Maybe President Obama is still feeling funny from last night: Stumping today in Fairfax, Virginia, he criticized Mitt Romney for "side-stepping" on women's issues like abortion and contraception—and of suffering from acute "Romnesia," CBS News reports. "Now that we are 18 days out ... Mr. 'Severely Conservative' wants you to believe he was kidding on all things he said last year," Obama said to about 9,000 people at a women's health event. "We've got a name this condition that he's going through. I think it's called Romnesia!"
The dig is trending on Twitter, but bloggers left and right aren't too impressed:
- "'Romnesia'? Really?" asks Alexandra Petri at ComPost. "It helps to have jokes" to get voters to like you, she admits. "But surely there’s better material than this."
- At Red Alert Politics, Francesca Chambersis writes that "Romnesia" simply doesn't exist: "Romney has never said or suggested that he wants to stop women from having access to contraception."
- Comedy Central accuses Obama of breaking the first rule of "Winning the Millennial Vote," namely: "Avoid political hack. Save the joke writers for AARP night."
- Everyone from liberal bloggers to Twitterers to the actress Eliza Dushku has already used "Romnesia," writes Elspeth Reeve at The Atlantic Wire. "So Obama neither deserves credit for the neologism nor blame for the pun."
- "Conservatives responded with their own hashtag," writes Alicia M. Cohn at The Hill. It's called "#Obamnesia."
- But the audience loved the phrase, laughing and cheering "on first hearing it and as Obama riffed on it in the remainder of his speech," reports the Guardian.
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