Romney is a pander-bear.

For a guy who already has plenty of people accusing him of being a greasy, pandering weasel, Mitt Romney seems to have a surprising lack of restraint when it comes to telling obvious untruths in public. Mitt Romney just keeps on making it so incredibly easy to make fun of Mitt Romney.

His latest bout with foot-in-mouth disease?
A misguided attempt to win over the flannel and firearms crowd:

(Glen Johnson, The Associated Press)
"To hear Mitt Romney talk on the campaign trail, you might think the Republican presidential candidate had a gun rack in the back of his pickup truck. 'I purchased a gun when I was a young man. I've been a hunter pretty much all my life,' he said this week in Keene, N.H., to a man sporting a National Rifle Association cap.

Yet the former Massachusetts governor's hunting experience is limited to two trips at the bookends of his 60 years: as a 15-year-old, when he hunted rabbits with his cousins on a ranch in Idaho, and last year, when he shot quail on a fenced game preserve in Georgia."

Exaggerating one's hunting-cred probably isn't the worst of all possible sins. And, yes, technically one could claim that the nominee-wanna-be's story was true, using a line of reason that would go something like this:

He hunted when he was young, and he hunted when he was old. In the period between hunting trips, one remains a hunter. Therefore, Mitt Romney has been a hunter for most of his life.

But anyone willing to take a fair and balanced look at Romney will quickly recognize him as a man with a disturbing habit of re-inventing himself to pander to whoever happens to be standing within a one-mile radius. It's almost as if he doesn't realize that when a politician in our country says something, it doesn't just vanish into the eternal fog of time and space. It gets recorded, printed in newspapers, published online, played back on television and radio, and if it's something stupid, the American people will know it. A politician who lives by the rule of speak first, answer questions later is going to get shredded into tiny pieces in the vita-mix of free press and served to the public as a delicious smoothie of failed ambition.

Still, I hope Mitt stays around long enough to give a speech in front of the NAACP. One can only imagine the tasty sound-bites that would usher forth from Mitt Romney's golden larynx:

"I became a civil-rights advocate when I was a young man. I've been a person of color pretty much all my life"

Until then, here's hoping that the ridiculously large amount of money that Mitt Romney's managed to plunder from his zombie-like following keeps him going for a few more months. Writing about politics just wouldn't be the same without him.