Politics: The Audacity of Rope-a-Dope

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Politics The Audacity of Rope-a-Dope Mitt Romney may not be the most popular politician with the Republican Party's conservative base, but Team Romney knows how to throw them a bone. By David Weigel Posted Wednesday, Apr 18, 2012, at 11:51 PM ET Eric Fehrnstrom wields Twitter like a torero wields a red flag. On Tuesday night, after his client and advisee Mitt Romney had spent a day making speeches about taxes, Fehrnstrom noticed a picture of President Obama playing with his dog, Bo. David Axelrod, his nemesis in the Obama campaign, had tweeted the photo to tweak Romney. "How loving dog owners transport their dogs," wrote Axelrod. Get it? Axelrod was making either the 12,936th or 12,937th joke about a 29-year-old incident involving Romney's dog, a car roof, a 12-hour drive, and dribbling feces. (The first thousand jokes were told by Gail Collins.) Bad timing. Fehrnstrom had read a blog post resurrecting the bit from Dreams From My Father wherein Obama remembered youthful digestive experiments with "dog meat (tough), snake meat (tougher), and roasted grasshopper (crunchy)." Obama had eaten dog meat? This was too good to keep on Jim Treacher's news blog. Fehrnstrom retweeted Axelrod and added "In hindsight, a chilling photo." Within an hour, Jake Tapper of ABC News was out with a story titled "Romney Campaign Notes that Obama as a Boy Ate Dog Meat." Not long after that, the Drudge Report popped a link to Tapper. One tweet from an iPad, and the Romney campaign had knocked back five years of dog stories. You've got a bogus controversy? Yeah? Yeah? How do ya like this bogus controversy? Great things can grow out of stupid stories. Fehrnstrom jacked into an emerging, jokey conservative ... To continue reading, click here. Join the Fray: our reader discussion forum What did you think of this article? POST A MESSAGE | READ MESSAGES Also In Slate The Federal Judge Who Inserted a Tea Party Screed Into a Ruling The Secret Service Is Still Protecting Newt Gingrich? Why? A Bold New Attempt in New Orleans To Hold Prosecutors Accountable for Their Dirty Tricks	Advertisement
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