Doing as your new employer wants is not "flip-flopping".

[Gudrun]

02:58 PM on 02/25/2012

If the Republicans want to get back the WH, they are going to have to with a moderate. It is ridiculous for them not to acknowledge this.

[Nycdxb]

02:49 PM on 02/25/2012

Romney is the perfect candidate since the economy and US prosperity is the only really important issue. The US government is in a state of chaos. S&P downgrade was a result of inconsistency, capriciousness, and doing dangerously crazy things like using the debt ceiling and risk of default as a bargaining chip. The tax system is inconsistent and can change from year to year depending on the populist flavor of the week so no one can plan ahead. Corporations' profits are trapped offshore because of the huge tax bill on repatriation (due to the insane US policy of worldwide taxation), while they could be using the money to create US jobs and bring many hundreds of billions back home. There is nothing more anti-productive in life, whether it be a job, a business, or a government, than inconsistency.

Romney is not inconsistent. He is methodical and analytical. Romney's so called 'flip flopping' is unfortunately a necessary evil to try to appeal to extremist Republicans who hypocritically want the government to impose their social views on the people, which is the exact opposite of small government. How else could he get the nomination?

[chris hatala]

04:10 PM on 02/25/2012

Flip, flop, flip, flop.

[frank2061]

05:27 PM on 02/25/2012

Isn't it tragic how the Dow has gone from 8000 when Obama took office to 13000 today?

And you can put all the lipstick you want on a human windsock and it's still a human windsock.

[Liberalbydefault]

01:32 PM on 02/25/2012

I'm not sure why anyone is so surprised by what Mitt Romney is doing. He is the epitome of the post Reagan era Republican. For the last thirty years the Republican party has tried to fracture this country in any way they could to usher people over to their side. They don't care about America or democracy, they care about winning!

Women once voted heavily democratic, so abortion became a political issue. It should not be. It is a personal, private, moral issue that has no place in the political spectrum. They made religion an issue, another aspect of personal choice that has no place in the political spectrum. They pitted union workers against non-union workers. They vilified intellectuals, you know, smart people. Anything they could do to fracture and factionalize the citizens of this country, that's what they did.

Mitt Romney is the culmination of those efforts. He is all things to all people; at least people on the right. You hate immigrants, I hate immigrants. You oppose abortion, I oppose abortion. Etc., etc., etc.!!!

Mitt Romney is exactly what the Republicans have been hoping for for the last thirty years. Unfortunately now that he is here, not very many people like him, and even the Republican hierarchy is not very excited with the end product.

[maveet]

05:15 PM on 02/25/2012

yep. F&F thank you.

[skatoolaki]

08:06 PM on 02/25/2012

Perfectly stated, thank you. F&F

[1Truthseeker]

01:21 PM on 02/25/2012

Don't forget your governing record Mr. Romey that left your State of Massachusetts ranking 47th on the job creation scale. How many millions fattened your investment portfolio Mr. Romney? Fat wealth growth for Romney while everyone else looses. That's what we'll get, should we suffer the disastrous misfortune of you becoming President.

[Wendilynn]

06:41 PM on 02/25/2012

considering he worked Mass for a $1 each year he worked as governor and as far as had been reported, he doesn't seem to have had special interest payouts, and believe me, they are looking for them. They had to try and portray his change of opinon as flip flopping because they don't really have anything else on him.

[1Truthseeker]

01:14 PM on 02/25/2012

For decades, corporate raiders like you Mr. Romey, outsourced the majority of US production to fill your own pockets. Your greed fractured the manufacturing foundation of our economy crippling the opportunity for propsperity for millions of Americans!

[CR99]

12:33 PM on 02/25/2012

Remembering the content of a youtube video is a simple task. Especially, if you spend most of your time surfing the intertubes from your mother's basement getting ideas for your next not-quite-funny article.

On the other hand, a candidate's day is comprised of: 2-3 speeches per day, townhall events, phone bank activity, interviews with the media, traveling, and, if lucky, 2 hours of sleep per night. One grows a little more impressed with the pace candidates keep and with their ability to have plenty of opposition research at ready recall during debates.

[lexigram]

12:40 PM on 02/25/2012

So, which son are you?

[1Truthseeker]

01:15 PM on 02/25/2012

This is where being a millionaire helps.

[CR99]

01:37 PM on 02/25/2012

Yeah, one of the benefits of being a millionaire is you get more than 24 hours in your day.

[amaboss52]

12:32 PM on 02/25/2012

Eventually Romney will flip flop so many times he won't be able to remember what he really believes.

[Psyko Tek]

03:05 PM on 02/25/2012

NO,I tell you Mitt will never forget his core convictions....

they are that he wants to be president

And will do whatever he has to, to get there

and he will always be true to that

[tsuchay]

11:49 AM on 02/25/2012

How can you trust someone who enriched himself by taking advantage of other people's weaknesses?

[MiddleMolly]

11:50 AM on 02/25/2012

That's a big, big issues with the R.

[Whoahox]

12:11 PM on 02/25/2012

Proof that conservatives will allow that Darwin did make a few good points.

[SocratesSiddhartha]

11:44 AM on 02/25/2012

Hilarious!!! thanks J.

[Pherdnut]

11:35 AM on 02/25/2012

So wait, is this about Romney making too big of a thing about watching YouTube or his advisor? Also, let's leave the flip-flopping thing to the GOP tacticians. I like candidates and citizens that are capable of changing their mind when presented with new information. Flip-flopping suggests a sort of wishy-washy mind changing over minutiae rather than the sort of zero-intellectual-integrity exhibited by at least as many Democrats as Republicans in expressing two completely different (televised) points of view to fit their audiences within days of each other.

[phal4875]

11:43 AM on 02/25/2012

Pherdnut says "I like candidates and citizens that are capable of changing their mind when presented with new information." He or she must just love Romney. He has never had a position that has not subsequently changed, except for the new positions he currently holds. He was a liberal when running against Ted Kennedy for the U.S. Senate in 1994. He was a moderate when he ran against Shannon O'Brien for Massachusetts governor in 2002. He has been a raging right-winger since beginning his two runs for the Republican nomination for the presidency in 2007. No one can accuse him of failing to change his mind.

[Whoahox]

12:07 PM on 02/25/2012

Personally, I don't trust people who never reconsider and, therefore, never change their mind. But the speed with which Romney can execute an about face is breathtaking and, like Gingrich and several others, he seems to have no idea what TV cameras and microphones are for.

[Pherdnut]

01:54 PM on 02/25/2012

My challenge was the point of the article, not a defense of Romney, who, I perhaps too non-explicitly suggested would be better viewed as having no intellectual integrity as opposed to being called a flip-flopper which suggests more innocent wishy-washiness than dangerous willingness to tell your audience anything you think they want to hear to get their vote.

[Psyko Tek]

03:08 PM on 02/25/2012

I believe Mitt is a weather vane on issues,
but yes new information , maturity, and real world experience should change people, their ideas, and beliefs