U.S. Presidential Campaign Goes to the Dogs

Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney and President Barack Obama seem to be dogged by their pasts.

Romney has been in the dog house with animal lovers and his opponents for once putting his Irish Setter, Seamus, on the roof of his car for a long road trip, and more recently, for his association with a benefactor who was once accused of skinning and barbecuing a dog.

Now a Romney supporter has bitten back by pointing out that Obama once ate dog meat.

Obama wrote in his 2004 memoir, “Dreams From My Father,” that he ate dog meat as a 7-year-old child while in Indonesia with his stepfather, Lolo Soetoro:

“With Lolo, I learned how to eat small green chili peppers raw with dinner (plenty of rice), and, away from the dinner table, I was introduced to dog meat (tough), snake meat (tougher), and roasted grasshopper (crunchy).”

Conservative blogger Jim Treacher posted the excerpt Tuesday on the Daily Caller. “Say what you want about Romney, but at least he only put a dog on the roof of his car, not the roof of his mouth,” Treacher wrote.

Romney aide Eric Fehrnstrom has now become engaged in a heated Twitter battle with Obama adviser David Axelrod over which incident was worse.

Back on January 30, Axelrod tweeted, “How loving owners transport their dogs,” with a photo of Bo, the Obamas’ Portuguese Water Dog, sitting beside his dog dad inside the presidential limo.

On Tuesday, Fehrnstrom retweeted Axelrod’s tweet, adding, “In hindsight, a chilling photo.”

Axelrod and other Obama supporters argue that the president was a young boy when he ate the dog meat, and it was served to him in a country in which, no matter how reprehensible it may seem, eating dog is a legal custom. Romney, on the other hand, was an adult when he strapped his dog into a kennel on his car roof – a mode of pet transportation that is not just dangerous, but illegal.

Romney scoffed at the dog-on-car-roof vs. child-eating-dog debate yesterday during an interview on WLW radio. “This campaign is ultimately going to become about jobs, not dogs,” he said.

PHOTOS: Center for American Progress Action Fund, c.bertlet/publiceye.org

Will these incidents have any impact on who you vote for in November? Please let us know in the Comments section below.

Laura Goldman

Laura Goldman is senior social media writer for i Love Dogs, Inc. She does love dogs. And elephants and turtles. Along with writing about the loves of her life, Laura likes to play with her two pound pups and tell anyone who’ll listen just how awesome Pit Bulls are.

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