“Mitt Romney Comments on Kennedy Funeral,” read the front page headline on the Dec. 17, 1963, edition of the Crane. “Note: Personal comments and observations made by Mitt Romney in Washington, Nov. 25, 1963.”

“The old Washington theory of relativity, briefly: one is important only until a bigger brass appears, was blatently [sic] obvious for whenever before have we had the top potentates of the world here to outrank our dignitaries? We all recall the day when we saw a senator of the like in some big, black limosine [sic] drive through our town. Most likely our mouths were hanging wide open as our Mommies and Daddies told [...]

"In Ohio recently, he told a long story about going to a friend’s wedding, taking some nail polish and writing on the soles of the groom-to-be’s shoes so that when he knelt at the altar, the congregation could read HELP." —We found some footage from the wedding that Mitt Romney told that crowd in Ohio about.

The new Guided by Voices album, Let's Go Eat the Factory, starts with the song called "Lasers and Laundry"—which is a perfect sort of song title for recovering D&D dorks who grow up to be middle-aged indie-rock dorks with non-exciting lives. (A demographic with a large overlap among Guided by Voices fans, I would imagine.) So I've been thinking about other good songs about laundry—good songs, perhaps, to play while you do the laundry. I've been making a list. And now that we are supposed to believe that Mitt Romney does his own laundry ("Honey, how much detergent should I use?" "Oh, just a little. Like 13.9 percent….") maybe [...]

Opposition research—political Dumpster diving perfected by Lee Atwater and Roger Stone—has been a part of American politics for nearly 200 years. Your familiarity with Willie Horton, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright and John Edwards' $400 haircut is a tribute to its irritating persistence as a campaign tool. What follows is oppo research, but we do not aim to inflict damage. In fact, The Awl's effort, a collection of early media mentions of the Republican candidates (sometimes appearing under their given names), may actually endear these Presidential hopefuls to you. Or am I the only one charmed by 11-year-old zoo booster Newton Gingrich?

MITT ROMNEY New York Times
—February 28, 1960

By [...]

Mitt Romney: "President Obama's plan to bail out the auto industry was a terrible, awful thing, and it was my idea in the first place."

Mr. Romney loves guessing the ages and ethnicities of voters — often incorrectly. Whenever Mr. Romney bends down to chat with a little kid, the whole press corps giddily inches forward, waiting for the inevitable moment when he asks a boy who is clearly 4 or 5, “How old are you? 9? 10?” (His favorite guess for nationality is French-Canadian, which was a reasonably safe bet in New Hampshire, but became more precarious in more recent primary states, like Florida and Ohio.)

—It's almost worth subscribing to the New York Times just for their "story behind the story" emails for subscribers. The one that went out this morning, [...]