stuck in the mittle

Mitt Romney’s Family Isn’t Totally Boring

Mitt Romney and his enormous family.

Mind you, they are still pretty boring, just not as universally boring as everyone assumed. According to a new Romney biography, which Politico’s Ben Smith summarizes today,  there are “loose cannons” throughout the family —  a reference, mainly, to Romney’s siblings. Jane Romney, an actress living in California, “openly backed Barbara Boxer and campaigned for Jerry Brown.” She also had a “very acrimonious divorce” from the nephew of the Mormon church’s president.

Mitt’s older brother George, meanwhile, has been divorced twice, and the “timing” of his “second marriage and the birth of the first child in that marriage … was a religious transgression that resulted in an official, if temporary, separation (excommunication or disfellowship) from the church.” That sounds vaguely scandalous! Anyway, these siblings seem more like “people who didn’t have perfect, cookie-cutter lives” rather than “loose cannons.” They’re kind of loose cannons in the same way that Mitt Romney was a “wayward” teenager.