Mitt Romney Going for the Gold in Absurd Mudslinging Competition

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Here is the Romney campaign’s latest effort to mobilize the Hispanic vote in Florida with an uplifting, inspirational message:

NARRATOR: Who supports Barack Obama?

HUGO CHAVEZ: “If I were American, I’d vote for Obama.”

NARRATOR: Raúl Castro’s daughter, Mariela Castro, would vote for Obama.

MARIELA CASTRO: “I would vote for President Obama.”

NARRATOR: And to top it off, Obama’s Environmental Protection Agency sent emails for Hispanic Heritage month with a photo of Che Guevara.

CHAVEZ: “If Obama were from Barlovento (a Venezuelan town), he’d vote for Chávez.”

ROMNEY: I’m Mitt Romney, and I approve this message.

Is it wrong to admit that this made me laugh more than it actually outraged me? Probably. But this is so ridiculously negative that it’s almost as if Romney is competing in some kind of Monty Python-esque mudslinging competition. Apparently Romney knows it, too: he refused repeated requests from the Miami Herald to make the ad available, so they had to make their own iPhone recording of it straight off the TV.

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DONALD TRUMP & DEMOCRACY

Mother Jones was founded to do journalism differently. We stand for justice and democracy. We reject false equivalence. We go after stories others don’t. We’re a nonprofit newsroom, because the kind of truth-telling investigations we do doesn’t happen under corporate ownership.

And we need your support like never before, to fight back against the existential threats American democracy faces. Fundraising for nonprofit media is always a challenge, and we need all hands on deck right now. We have no cushion; we leave it all on the field.

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