Mitt Romney's Poor Character On Display

Are you skeptical of my take on Mitt Romney? If so, lucky me, Romney is intent on illustrating my point about his character:

"I love being home, in this place where Ann and I were raised, where but the both of us were born," Romney said after introducing his wife, fellow Michigan native Ann. "No one's ever asked to see my birth certificate. They know that this is the place where we were born and raised."

Romney knows that the reason people wanted to see Obama's birth certificate - and kept demanding to "see" it even after various copies hd been released - has nothing to do with Obama's character. His "joke" not only gives implicit support to the "birthers", it also support for thinly veiled racism. Nobody asked to see John McCain's birth certificate, either, and he wasn't born in the United States.

At best Romney is engaging in the type of race baiting pushed by people like Kathleen Parker, that something about Obama (now what could it be...) keeps him from being a "full-blooded American" and understanding America the way we wh...ole-blooded Americans do. At worst, like his continuing lies about welfare, it's outright race-baiting.

Either way, it's not a joke you would expect from a man of virtue.

Update: More evidence of the character of Romney and his campaign:

[Top Romney adviser Kevin] Madden said Romney did not need to apologize because he was simply drawing attention to the fact that Michigan, where he was campaigning, was the state where he himself was born and raised....

Madden said Romney wasn't intentionally making a reference to the questions about Obama's birth certificate.

Did somebody expect Romney to apologize? No, this approach of slathering on another layer of mendacity is much more in-character.

Update 2: Romney has now spoken in his own defense:

“I’ve said throughout the campaign and before, there’s no question about where he was born,” Romney said in the interview. “He was born in the U.S. This was fun about us, and coming home. And humor, you know — we’ve got to have a little humor in a campaign.”

The thing is, if it was a joke about "coming home" and not about Obama, it's not funny. It's not a joke. It would just be a weird comment that would leave his audience scratching their collective heads. It's only a joke if it's a nod to the birthers, and its difficult to think of anybody but a birther who would find that type of race-baiting to be funny.

A parallel would be if the President were to joke about Romney's "magic underwear Which, of course, won't happen because, for all of his faults, the President has more character than that.