Today’s Quotes: The Great White Dope

“The American people probably aren’t going to fall in love with Mitt Romney.”
— Rep. John Boehner, as quoted by Politico.com.

“Other politicians look at this guy and say, ‘Wow, that dude is a phony, two-faced, flip-flopping weasel.’ And that’s really saying something.”
— From “Mitt Romney’s Skeleton Closet: Scandals, Quotes, and Character,” RealChange.org.

“Mitt Romney is a grown-up version of the nastiest, most obnoxious snobby rich kid characters that James Spader played in the 1980s (The millionaire Republican governor’s son who bullies Duckie. Tell me that young Mittens is not straight out of a John Hughes film).”
— Richard Metzger, Dangerous Minds, May 10, 2012.

“Earning about $380,000 puts you in the top 1% of American earners. Romney makes that every WEEK. But the real problem is that — unlike, say, Newt Gingrich or Bill Clinton or Barack Obama who started poor and got rich — Romney has lived in a strange bubble of wealth for his entire life. He simply doesn’t know what it’s like to live as a normal person.”
— From “Mitt Romney’s Skeleton Closet: Scandals, Quotes, and Character,” RealChange.org.

“I believe in an America where millions of Americans believe in an America that’s the America millions of Americans believe in. That’s the America I love.”
– Mitt Romney in January 2012.

“I like those fancy raincoats you bought. Really sprung for the big bucks.”
— Mitt Romney to a group of NASCAR fans wearing plastic ponchos at the Daytona 500 (February 2012), from Political Humor at About.com.

“He is the most intellectually dishonest human being in the history of politics.”
— Barney Frank, former congressman from Massachusetts.

“Granted, presidential candidates are no strangers to disingenuous or overstated claims; it’s pretty much endemic to the business. But Romney is doing something very different and far more pernicious. Quite simply, the United States has never been witness to a presidential candidate, in modern American history, who lies as frequently, as flagrantly and as brazenly as Mitt Romney.
“Now, in general, those of us in the pundit class are really not supposed to accuse politicians of lying — they mislead, they embellish, they mischaracterize, etc. Indeed, there is natural tendency for nominally objective reporters, in particular, to stay away from loaded terms such as lying. Which is precisely why Romney’s repeated lies are so effective. In fact, lying is really the only appropriate word to use here, because, well, Romney lies a lot.” […]
“…Romney persists in repeating the same lies over and over, even after they’ve been debunked.
“This is perhaps the most interesting and disturbing element of Romney’s tireless obfuscation: that even when corrected, it has little impact on the presumptive GOP nominee’s behavior. This is happening at a time when fact-checking operations in major media outlets have increased significantly, yet that appears to have no effect on the Romney campaign.”
— Michael Cohen, “Mendacious Mitt: Romney’s bid to become liar-in-chief,” The Guardian (UK), June 21, 2012.

“This is the Republicans’ great hope, their great strategy: Forget about Romney. Romney is a cipher, a place holder. He has but one real quality: He is not Barack Obama.”
— Roger Simon, Politico.com, July 10, 2012.

“If you want to know why most people don’t like Mitt Romney, all you have to do is listen to him for fifteen minutes.”
— Anonymous