Thursday, May 10, 2012

The Washington Post’s Romney hit piece comes apart

Washington Post Changes Romney Bullying Story Without Issuing a Correction - The Weekly Standard

The Washington Post’s Romney hit piece comes apart - An astonishing journalistic train wreck. - John Hayward at Human Events

Romney friend Stu White dropped the first bombshell on the Washington Post’s phony story, telling ABC News “he was not present for the prank, in which Romney is said to have forcefully cut a student’s long hair, and was not aware of it until this year when he was contacted by the Washington Post.” The assertion that he was “long bothered” by Romney’s alleged display of full-contact barbering was entirely false, and there is no way to claim it was not a deliberately false impression inserted into the Post story, since they knew perfectly well that they are the ones who told White about it, just a few weeks ago.

Much worse for the Post was a statement released by John Lauber’s sister Betsy, which reads, in full: “The family of John Lauber is releasing a statement saying the portrayal of John is factually incorrect and we are aggrieved that he would be used to further a political agenda. There will be no more comments from the family.”

Wow. Just… wow.

...It’s really interesting the way the Washington Post chose to end their article, by noting that Romney received an alumni award just a year after John Lauber’s untimely death. You know what happened a year before Lauber lost his battle against liver cancer? A boat carrying a family of four, two friends, and the family’s dog sprang a leak on Lake Winnipesaukee, dumping them into the dark waters of early evening, and leaving them to howl in terror as other boats zipped around them. Mitt Romney and two of his sons happened to be vacationing in the area. They jumped onto jet skis and raced to the rescue. Governor Romney was pulled off his jet ski at one point. They even saved the dog, a Scottish terrier.

A couple of years before that, Romney performed a similar rescue for a group of kayakers who were shoved onto hard rocks by fierce winds.

In 1996, the fourteen-year-old daughter of a Bain Capital partner was kidnapped. When Mitt Romney learned of this, he shut down the entire multi-million dollar firm and flew the entire staff to New York, so they could help look for the girl. Romney hired private detectives, set up a toll-free tip line, coordinated with the NYPD, papered the streets with fliers, contacted every Bain customer in the city, and personally hit the bricks with the Bain crew to join the search. They found her, just in the nick of time – she was dying from an overdose of drugs in a New Jersey basement. She was only rescued because someone saw news coverage of Romney’s search efforts.

Thirty years earlier, Mitt Romney was a high school student who may, or may not, have been slightly more of a jerk than the average teenage boy. How’s that for an “evolution?” Why on Earth would any reasonable person think his high school misadventures tell us more about his character than his deeds later in life?