Mitt Romney jokes

Mitt Romney certainly has a bizarre sense of humor. In the course of a telephone town meeting where he was wooing Wisconsin primary voters today, Romney told them his funny story about his connection to the state.

“One of (the) most humorous, I think, relates to my father. You may remember my father, George Romney, was president of an automobile company called American Motors,” Romney said, according audio of the call posted by ABC News and first reported by the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel. “They had a factory in Michigan, and they had a factory in Kenosha, Wisconsin, and another one in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. And as the president of the company he decided to close the factory in Michigan and move all the production to Wisconsin.

“Now, later he decided to run for governor of Michigan and so you can imagine that having closed the factory and moved all the production to Wisconsin was a very sensitive issue to him, for his campaign.”

Romney laughed about the incident and about how it affected his dad, a three-term Michigan governor.

“Now I recall at one parade where he was going down the streets, he was led by a band, and they had a high school band that was leading each of the candidates, and his band did not know how to play the Michigan fight song,” he said. “They only knew how to play the Wisconsin fight song, so every time they would start playing ‘On, Wisconsin,’ ‘On, Wisconsin,’ my dad’s political people would jump up and down and try to get them to stop because they didn’t want people in Michigan to be reminded that my dad had moved production to Wisconsin.”

I suppose that “humorous” tale probably has them rolling in the aisles at the country club. But guessing the thousands of workers in Michigan whose families lost their jobs then probably still aren’t laughing.