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Did the Politics of Pizza Sink Romney's Iowa Bid?

Posted by Adam Kuban, January 4, 2008 at 1:15 PM

This info has been out there since late last month, but it's yet another reason why Mitt Romney may not have carried Iowa in the Republican caucus last night. The man must have alienated the pizza partisans in the Hawkeye State:

From Joel Achenbach's "Iowa Journal" on his Washington Post blog Achenblog:

I heard the other day that Mitt Romney is so careful with his weight that he will pick the cheese off his pizza. Then I heard from another source that he eats pizza with a knife and fork. That's two sources, two angles: That's practically confirmation.

I just can't imagine the American people electing as president someone who does that to pizza. I'm not saying a president has to have a special knack for eating pizza—what you call "pizza talent"—but he or she has to respect the pizza, and look comfortable with it.

You want, as a voter, to be able to say, "He looks like he knows his way around a pizza."

That's one reason people like Bill Richardson: He looks like a good eater. They liked that about Bill Clinton, too. When you ask people in Iowa what they look for in a candidate, the response is almost invariably a version of "Someone who's down to Earth. A real person. Honest. The kind of person who'll look you in the eye and tell the truth. A straight shooter."

And they don't need to add: "Someone who knows how to scarf down a slice of pizza."

[Tip o' the hat to Will F. for the heads-up on this one.]

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