On Friday, President Barack Obama launched a new attack on his opponent, charging that the Republican presidential case suffers from “Romnesia.” From an Obama campaign press release:
Romnesia [Rom-nee-zhuh] Noun—a condition affecting Mitt Romney, who has shifted his positions from “severely conservative” to “severely kidding”—conveniently forgetting the conservative promises he’s made over the past six years that he’s been running for president.
At a grassroots event today in Virginia, President Obama reminded voters that with just weeks before the election, Romney has come down with a case of “Romnesia” because he is now forgetting what his own positions are on issues important to women and their families—like refusing to say whether or not he’d sign a bill that helps women fight back when they don’t get equal pay for equal work, supporting legislation that would let your employer deny women coverage for contraceptive care, and saying that he’d be “delighted” to sign a law outlawing a woman’s right to choose in all cases.
Romnesia—several months ago our David Corn deployed the same term in an article headlined, “A Case of Romnesia“:
Mitt Romney has a history problem.
It’s not only that past events and stances—say, his implementation of an Obamacare-like reform in Massachusetts, or his 1994 call for “full equality” for gay and lesbians—undermine his current efforts by calling into question his political integrity. Romney often distorts—or is detached from—significant realities of his personal past.
Corn, who described several instances of Romnesia in that piece, may not have been the first to coin the term, but he was an early adopter. You can watch the president embrace this diagnosis here:
