What is it with top Republicans and animals? First, we found out that former Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist used to "bring cats home from animal shelters and dissect them" while he was in medical school. Now, Mitt Romney is in trouble for stuffing his poor dog into a carrier on his station wagon's roof rack for a twelve-hour trip. Yikes.
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June 28, 2007
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About Me
I am Professor in the Department of Government at Dartmouth College. I received my Ph.D. from the Department of Political Science at Duke University and have served as a RWJ Scholar in Health Policy Research and a faculty member in the Ford School of Public Policy at the University of Michigan. I also tweet at @BrendanNyhan, contribute to The Upshot at The New York Times, and am a co-organizer of Bright Line Watch. Previously, I served as a media critic for Columbia Journalism Review, co-edited Spinsanity, a non-partisan watchdog of political spin, and co-authored All the President's Spin. For more, see my Dartmouth website.
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Not to mention Karl Rove, who joked about beheading small animals as a hobby.
Posted by: Marie | June 28, 2007 at 11:17 AM
Speaking of dogs and presidential candidates, do you remember that in 1944 Republicans claimed that a destroyer had been sent back to one of the Aleutian Islands to recover FDR's Scottish terrier Fala? In a speech to the Teamster's Union, Roosevelt brilliantly skewered the charge: “These Republican leaders have not been content with attacks on me, or my wife, or on my sons. No, not content with that, they now include my little dog, Fala. Well, of course, I don't resent attacks, and my family doesn't resent attacks, but Fala does resent them. You know, Fala is Scotch, and being a Scottie, as soon as he learned that the Republican fiction writers in Congress and out had concocted a story that I had left him behind on the Aleutian Islands and had sent a destroyer back to find him - at a cost to the taxpayers of two or three, or eight or twenty million dollars- his Scotch soul was furious. He has not been the same dog since. I am accustomed to hearing malicious falsehoods about myself - such as that old, worm-eaten chestnut that I have represented myself as indispensable. But I think I have a right to resent, to object to libelous statements about my dog."
Posted by: Rob | June 28, 2007 at 11:20 AM
On the up side: Nixon and Checkers had a happy ending.
Posted by: Seth | June 28, 2007 at 09:47 PM