A [Manchester Union Leader] columnist quoted Romney thusly this week: “He said he’s flown F-16s and shot Uzis and AK-47s, ‘and they’re fun.'”
Asked if Romney, who never served in the military, has ever been a gun-toting warplane pilot, spokesman Eric Fehrnstrom replied: “When he was in Iraq last year, the governor participated in a demonstration where he was allowed to fire fully automatic weapons. He got the chance to take the stick of an F-16 under the supervision of a trained pilot. That was at Hill Air Force base in Utah during the period of time he was running the Olympics.”
Wonder if he bagged any desert varmints with his machine-gun spray?
It’s getting very difficult to satirize Mitt Romney. Could he possibly make himself look any sillier?
Of course it would be fun to fire an automatic weapon. And a ride on an F-16 would be about as thrilling as it gets, especially if you are allowed to hold the stick. He might as well have opined that the Green Mountains in autumn are a sight to see.
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This seems like little more than an opportunity for the Herald’s novelist to make a cheap shot. Whoop de doo.
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I don’t get you guys sometimes.
I see what you’re saying, CMD, but I think this is highlighted because Romney’s comments just seem a bit strange. It gets at the fact that he would never say anything like this at all in his previous runs for elected office, and now he’s all about firing assault weapons.
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It’s just an awkward and silly attempt to appeal to the conservative base. Like the rest of his schtick, I’m not sure it works.
Mitt, in doing his pandering bit once again is sounding like a moron. It’s noteworthy because of the past episodes with the NRA membership, the varmints, etc.
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Mitt is doing a far better job of mocking himself than anyone else could do. Try this, read his quotes and ask yourself; is this from The Onion, or is it real? That would be a good test if he’s making a fool out of himself.
Although it was hard to miss in the original “varmint” comment.
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But as for this, I just don’t see it, unless you for whatever reason believe that only a hard-right conservative would find an opportunity to blaze away with a fully automatic rifle– never mind a ride in an F-16– to be pretty cool.
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On the other hand, I guess only a true progressive would find it shocking to the conscience that someone would find those activities to be a “blast”…
But it’s not really about the F-16, or whether it would be a rush in doing what he did. It’s about Mitt and pushing the “see I shoot guns” shtick.
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I’ve about had enough of him for a while.
I suspect you haven’t drunk enough partisan Koolaid yet.
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I think your point is well-taken: Since we think Romney is icky, you can be sure that we will construe anything Romney says as icky. For example, we expect Romney to say icky things about sunsets over oceans.
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Wait a minute…
downthread.
That if you fired some heavy weapons and flew an F-16 you’d be blogging bout how boring it was the next day.
and if someone offered you a ride in a tank, insisting of course that you don appropriate safety gear, you’d no doubt take them up on it, and maybe you’d even think it was (to quote Romney) “fun.”
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And we all know how that turned out.
Romney, like Cheney and all these other wannabe tough guys, is just another rich coward whose gunplay consists only in shooting at things that can’t shoot back, while endlessly endorsing the shipping out of 18-year-olds to do their dirty work. They are absolutely, absolutely disguting people.
I guess the same could be said of Bill Clinton (oh wait, he was born poor, white trash!) Or better still, FDR … he certainly shipped out plenty of 18-year-olds, so he must have been a “rich coward,” too.
Seriously, I want to get my father’s US civil war era musket (and the accompanying paraphernalia to mould the bullets). Shooting that (which I did, when I was a kid in the 1960s) is a real testosterone generator. Shooting AK47s? Not so much.
Have you ever actually shot an AK? How about an AR-15? Ruger Mini-14? Ruger 10/22 perhaps?
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All of those are a blast to shoot. I’m not saying shooting your grandfather’s musket isn’t fun (although it’s certainly is extremely dangerous) but saying shooting an AK isn’t fun is ridiculous.