Romney Continues Video Game Theme in Iowa; Negative Reactions Elsewhere

Terrorists, Internet pedophiles and violent video games.

Those were the issues Republican presidential hopeful Mitt Romney spoke about during a Friday campaign swing through Iowa. As reported by the Gazette Online, the candidate repeated his "our kids are swimming in filth" message as he pressed the flesh at Cronk's Cafe in Denison:

It's time to clean up the water in which our kids are swimming. I've proposed that we enforce our obscenity laws again and that we get serious against those retailers that sell adult video games that are filled with violence, that we go after those retailers.

Meanwhile, Romney's video game stance has alienated some observers on both ends of the political spectrum. Last week the conservative Free Republic site picked up on GamePolitics' recent Romney coverage. The Freep's reader comments to Romney's position were uniformly negative:

- Whatever happened to Republicans who wanted to get government off the backs of the people?  For all of you who thought his nanny tendencies would stop with his "Health Insurance for everyone!" thing here in Massachusetts.

- Save us from the video games!!!!! This idiocy just dropped him 50 points in my book. Having seen this, I’m not sure I would vote for such a bozo, even if they are the nominee.

- I agree I`ve been a Romney supporter but I don`t want big brother on the internet and in video games. When he stuck with reforming the government to kill duplication and over bureaucracy, and some reforms to help the economy, and increasing the size of the military I was with him.

Meanwhile, Chris Kelly, who blogs for the liberal-leaning Huffington Post, writes:

I think the solution to kids playing violent video games is for their parents not to give them the fifty bucks to buy one. But that's just me. But let's say you were a "values voter." Here's the problem with [Romney's] Oceans Ad:

The Peggy Noonan column [Romney is] quoting ran in the Wall Street Journal after the Columbine shootings, and it ends with a bitchy and out-of-left-field shot at [Hillary Clinton]...

Meow! I guess, when you think about it, Hillary Clinton really was responsible for the Columbine killings. I mean, in that she didn't personally prevent Rockstar games from distributing Grand Theft Auto. This never would have happened if Mitt Romney was First Lady.

Here's the problem, and why Mitt Romney probably doesn't want to run against Hillary Clinton on who's tougher on Halo: ...on November 29th, 2005, Hillary Clinton - and Joe Lieberman - introduced The Family Entertainment Protection Act to prohibit the sale of inappropriate games to minors. You can look it up, if you're not too indolent.

You might think it's a moronic non-issue, but it's Hillary's issue. The Super Mario Brothers = Moral Swamp thing? She owns it.

Mitt Romney has spent almost five million dollars, and he just produced an ad for Hillary Clinton.

And, of course, conservative presidential hopeful Sen. Sam Brownback (R-KS) doesn't think much of Romney's ad, either.