Romney, lead in the Theater of the Absurd

....................................................................
Olbermann: Dog-Gate Exponentially Raises 'Absurdity' of Campaign
By George Stephanopoulos, April 22, 2012

After a week of dog-eat-dog politicking between President Obama and Mitt Romney's respective campaigns, Keith Olbermann said today that the " dog-gate" controversies have gotten out of hand.

Politicos, pundits and the presidential-campaign watching public spent the past week pondering which is worse, a presidential candidate who put his dog in a kennel strapped to the roof of his carfor a 12-hour drive or a president who ate dog meat as a child living in Indonesia.

"It raises the level of absurdity to something exponential," Olbermann said on "This Week" about the Romney campaign criticizing Obama for consuming dog meat when he was 6 years old.

"With so many valuable questions going on, we're wasting most of the time dealing with the dogs," the former MSNBC and CurrentTV host said.

But ABC's George Will said neither the candidates nor their campaigns are responsible for the recent dominance of dogs in the presidential race. Instead, he said, the media is to blame.

"The horse race is over, and the sugar rush that the media got from that is gone, and therefore they're looking for something to keep their mind off, I guess, big questions," Will said during the "This Week" roundtable.

Wall Street Journal columnist Peggy Noonan argued that with the breakneck speed of the campaign this year, dogs may be the topic of the week, but they are not here to stay.

"There are literally thousands of people in the United States now who are employed to cover these campaigns minute by minute and they need something to say," Noonan said.  "And so it's dogs today.  It'll be cats tomorrow."

As long as the dog story persists, ABC News contributor Donna Brazile said Romney should be worried. The presumptive GOP nominee has been thus far unable to shake free from the story of putting his dog Seamus in a kennel strapped to the roof of his car during a 12-hour drive from Boston to Ontario, Canada for a family vacation in 1983.

"This is a narrative, and for Mitt Romney, he has to be concerned about the Seamus scandal because it might fit into this narrative that perhaps he's not like us," Brazile said.

....................................................................