Democrashield.com

In order to diffuse criticism that the Mormon church is racist (since it took them until 1978 to allow African-Americans to be ordained or participate in certain temple ceremonies) Mitt Romney started saying that his father–Michigan Governor George Romney–once marched with Martin Luther King Jr.Unfortunately for him, a few journalists started digging and they found that Romney’s story is completely made-up.More from Blue Mass Group:

Mitt Romney will stop at nothing to score political points. Even if it means lying outright about his father.

I saw my father march with Martin Luther King.

Uh huh.

He made a similar statement Sunday during an appearance on NBC’s “Meet the Press.” He said, “You can see what I believed and what my family believed by looking at our lives. My dad marched with Martin Luther King. My mom was a tireless crusader for civil rights.”

Right. Got it — dad marched with MLK. Even David Broder says so, and supplies some corroborative detail intended to give artistic verisimilitude to an otherwise bald and unconvincing narrative. (BMG bonus points for identifying the source of that phrase!)

As Mitt Romney recalled in his address, his father was able to remind people that he had marched with Martin Luther King Jr. (through upscale Grosse Pointe, Mich., in support of open-housing legislation).

Problem is, it’s not true. None of it. As the Phoenix’s David Bernstein reveals (see also update here) in some superb digging, George Romney never marched “with” — i.e., in the presence of, at the same place at the same time — Martin Luther King, Jr.

Here’s Bernstein, who in addition to calling out Romney, calls out Broder:

[W]hile the late George W. Romney, a four-term governor of Michigan, can lay claim to a strong record on civil rights, the Phoenix can find no evidence that the senior Romney actually marched with King, nor anything in the public record suggesting that he ever claimed to do so. Nor did Mitt Romney ever previously claim that this took place, until long after his father passed away in 1995 – not even when defending accusations of the Mormon church’s discriminatory past during his 1994 Senate campaign.Asked about the specifics of George Romney’s march with MLK, Mitt Romney’s campaign told the Phoenix that it took place in Grosse Pointe, Michigan. That jibes with the description proffered by David S. Broder in a Washington Post column written days after Mitt’s College Station speech.

Broder, in that column, references a 1967 book he co-authored on the Republican Party, which included a chapter on George Romney. It includes a one-line statement that the senior Romney “has marched with Martin Luther King through the exclusive Grosse Pointe suburb of Detroit.”

But that account is incorrect. King never marched in Grosse Pointe, according to the Grosse Pointe Historical Society, and had not appeared in the town at all at the time the Broder book was published. “I’m quite certain of that,” says Suzy Berschback, curator of the Grosse Pointe Historical Society. (B[ro]der was not immediately available for comment.)

Faced with the unfortunate reality that Mitt was making things up, his campaign has retreated into a hilarious Humpty-Dumptyism about what it means to “march with” someone. You see, it doesn’t mean that you were actually there. It means that, well, you participated in a march about a related topic on a different day, and maybe you thought about the guy while you were doing it.

Mitt, in other words, was “speaking figuratively, not literally.”

[Emphasis Added]

This is just ridiculous. Romney has been lying and flip-flopping since day 1 of his campaign, but this more than takes the cake. What sense does it make to diffuse criticism that the Mormon church is racist by making up a story about his father marching with Martin Luther King, even though such a claim is blatantly untrue and can be proven false relatively easily? And what kind of truth-bending hair-splitting parsing is it to say that his father marched “figuratively” with King? How does one figuratively march with someone?

Seriously, is this is the best the GOP can do? A flip-flopping serially-exaggerating Governor of Massachusetts, the scandal-prone law-bending cross-dressing Mayor of New York City, and the corrupt, incompetent, vindictive, radical fundamentalist Arkansas Governor with exceptionally poor judgment and Ron Paul? Seriously?

Conservatives don’t seem to understand that the Republican Party is at a historic crossroads. They have the chance to leave their Reagan-Bush era baggage behind and redefine what it means to be a conservative. They can ditch the burden of the Bush years by nominating a visionary candidate who will lead their party into the future, undoing the damage they caused and improving the lives of millions of Americans.

Instead, the GOP nominates a field full of faceless cookie-cutter Republicans; a field full of liars, exaggerators, incompetents, radicals, extremists and others who are completely unfit to be America’s next President. Romney’s latest fabrication shows just how poor the Republican field is, and just how desperate the GOP has become.

UPDATE: Daily Kos has this supposed clarification from the Romney campaign:

A spokesperson for Mitt Romney now tells the Phoenix that George W. Romney and Martin Luther King Jr. marched together in June, 1963 — although possibly not on the same day or in the same city.

[Emphasis Added]

Again, how can you and someone else march together if you’re not in the same city or even doing it on the same day? Doesn’t that contradict the meaning of “together?” Do we even need to discuss this?

Romney’s in serious trouble. He’s been losing momentum for weeks, and this latest incident shows just how much of a slick used car salesman he is–willing to say anything, anything at all, just to get you on his side. This man should not be allowed anywhere near the White House. Period.

UPDATE II: More from The Huffington Post’s Chris Kelly:

Although they never marched together, they did march separately. In that they were both in Michigan and ambulatory at the same time. And, by “the same time,” I mean “different times.”

Except, if you read the Phoenix story, George Romney didn’t actually “march” anywhere. But he was present at an event. Where King was not.

And Mitt never “saw” it, because he was doing missionary work in France.

WHAT MITT MEANT:

We can all agree that George Romney and Martin Luther King were both alive in June, 1963.