‘Angry’ Mitt Romney ‘Loses His Cool’ With Voter At New Hampshire Town Hall
Former GOP presidential frontrunner Mitt Romney got into a heated exchange with a voter at a New Hampshire town hall event Wednesday over his support for a balanced budget amendment, and by the mainstream media’s selective standards, lost his cool when she tried to engage him. In clips played on MSNBC’s The Daily Rundown this morning, Romney certainly appeared angry by those standards, and the full exchange, while slightly less damning, demonstrated a marked contrast with how President Obama dealt with an aggressive questioner recently.
The snippets that MSNBC played, of Romney snippily asking the town hall attendee to let him answer her question, were obviously designed to show the candidate as impatient and besieged, but placing them in context doesn’t change things all that much. Romney aggressively interrupts the woman’s calm, if rambling, question by asking her, “Did somebody in the room say that we don’t need any government?”
When she tries to engage his question, calling the balanced budget amendment “irresponsible,” he interrupts her again, abruptly asking, “Do you have a question, and let me answer your question.”
“Yes, how do you think the government can not provide funds for the people, its citizens?”
Romney begins to answer the question, and from there, you can’t hear what the woman is saying, but Romney reacts angrily to her attempts to follow up, saying, “You had your turn madam, now let me have mine!”
Unfortunately, you can’t hear what she was saying, but it probably had to do with the fact that Romney’s answer skirted the central premise of her question, which is that a balanced budget amendment would handcuff the government in the event of any number of catastrophes, as would the GOP’s absolute refusal to pursue additional revenues.
She might also have been pointing out that Mitt Romney, and all of the other governors he cites as balancing their budgets year after year, do so with the help of billions in federal funds.
Even if you allow that the woman might have been aggressively interrupting Romney, his performance is still a stark contrast from the way President Obama handled a pair of Tea Party members who aggressively questioned, and interrupted, him over Vice President Biden’s comments on the debt ceiling negotiations. Whether or not you liked his responses, the President engaged them calmly and extensively, even as he shook hands with others in the crowd.
Why is it, then, that whenever the President’s pulse gets above 80, the media react as though Bill Bixby just mashed his hand with a tire iron, but Republicans get a pass? The media should present Romney’s performance here (fairly and completely, of course), and point out that a presidential candidate ought to be able to keep his composure when dealing with voters, even ones they disagree with.
This is an opinion piece. The views expressed in this article are those of just the author.
