I Defend a Republican: "King-Gate"

Romney said last week that he "saw his dad march with Martin Luther King."  (BN-Politics)  Hell, I remember my own dad and his cronies grumbling about old George being "too liberal."  I'd give Romney the benefit of the doubt, except now he is conceding that he never actually physically "saw" this, i.e., with his eyes.  His point being that he saw his father stand morally with MLK, which was kind of the point to begin with....  Man, they're going kind of hard on him for this.  And bear in mind, in case it ain't clear:  I am not a Republican.

Well, aren't they?  Mayyyybe.  Then again, maybe not..  I  had concluded that the whole "scandal" boils down to two questions:  (1)  Did George Romney march with MLK? and (2) Did Mitt actually see this?  Apparently the answer to the second question is "no."  The answer to the second might be "yes," according to this report in the The Politico.   In which case, I'm prepared to buy into his definition of "saw," in spite of what Republicans did to Bill Clinton.  I am a fair person. 

But then I learned that there are actually three questions.  Here's Andrew Sullivan with the "latest."

Here's the latest on Mitt and MLK. Thirty years ago, Romney's version of the story was even more figurative:

Mitt Romney went a step further in a 1978 interview with the Boston Herald. Talking about the Mormon Church and racial discrimination, he said: "My father and I marched with Martin Luther King Jr. through the streets of Detroit."

So now there is also a third question:  Did Romney march with---in the sense of physically, in person, using his actual feet, literally march with Dr. Martin Luther King?  Not so much, apparently.  (It Gets Better)

Yesterday, Romney spokesman Eric Fehrnstrom acknowledged that was not true. "Mitt Romney did not march with Martin Luther King," he said in an e-mail statement to the Globe.  (It Gets Better)

If I were a Republican, I'd be arguing that this whole argument is stupid and overblown, since the key question was whether Romney, as a Mormon, sincerely supports the equality of African-Americans, given that his church only  recently---in fact, in 1978!---recognized them as on a par with white humans.  He says that he did and does.  Powerline makes this point.

As a Democrat, I'd respond that it's one thing to march in Detroit with Dr. MLK and another to claim to have supported him.  One involves an element of political risk; the other----once history has vindicated King's role in changing society---doesn't.  As to George Romney, Mitt's father, The Politico reports:

Shirley Basore, 72, says she was sitting in the hairdresser’s chair in wealthy Grosse Pointe, Mich., back in 1963 when a rumpus started and she discovered that Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and her governor, George Romney, were marching for civil rights — right past the window.

With the cape still around her neck, Basore went outside and joined the parade.

“They were hand in hand,” recalled Basore, a former high-school English teacher. “They led the march. We all swung our hands, and they held their hands up above everybody else’s.”

She remembered the late governor as “extremely handsome.”

Until this week, that was just a vivid memory for a sweet retiree who now lives in Pompano Beach, Fla....

The campaign posted citations quoting one author as writing that “George Romney made a surprise appearance in his shirt sleeves and joined the parade leaders.” Stephen Hess and David S. Broder also wrote about the march in their 1967 book, “The Republican Establishment: The Present and Future of the G.O.P.” (The Politico)

This fits with what I grew up hearing people say about George Romney (who also took flack for his opposition to the Vietnam War).    But of course they'd have said the same things whether he marched with King or simply supported him.

[H]istorical evidence, including news accounts at the time, shows that George Romney never marched with King, though he supported King's agenda.

Susan Englander, assistant edi tor of the Martin Luther King Jr. Papers Project at Stanford University, who is editing the King papers from that era, told the Globe yesterday: "I researched this question, and indeed it is untrue that George Romney marched with Martin Luther King."

She said that when he was governor of Michigan, George Romney issued a proclamation in June 1963 in support of King's march in Detroit, but declined to attend, saying he did not participate in political events on Sundays. A

New York Times

story from the time confirms Englander's account.

A few days after that march, George Romney joined a civil rights march through the Detroit suburb of Grosse Pointe, but King did not attend, Englander said. A report in the New York Times confirms Englander's account of that second march, mentioning George Romney's attendance but making no mention of King.  (The Boston Globe)

I'm guessing that this was pretty formative in young Mitt's life, whether he saw it or not.  And I'm guessing he "saw" it in his mind to the extent he might well have begun to believe he really was there.

But he needs to be more careful.  This is exactly the sort of exaggeration of which he has---I believe quite rightly---accused Giuliani.  But what price, then, this highly embroidered version of, "My father always supported the civil rights of African Americans and my dad was my role model."  That is what he meant.  Why can't he just say it?

You'd think he'd have learned that "facts are stubborn things" on his own account after the whole "varmint hunting" where he made a botch of trying to approve that he is Yosemite Sam (manly!)   And then there was that whole mess where he didn't check whether the people working in his yard were illegal immigrants or not even though he ought to have been on notice. 

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