Apparently, Mitt Romney is a big fan of last year’s The Prestige In a recent interview on CNBC’s Kudlow & Company Mitt outdid even the great magician’s of the past. He successfully made Senator Larry Craig (R-IDAHO), NOT GAY senator and Mitt Romney supporter, disappear and replaced him with Bill Clinton.
The Pledge: The magician shows you something ordinary: a deck of cards, a bird or a man. He shows you this object and asks you to inspect it to see if it is indeed real.
Kudlow:”… Mr. Craig’s one of your Senate leaders. I believe he was your Idaho state chairman. What is your comment on the Craig problem, sir?”
Gov. Romney: “…Very disappointing. He’s no longer associated with my campaign, as you can imagine. ”
The Turn: The magician takes the ordinary and makes it do something extraordinary.
Kudlow: “…Mr. Craig was forced to deny having sex with pages. Isn’t this the sort of thing that reminds us all of the Mark Foley (R-FL) episode last fall, before the elections, that was devastating to the Republicans?”
Gov. Romney: “Yeah, I think it reminds us of Mark Foley and Bill Clinton. I think it reminds us of the fact that people who are elected to public office continue to disappoint…”
Now you’re looking for the secret.. but you won’t find it, because of course you’re not really looking. You don’t really want to know. You want to be fooled. But you wouldn’t clap yet. Because making something disappear isn’t enough; you have to bring it back.
That’s why every magic trick has a third act, the hardest part, the part we call The Prestige.
KUDLOW: Governor, if there were a President Romney, and you heard this, and your staff briefed you on some of the past allegations and charges, and there seems to be something of a cover-up, a silence on this with regard to Craig, would you not call for him to resign from the Senate?
Gov. ROMNEY: If–you know, I don’t know the circumstances right now of his setting, and so I really can’t call–make that call without having reviewed it, Larry. I will review that, and we’ll give you a call on that. I certainly felt that Bill Clinton shouldn’t have stayed in office. But you know, with regards to this setting, why, we’ll take a close look at it.
KUDLOW: Actually, on that Clinton point, you threw Clinton in with the Craig episode and the Mark Foley episode. Could you just expand a little bit on that for us, sir?
Gov. ROMNEY: I’m not sure I need to. I think we’ve all heard the story about Bill Clinton and the fact that he let us down in his personal conduct with a–with a White House intern. And that strikes me as another one of these extraordinary acts of falling short of what America would expect of elected officials, particularly one who should be held to a higher standard.
You really have to stand up and applaud the guy. A member of his party, with a history of allegations that include public fellatio, cocaine use and sex with male teenage congressional pages, is accused of soliciting gay sex in an airport bathroom (AGAIN!) and he turns it to a discussion of Bill Clinton and Monica Lewinsky. He even gets the interviewer to head down that road with him. Brilliant!
Transcript of Mitt Romney on CNBC’s Kudlow & Company
