In a tele-townhall with Wisconsin voters today, Mitt Romney touted his own connections to the state. Then he shared this anecdote, which was reported by the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel:
“One of most humorous I think relates to my father. You may remember my father, George Romney, was president of an automobile company called American Motors … They had a factory in Michigan, and they had a factory in Kenosha, Wisconsin, and another one in Milwaukee, Wisconsin,” said Romney. “And as the president of the company he decided to close the factory in Michigan and move all the production to Wisconsin. Now later he decided to run for governor of Michigan and so you can imagine that having closed the factory and moved all the production to Wisconsin was a very sensitive issue to him, for his campaign.”
Romney said he recalled a parade in which the school band marching with his father’s campaign only knew the Wisconsin fight song, not the Michigan song.
“So every time they would start playing ‘On Wisconsin, on Wisconsin,’ my dad’s political people would jump up and down and try to get them to stop, because they didn’t want people in Michigan to be reminded that my dad had moved production to Wisconsin,” said Romney, laughing.
It's a line the Democrats couldn't have scripted better in pigeonholing a man Vice President Joe Biden referred to this morning as "out of touch." And the story was quickly flagged by the Obama campaign and sent to press with the subject line, "Romney Finds Humor in MI Lay Offs."