Home/Daniel Larison/Mitt Romney’s “Pretty Much” A Terrible Liar

Mitt Romney’s “Pretty Much” A Terrible Liar

To hear Mitt Romney talk on the campaign trail, you might think the Republican presidential candidate had a gun rack in the back of his pickup truck.

“I purchased a gun when I was a young man. I’ve been a hunter pretty much all my life,” he said this week in Keene, N.H., to a man sporting a National Rifle Association cap.

Yet the former Massachusetts governor’s hunting experience is limited to two trips at the bookends of his 60 years: as a 15-year-old, when he hunted rabbits with his cousins on a ranch in Idaho, and last year, when he shot quail on a fenced game preserve in Georgia. ~Newsday

I’ve been shooting once or twice in my time, I have been on a horse a few times in my life (mostly when I was very young), my school had all of us do a five-day backpacking trip in the Jemez, and I have been fishing on occasion, so by Romneyian standards I must be the Great Outdoorsman.

The quail hunting trip might at least work to Romney’s advantage in a very narrow sense, in that he did not shoot any of his companions in the face.

about the author

Daniel Larison is a senior editor at TAC, where he also keeps a solo blog. He has been published in the New York Times Book Review, Dallas Morning News, World Politics Review, Politico Magazine, Orthodox Life, Front Porch Republic, The American Scene, and Culture11, and was a columnist for The Week. He holds a PhD in history from the University of Chicago, and resides in Lancaster, PA. Follow him on Twitter.

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