Why did Romney put the dog on the roof? Is there any good reason to do this?

What? Do you have a link?

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He is a dog abusing idiot.

I think the reason relates to his level of logic, deductive reasoning and intelligence. Surely he had enough of an income at the time to either pay for the appropriate travel arrangements for he, his family and their pet & if not then surely he had enough money to pay for a pet sitter & if not then what kind of idiot is so irresponsible with their money that they take their family on a vaca with the dog strapped to the roof shitting up a fear induced storm for the whole trip? He’s a douche!!

You’re not even supposed to let your dog stick it’s head out the window. The rush of air damages their lungs.
I don’t give a flying fuck about his politics; in the end it’s about a few profiting off the many, however you lean.
But this? This in unpardonable and insupportable.
“Romney, when asked whether he would repeat his actions during the family vacation, said he wouldn’t, “certainly not with the attention it’s received.””
So, I translate this to mean he certainly would if there were no one paying attention.
Stupid excuse too; Oh the dog liked it. Really? That’s your excuse? Because kids like candy too. Is that a good excuse to feed it to them until they get sick? It is the role of the responsible adult to unsure the child’s health and wellness over the uninformed, egocentric wishes of the child. Do they feed the dog ham? Bones? They like that too.
Idiots.
Do you see that idiocy transcends income? That it knows no demographic boundaries?
Christ on a pony.

His wife said the dog had the runs before the trip, so, of that’s true it might have been why. Still not a valid excuse to me though. Poor thing. @chyna, I’m surprised you hadn’t heard about it! There is even a “Dogs Against Romney” Facebook page!

Sigh… It’s rich people shit all over again. Like Micheal Jackson hanging his baby off the balcony. Money makes some people dumb as shit. So glad when this campaign is done with. This stunt happened almost 30 years ago back when Romney was still a driver? This is what people are using to seal the deal that Romney is bad? It might be interesting to actually look forward to watch the news again without election junk taking over. Seven more months of BS for everyone, followed by 4 more yrs….yay.

There are a lot of poor people running around Australia in pick up trucks with their dogs hanging over the edge of the bed. I see no correlation between income and intelligence.

But I agree that is abuse in my mind and one would think illegal to boot. And to me, if he has that little common sense and compassion, he is not the kind of person I would want as president.

With a population of 313376000, one would think there would be at least one or two who would be suitable for the job but I haven’t seen them show their faces yet.

Is this a metaphor for placing ones toupee atop ones balding bonce?

Anybody remember what a headache this story caused for President Johnson? Pet owners are a pretty serious lot, and no politician with any brains ought to take chances with their favor.

I have really tried to see if I can get too upset about Romney’s actions of over thirty years ago, and I can’t. I’m an animal lover, but still. I assume that the dog had a shield of some type to protect from the wind. Was it still the best thing to do, or the smartest? Probably not. An unforgivable crime against the animal? Probably not.

But just when I thought that I had laid this to rest, in my own mind at least, along comes another Romney “dog story.”

This one involves the man who just threw Ann Romney a fundraiser birthday dinner (no, not the Donald Trump one, with the horse cake). The one thrown by the guy who was in trouble for an incident that involved killing a dog, skinning it, and roasting it on a spit in a public park. This also happened decades ago.

I guess we have to believe that at some point the disregard that these men show toward dogs has corrected itself, or at the very least not ever been extended to disregard for human beings. Not that I find someone who mistreats animals any less reprehensible…

Let’s just say that I do not intend to vote for a guy who plans to strap the middle class to the roof of the car and take us for a ride.

As for luggage v. dog on roof, I’m guessing that with seven passengers in the car, it all went on the roof. If they’d had a sixth son, he probably would have been up there, too. ;-p

@GoldieAV16 I agree to some extent that getting upset about things done in someone’s very distant past is or should be difficult. When it comes to politics people in general often hold grudges against politicians from things done a decade or more in the past as if that person couldn’t have learned, grown and changed. If you ask me, that is almost an admission by that person who holds the anger about that past incident making an admission about their own life saying that they haven’t changed in a decade or more. We all know that it’s nearly impossible not to grow, learn & change in even 2–3 years whether it be in a good or bad direction so why is it that we as the average voter are so willing to hold these significantly past incidents over the heads of a politician as if they haven’t changed in all those years &/or as if there are not plenty of more recent incidents which would act as an example of their more recent ignorance?

My concern is more with what the guy says and does now – in general of course – but also when asked about this particular incident related to the dog. As mentioned already by @Trillian his response is something like… ”Romney, when asked whether he would repeat his actions during the family vacation, said he wouldn’t, “certainly not with the attention it’s received.”

Now that answer tells it all. It says to me that Romney will do anything he feels like doing & believes himself to have a hierarchy of intelligence that supersedes others and/or the law and basic logic & that his most likely motivation for not doing something idiotic would be because of the attention it would get rather than whether it was generally accepted as right or wrong in the eyes of the people he would be hired to serve. Additionally other of his behavior indicates to me that he is willing to metamorphosis into an entirely different person merely to satisfy those with the power to remove him from office. That fact makes it more sensible to me as to why the GOP would make him their choice… he would be like clay in their hands as opposed to the other candidates (however ignorant) who are attached enough to their egos as opposed to their jobs & money that they wouldn’t be nearly as pliable as Romney would likely be in the hands of the Republican leadership.

Maybe he thought it would work better than the time he tied his leash to the bumper?

I’m not going to hold Romney responsible for the actions of the dog BBQ guy because I didn’t think it was right to hold Obama responsible for every word Rev Wright ever spoke.
I’m not voting for Romney because he’s an idiot in his own right and the callus nature with which he treated the many work forces he dealt with at Bain Capital is even worse than the dog on the roof.

@Judi I agree. In no way is Romney responsible for BBQ guy’s actions, any more than he’s responsible for Nugent’s remarks.

I do wonder about the casual way that he seems to dismiss really offensive behavior, ie Rush Limbaugh (“not the words I would have chosen”), and Nugent (“let’s all be civil”), and in the case of BBQ guy “Sure we’ll come to your party, I just hope you aren’t serving dog, nyuck, nyuck, nyuck”) Okay, just kidding about that last one.

But let someone suggest that Ann doesn’t relate to economic woes? MAN THE TORPEDOS!

@Jenniehowell Regarding the response to the dog on the roof, it reminds of when he was questioned by Rick Perrry during one of the debates about hiring illegal immigrants to do his landscaping:

“So we went to the company and we said, look, you can’t have any illegals working on our property,” said Romney. “I’m running for office, for Pete’s sake, I can’t have illegals.”

Which would certainly suggest that were he not running for office, he’d do whatever the hell he pleased, laws and morals be damned.

“he would be like clay in their hands” – or like an etch-a-sketch in their hands.

Thanks for your responses. Right after I posted this question, I found myself thinking about a larger question that some of you have raised, viz., how much weight should we place on a single episode that happened decades ago? Or to put it another way, can such an episode be so revelatory that it alone can disqualify a person from consideration for high office, or must such an episode be considered against the background of the person’s entire biography and political potential?

I don’t know. @Jenniehowell raises good points about personal growth or the lack thereof, but could there be acts so bad that, even if the person had changed their ways, the mere fact that the person had ever done such a thing would show that, while they might merit forgiveness, they could never be trusted with grave responsibilities? In the Romney case, it’s hard for me to get past my biases, and the general question is too abstract for me to get a handle on.