Future Ambassador Newt's FOR THE DOGS Ad

Mittens' dog issue has come back to bite him. Rachel, a dog owner, led off last's night's show with TMI graphic gross-out detail, for which she later apologized to us viewers, with a mischievous smirk. The reproach by FOX personality Chris Wallace in 2008 and The Hill in 2012, to name a few, shows how much this issue cuts through tribal media barriers.

For some inexplicable reason, Salon's Steve Kornacki drew the short straw to do the "brown liquid" color commentary, dropping a bit of misinformation along the way (he didn't know), about a photo presumably depicting Mittens getting a shoeshine at an airport tarmac when, unfortunately, he was only getting wanded. Thank you Rachel for the lightning-fast correction. Here's the question, though: How many normal travelers get to sit in a chair on the airport tarmac to be wanded by a TSA employee whose union Mittens has vowed to destroy? So the photo, with explanatory text, is still worth posting. The only missing element to complete Mittens' regal traveler's treatment is a red carpet:

A smug wanding ...

Back to Mittens' dog problem, here's The Hill blogger Lanny Davis's outraged (excerpted) report; it says something larger about how a vulture capitalist who made his millions decimating companies, firing its employees, and shuttering communities built around those companies, behaves with "emotion-free crisis management;" kind of like Jeremy Irons in Margin Call:

"In brief, as the Boston Globe first reported in 2007, in 1983, Mitt Romney, then 36 years old, drove his station wagon packed with five sons and his wife on a 12-hour trip from Boston to Ontario, where his parents had a cottage on Lake Huron.

He took a dog carrier and attached it to the station wagon’s roof rack, built a special windshield, and put his dog Seamus into the carrier, where the dog remained for the 12-hour trip.

Was the dog distressed? Was it illegal under Massachusetts law as cruelty? There is some evidence that both are true.

During the trip, the Boston Globe reported, Romney’s oldest son, Tagg, looked around through the rear window and yelled, “Dad — gross!” A brown liquid was dripping down the back window — diarrhea from an animal that just might have been caused by the stress of being inside a cage for 12 hours on top of a car going 60 mph.

And what did Romney do, even after knowing of the dog's diarrhea? Did he realize that perhaps Seamus should be shown some mercy, cleaned up and allowed in the car, to sleep on someone’s lap?

No.

Here’s how the Globe described what Romney then did:

“As the rest of the boys joined in the howls of disgust, Romney coolly pulled off the highway and into a service station. There he borrowed a hose, washed down Seamus and the car, then hopped back onto the highway. It was a tiny preview of a trait he would grow famous for in business: emotion-free crisis management.”

Emotion-free crisis management??!"

South Carolina's SC Forward Progress — whose purpose is "to expose the gaining influence of right-wing extremism in South Carolina politics, how such extremism relates to and affects the Republican presidential nominating process" — has staged "Dogs Against Mitt Romney" demonstrations at Romney rallies:

Newt Gingrich, the Democrats' walking, rage against the Mittens talking point, puts it all in context, earning praise from United Steel Workers International President Leo Gerard, and idle speculation from E. J. Dionne that Newt is possibly vying for an Ambassadorial appointment from President Obama. Possibly to France, where Callista will have the run of Chanel and French haute couture? Because he's surely not landing a prime speaking role at the GOP convention much less a spot on the Mittens "dream ticket" or cabinet.