In his second presidential debate in 2012, Republican Mitt Romney awkwardly referred to his "binders full of women" and left-wing media decided it had a game-changing meme on their hands.
Had this been a Democrat, this innocuous phrase would have been quickly forgotten. For examples, see almost everything said by Joe Biden for the past six years. Of course, there was an election to win and a narrative to push (War on women!) and thus the comments became "viral." The phrase hounded Romney the remainder of the campaign, and MSNBC, which was in full-on Obama spokesman mode, ran the clip constantly and gleefully mocked it.
Yet for MSNBC hosts and guests, obsession with this clip and making jokes about it, and smirking at it every time for its alleged cleverness, did not die out in 2012.
Or 2013.
Or 2014.
Or, as some of the above clips show, in 2015.
As recently as this month, strategist Angela Rye made the "binders" reference when mocking Republicans for having Sen. Joni Ernst (R., Iowa) give the State of the Union response. Apparently, the Republican Party was wrong to have a woman give the official response to Obama's address because it did not play into Rye's desperate need to hammer the GOP on gender issues.
But now, with the news breaking today that Romney told donors he will not run in 2016, maybe MSNBC will realize that this hysterical joke that just totally sums up all the party's problems with female voters has been played out. That they're still laughing at it 27 months after the fact is sad, but we've come to realize MSNBC likes to stick to a script.