The mayor of London, Boris Johnson, just mocked Mitt Romney in front of more than 50,000 people attending the Olympic torch-lighting ceremony in Hyde Park. The Epic Fail is complete. He can do whatever he likes for the rest of his tour, but all anyone is going to remember is that he made himself a detested laughing stock in less than 48 hours abroad.
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BooMan
Martin Longman a contributing editor at the Washington Monthly. He is also the founder of Booman Tribune and Progress Pond. He has a degree in philosophy from Western Michigan University.
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Oddly, near the end of that clip Johnson even throws in a couple shouts of “Yes, we can!” I don’t know what his politics are like but I wonder if that was another subtle anti-Mitt, or at least pro-Obama, dig.
He’s a Tory. Albeit, an irascible one.
But no one likes to be insulted by visiting dignitaries.
Isn’t he kinda far-right to boot?
He’s a Tory, which means that he was in the opposition when the lickspittle Blair cozied up to G W Bush and humiliated Britain in the process. I would think that that episode would leave Tories deeply suspicious of the GOP. Both Democrats and GOP are foreign, but at least Democrats aren’t patronizing.
Hmm…I’ll have to look up “dignitaries”. I always assumed it had something to do with dignity. But then we must not be talking about Romney. As he’s shown again, he’s the most undignified, graceless “leader” the US has ever endured. And all for no reason — There’s no political gain to be had, he just needs to butt in and show that he knows better. This is just a new version of Cookiegate.
There’s two possibilities. One is that Romney’s jibe was that he could not care less about the reaction of the Brits, and it was a calculated (though idiotic) effort for the folks back home to remind them of Salt Lake’s Olympics (rather than Bain), and, as a bonus, to tickle his base by insulting foreigners.
The other possibility is that he just can’t help himself.
I have to go with the second one. Surely even the shambling brainless that constitute his campaign could have written him something with a little wit or grace to it. So I have to think it wasn’t part of a plan.
maybe McCain ppl are running his campaign.
Bring on the green background!
One reason redirecting voter attention toward the 2002 Olympics may be a bad idea is coming to light. So soon after the Romney/Fox slice and dice of Obama’s comments on roads and bridges and business comes this from Mother Jones. Please pardon the length but this material looks to completely discredit Romney’s handling of the 2002 Olympics:
The MJ article is based on an apparently well researched Sports Illustrated article from 2001. Titled “Snow Job“, it starts:
Cue the wingnut tinfoil….
Well obviously, Boris Johnson is an Obamabot. Since birth he has been curried and molded for this very event. In fact, I read on blog somewhere that his mother was impregnated for just this purpose. I heard a rumor that he spent some time with Obama in a Madrassah when they were kids, too. So he’s simply doing the bidding of his Kenyan master, right?
It’s all part of Obama’s plan………..
What a great video. The MSM spin masters will have a tough time raking Romney’s remains out of the coals and spin this as good news.
Another, almost overlooked gaffe today on the video in this link. He forgot the name of the opposition leader, Ed Miliband.
What makes you think so? They’ve never before had any difficulty reversing course on yesterday’s favored narrative?
They clucked over giving the Queen an iPod? Over the First Lady being too familiar with her? Returning the bust of Churchill?
That was yesterday. Starting today, it will be: We fought the War of Independence to show that the British have no business interfering in how we run our country.
I am usually a cynic more or less like you, but not as pessimistic this time. The British press will have a field day with this, it’s already ongoing. It won’t be as easy for the MSM to hide the facts and to get away with outright spin.
Flipped ‘im off good and proper on worldwide telly, ‘e did. We should all buy the mayor a pint in celebration.
link
Sorry, Mr. Becker. Ask any disinterested observer. Salt Lake City is most definitely the middle of nowhere. The Mormons settled down there precisely BECAUSE it is the middle of nowhere.
My recommendation to anybody who has the misfortune to visit: grab yourself a milkshake at the Iceberg drive-in and then get the fuck out of town as fast as possible.
check out the tweets from the Daily Mail writer James Chapman (diary at dKos). This is not a guy you want to get on the wrong side of.
Oh my, took less than 48 hours for even conservative Brits to get Mitts:
Guess that’s why they can manage with six (or is it eight?) week campaigns and Americans require a year and a half to do the same thing.
Owwie! Bet that smarts.
Appears to have gone downhill from there:
Brits agree with McCain: Palin better than Romney.
They’re throwing the election, right? Is it even possible to be a successful businessman and this incompetent at the same time?
Haven’t you learned anything by now? How many businessmen, especially the GOPer type, are necessarily smart? Willard is just smart enough to buy a company, load it with debt and pay himself and his Bain buddies off then dump the company in one form or another.
