Is Mitt Romney a Conehead?

The Coneheads were a comedy sketch on Saturday Night Live from 1977 to 1979 that featured Dan Aykroyd, Jane Curtin, and Laraine Newman as space aliens stranded on earth and trying to pass as a normal suburban American family. The humor was in their strange dialogue, referring to their unusual food selections as “consumables”, and behavior, such as smoking a whole pack of cigarettes at once, or drinking from a six-pack of beer cans still tied together. When questioned by neighbors about their unusual practices, the Coneheads always explained that they were “from France”. The term “parental units” to refer to parents was introduced into the American vernacular by the Coneheads.

Could Mitt Romney be a space alien trying to pass as an ordinary American? He makes Conehead-like pronouncements, repeatedly saying for example, that in his alleged home state of Michigan, “The trees are the right height.”

Mitt Romney has engaged in Conehead-like behavior, like transporting the family dog, an Irish Setter named Seamus, in a crate strapped onto the roof of the family station wagon, for a vacation trip from Boston to Canada. When the poor animal proceeded to experience acute diarrhea from terror over the situation, Romney proceeded to stop at a gas station to hose down dog, crate, and station wagon, and then continue on the long drive to Canada with the family pet still strapped to the roof.

Fox News reporter Chris Wallace said in an interview of Romney that he, Wallace, would no more put his dog in a crate on the roof of his car than he would put his children in such a crate. Then he asked Romney, “What were you thinking?”

Romney gave a Conehead-like laugh, “Heh, heh, heh.” Then he added mysteriously, “This is a completely airtight kennel, mounted on the top of our car. He climbed in there regularly, enjoyed himself.” Airtight? Enjoyed diarrhea?

When the Wall Street Journal asked Romney just last December about the incident, Romney just smiled and responded as a Conehead might, “Uh…, love my dog.”

Romney seems oblivious to the significance of this story despite its recent appearance on the front page of the Washington Post, on the cover of the New Yorker magazine, as a regular topic on David Letterman and other late-night television programs, and as the target for the website “Dogs Against Romney”. Both the Santorum and Gingrich campaigns have embraced the story as additional evidence that Romney can’t win.

Who else but a Conehead would think it normal to propose a $10,000 bet to resolve a factual dispute in a televised political debate with Texas Governor Rick Perry?

Who else but a Conehead would say that he’s not concerned about the very poor, but is concerned about corporations because “Corporations are people, too”?

Who else but a Conehead multimillionaire and son of a corporate CEO, educated exclusively in private schools, whose wife drives two Cadillacs, and who has said he enjoys firing people, would tell an audience of the unemployed that he’s currently unemployed, too, and knows what it’s like to worry about whether you’re going to get fired?

Who else but a Conehead candidate for president would write and publish an article in the New York Times advocating bankruptcy for the U.S. automakers, entitled “Let Detroit Go Bankrupt”?

You decide. Is Mitt Romney a Conehead space alien? Or does he just play one in front of the cameras?