For Mitt Romney, Friday the 13th may be more like the movie "Groundhog's Day." Only instead of repeating itself, the day just keeps getting worse and worse.
First, the Bain Capital stuff. Then the Republican governor of Alabama tells Mitt to release all his taxes to show he has nothing to hide.
Then, yesterday (July 14) our Examiner colleague Lou Colagiovanni, released a story that has been known about since it happened but -- like Laura Bush's accident in which she killed an ex-boyfriend -- is never talked about.
In 1968, while wishing he were in Vietnam instead of being a Mormon missionary in France, Mitt Romney was driving a very nice Citroën DS from the city of Pau to Bordeaux while serving the Mormon Church by acting as chauffeur for Duane Anderson the French Mormon mission president.
As Lou relates in his story:
Romney tells the story of going around a curve and being struck at full speed by a Catholic priest named Albert Marie. Romney claimed Albert Marie was drunk but this has never been verified. Conversely it was not been verified if Romney was under the influence at the time of the accident, because he was unconscious and in a coma. The first police officer to arrive wrote, "he is dead" in Romney's passport. There is no record if a sobriety test was issued after Romney regained consciousness who escaped the crash with a broken arm and lacerations to the face.
Six people were in the car that day. Suzanne Farel, Bertin Farel, David Wood, Mitt Romney, Duane Anderson and the fatality, Duane's wife, Leola Anderson.
Mai non! Again Romney claims the priest was drunk -- you know, Catholics and their sacramental wine, right? And Momons never touch the stuff. So it had to be the priest's fault. Romney said so. And he would never lie about an important thing like that. Would he?
The UK's Daily Mail retold the story in January 2012.
The New York Times picked up the story in 2007.
Romney, who was seriously injured in the crash and was momentarily feared dead, has long said there was nothing he could have done to avoid the tragedy.
Yes. It was someone else's fault. That's a familiar narrative for Romney. No way to say for sure. The local police destroyed the records in 1978.
But for some reason, the story has not been a regularly-told part of the Romney narrative. Until today.
In addition to the Bain problems and the re-revealed fact that he was driving a car in a crash that killed a woman, Romney now has to face the fact that prominent members of the GOP are turning on him.
According to the Associated Press, National Governors Association meeting in Williamsburg, Alabama's Republican governor, Robert Bentley, called on Romney to release all the documents requested of him.
"If you have things to hide, then maybe you're doing things wrong," Bentley said. "I think you ought to be willing to release everything to the American people."
It wasn't just Gov. Bently speaking for the GOP, either.
"There is no whining in politics," chided John Weaver, a veteran Republican strategist. "Stop demanding an apology, release your tax returns."
In a round of TV interviews Friday evening, Romney said he wouldn't release more tax returns beyond the 2010 and 2011 returns.
"You can never satisfy the opposition research team of the Obama organization," Romney told CBS on Friday.
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