‘Zackly. Buying up companies and leveraging them to death does not exactly employ the same skill set as international diplomacy.
It’s not like this is the first time we’ve seen Mitt completely fuck up trying to relate to people who aren’t his fellow Mormons or his fellow corporate scam artists. If anything it just reinforces what we already knew.
That might be overestimating him. Bain Capital seems to have been Bill Bain’s idea. Mitt may have been selected for one purpose: entice investors from among his father’s and Mormon cronies. He seems not to have done that job all that well and based on his publicly demonstrated social IQ we now know why. Managing the money once it came in and the investments once they were made may have been done the others on the team that Bain had selected.
Let me rephrase, then. How is it possible to be the supposed leader of a major party and that incompetent at the same time? Do we truly believe that the entire Republican power structure, the people who essentially ruled the world for the last thirty years, could not do better than this? What the hell are they up to?
It’s practically a job requirement. Need you be reminded of Adelson, Cain, Trump, Bush, and Bachman’s hubby toy, just for starters?
The GOP must be proud. Mitt has taken the GOP Clown show to Europe. I can’t wait for the Israel visit. Will Mitt make public statement about the Muslim Brotherhood or Syria? Will Mitt go all in after Iran?
This is pretty funny, but if it affects the election one bit I’ll eat a hamburger. (I don’t eat beef so…)
Time to go home.
Posted that last one somewhere else. It’s still funny even hours later.
But in a larger sense, Romney’s failure has only just begun. By the time it reaches its glorious apogee in November it will be immortalized in joke books and America-hating propaganda unto the seventh generation.
I get the “gaffe” Mitt made by naming the head of MI16. But I haven’t seen anyone ask yet: WHY did he meet the Head of British Foreign Intelligence? I mean, he’s not a currently elected representative of the United States or a diplomatic liaison. He can’t remotely have any kind of Top Secret Clearance… can he? So why did the Head of MI16 want to meet him? Or why did the current PM of the UK feel he should be included in introductions to potential GOP candidates for President? Cause, ya’know, Mitt ain’t even there yet. I wonder what was said beyond exchanging names and secret we-are-the-rulers-of-the-world handshakes.
If the WH truly played 11-dimensional chess, they would have arranged Mitt’s meet and greet tour. More likely one of Mitt’s wealthy London ex-pat donors set it all up and the UK officials didn’t know how to say no.
It’s really starting to bother me the more I think about it. If we reverse the situation, a potential leader of the Opposition Party in the UK comes to visit D.C. He’s only a potential somebody who might become the Prime Minister. Would he even get invited to the White House? And if he was received with diplomatic cordiality, would he be introduced to the current Director of the CIA? Wouldn’t this be interpreted in the U.K. as the President of the U.S. tacitly endorsing him or, at the least, giving him legitimacy?
I mean, why the heck did Cameron even meet with Romney like he is some kind of US dignitary? He’s just a rich dude at this point, not even the official GOP candidate. If Ron Paul came to London would the P.M. meet him, too?
Agree that it seems unseemly. But what would I know, I seemed to be alone among lefties that supported Obama in 2008 that viewed his pre-convention rally in Germany as a tacky stunt.
As the GOP nominee loser, Ron Paul, along with the other also rans, gets no consideration.
This is completely normal. Sarah Palin met with the government of Pakistan when she was a Vice-Presidential candidate.
But, he’s not even the official nominee, yet.
a) She had a tete-a-tete with Zadari in NYC and not Pakistan.
b) She was the GOP VP nominee.
c) It was during the 2008 election and after Obama’s foreign country charm offensive. “Normal” would be that every or most POTUS tickets do it. Maybe they do but I can’t recall any of those that did.
This thought has been running through my head all day. I would have a problem with a candidate having access to our intelligence. Once elected, that’s another story.
It’s just getting started. Bibi publicly stated that Willard is definitely not and “old friend”.
Too bad about the drought. Popcorn would come in handy watching Willard’s tour.
Somebody used the phrase “take the Mickey out of him” in regards to what the British do to a “a guy called Mitt Romney.”
I guess so.
Sorry, gentlemen, but my mother didn’t even know that Romney had been out of the US.
Without the active engagement of a substantial portion of the electorate, he (Romney) could literally shit on the queens throne and it would make no difference.
You never go broke underestimating the intelligence of the American populace.
True dat. It isn’t October yet either.
Well, obviously that commie “Mayor of London” and that “Prime Minister” guy over there don’t understand the concept of American Exceptionalism.
Good thing Mitt’s there to teach ’em.