The Mittsy Chronicles: The Summer Of His Discontent

So, Mittsy's team of handlers and enablers and spinners might be jumping for GOP joy because he's raising so much money for his campaign—Is that really a surprise when the 1% supports him?—but when you look at the last month of Romney goofs and gaffes, the laughter is tinged with a little incredulity that their man is a complete dumbass. So, let's walk back over the last four weeks or so in Mittsydom, courtesy of the good folks at TPM:

July 1: Mittsy is on vacation in Wolfeboro, New Hampshire. The previous couple of weeks had been among the most intense of the election, marked by the Supreme Court’s decision to uphold the Affordable Care Act [ACA], and Obama unleashed a bunch of ads reminding us all of Mittsy's involvement with Bain Capital, a leader in outsourcing of American jobs.

July 2: One of Mittsy top advisors, Eric Fehrnstrom, breaks with GOP talking points, and starts calling the ACA’s mandate a “penalty,” not a “tax.”

July 3: Mother Jones publishes multiple stories on Mittsy's ALLEGED exit from Bain Capital in 1999, noting that his name still appears on SEC filings related to later investments.

July 4: Mittsy flips on Eric Fehrnstrom's flop, when he says the ACA mandate is a tax, and not a penalty, though he says the same mandate in his own Romneycare was not a tax. Huh?

July 5: Irate by Mittsy’s handling of the ACA decision, the Wall Street Journal warns that he is in danger of blowing the election: “If Mitt Romney loses his run for the White House, a turning point will have been his decision Monday to absolve President Obama of raising taxes on the middle class.”

July 6: Okay, so he has a slightly good day when he slams the president’s jobs record after a weak employment report. It marks one of the few days that Mittsy can actually convey a coherent message.

July 10: TPM finds SEC filings listing Mittsy’s “principal occupation” as “Managing Director of Bain Capital, Inc.” after he says he departed the company to run the Olympics.

July 11: Mittsy gets booed at the NAACP conference for pledging to repeal Obamacare.

July 12: The Boston Globe finds numerous examples of SEC filings that refer to Mittsy as CEO, chairman and sole owner of Bain Capital after his 1999 Olympics leave. The Obama campaign demands Mittsy prove his claim that he doesn’t bear responsibility for a variety of investments that occurred after his stated departure, and suggests Mittsy may have committed a “felony” if he misled, er, lied, on his SEC reports.

July 13: As is his style, Mittsy offers no explanation for the Bain mess, but instead demands that Obama apologize to him for even bringing it up.

July 14: The Obama campaign responds by unveiling a new ad that shows Mittsy singing “America the Beautiful” while news stories about his foreign investments and holdings flash on screen. The Washington Post calls it “perhaps the most memorable of the cycle.” I say it’s the best ad EVER!

July 17: Romney surrogate John Sununu goes all ape-shit in the media, talking about Obama’s teen drug use and his brief childhood move to Indonesia, and demanding that Obama “learn to be an American.” He offers a lukewarm apology for his racism the same evening.

July 18: Mittsy tries to build steam by using an out of context Obama quote....“You didn’t build that”....that FAUX News spends dozens of segments covering.

July 19: Mittsy presses on with “you didn’t build that,” releasing a video that misleadingly chops up and weaves together pieces of Obama’s speech. In other words, he lies. Again.

July 20: A gunman kills 12 people in Colorado, prompting both candidates to temporarily abandon negative ads in the state and drop partisan rhetoric from their public appearances.

July 25: Mittsy goes to London. Let the games begin! Hoping to showcase his foreign policy credentials, Mittsy puts his thousand-dollar loafers in his mouth by questioning Britain’s handling of security and then he questions British enthusiasm for the games.

July 26: With headlines like “Mitt the Twit,” the British press lambasts Mittsy for his remarks. Prime Minister David Cameron slams Mittsy’s Salt Lake City games: “[I]t’s easier if you hold an Olympic Games in the middle of nowhere” while London Mayor Boris Johnson mocks Mittsy at a pre-Olympics rally, and the crowd cheers.

July 29: At a fundraiser in Jerusalem, Mittsy chalks up Israel’s economic superiority over Palestine to “culture” and “providence,” prompting Palestinian officials to condemn his remarks as “racist.”

July 30: Mittsy tells ABC News that he would be “happy” to provide details on whether he paid a lower tax rate than 13.9 percent in 2010 in previous returns, but his campaign denies the network’s request for the follow-up information.

July 31: Contradicting, a 1% word for lying, his own speech, Mittsy denies to FAUX News that he was referring to Palestinian culture, but then he flip-flops....again....and publishes a National Review op-ed standing by his original remarks.

July 31: Mittsy’s traveling press secretary, Rick Gorka, dresses down American reporters following the candidate in Poland, telling them to “kiss my ass” and “shove it.”

July 31: Harry Reid claims he has an unnamed Bain Capital “source” who says Mittsy didn’t pay “any” taxes for 10 years. The unsubstantiated claim spreads like wildfire.

August 1: The nonpartisan Tax Policy Center releases a study which suggests Mittsy’s tax plan would either explode the deficit or increase taxes by an average of $500 for the 95% and profit the 1%. Despite the fact that he often cites the Tax Policy Center in his own speeches, Mittsy calls their report “partisan” and “biased” but does not release any details to contradict it.

August 2: The Obama campaign releases an ad based on the Tax Policy Center’s findings.

August 2: Mittsy tells Reid to “put up or shut up” on his Bain source and Harry Reid responds that Mittsy should release his tax returns if he wants to prove his “extremely credible” source wrong. Mittsy does not.

August 3: Romney condemns Reid’s claim: “I have paid taxes every year, and a lot of taxes.” And still, he refuses to prove it.

Ah, Mittsy. A bad summer for you, but I’m loving it!