An aide to the Obama campaign used his personal Twitter account today to promote a story by controversial blogger and noted beagle enthusiast Andrew Sullivan of the Daily Beast.
The aide, Ian Harrington, describes himself as a "filmmaker" and "genius procrastinator" on his Twitter page, where he also clearly identifies his association with Obama for America.
The Sullivan post assailed Governor Romney for defending traditional marriage and saying, "3,000 years of history shouldn’t be discarded so quickly." Sullivan commented:
Ahem. His own family were [sic] ardent polygamists only a century ago - and went to Mexican colonies to escape US federal oppression of their version of marriage (which also goes back a long, long way and still exists across the world). Romney's great-grandparents were polygamists; one of his his great-great-grandfathers had twelve wives and was murdered by the husband of the twelfth.
The Tweet fits a pattern of Obama supporters and surrogates referencing Romney’s Mormon faith and its historical practices in an effort to paint him as "the other," even as the campaign publicly distances itself from attacks on the candidate’s religion.
Montana Democratic Governor Brian Schweitzer recently attacked Romney by saying the presumptive Republican nominee’s family hailed from a "polygamy commune" in Mexico. The campaign quickly distanced itself from Schweitzer’s remarks.
The Obama campaign did not return requests for comment.