Give a politician access to a live microphone, an audience and toss in the heat of an election campaign and there's no telling what he or she might say.
The never-ending slog that is the campaign for the presidency of the United States has provided a wealth of political gaffes from Howard Dean's campaign-killing "I have a scream" speech:
to Rick Perry's "Oops" moment:
Now, barely a day after Mitt Romney soundly beat Newt Gingrich in the Florida primary and seemed well on his way to locking up the Republican nomination, he's gone and stepped knee-deep in another aural controversy.
"I'm not concerned about the very poor," Romney told CNN's Soledad O'Brien.
Well, that got Gingrich going again. He accused Romney of dividing America.
Rewind to last November, in the lead-up to the beginning of the primary season. Gingrich had his own solution to help address poverty. Do away with child labour laws. He called them "truly stupid." Schools, he said, should fire their unionized janitors and replace them with kids as young as nine, so they could join the process of moving up in life. At a campaign event in early December, he went further saying that "really poor children in really poor neighborhoods have no habits of working …They have no habit of 'I do this and you give me cash,' unless it's illegal."
Questionable comments aren't just the domain of the front-runners. Move to the back of the pack, and you've hit the motherload of loopy comments. Take Michele Bachmann, the Minnesota congresswoman who briefly wowed the Tea Party with her God, anti-gay-marriage, stick-to-the-constitution campaign.
Last August, at a campaign event in Florida, she said God was speaking, but America wasn't listening.
"We've had an earthquake; we've had a hurricane. He said, 'Are you going to start listening to me here?' Listen to the American people because the American people are roaring right now. They know government is on a morbid obesity diet and we've got to rein in the spending."
Glenn Beck, the former Fox News talk show host, briefly mulled a run at the Republican nomination. He's not known as being a big fan of U.S. President Barack Obama.
"I'm not saying he doesn't like white people, I'm saying he has a problem. This guy is, I believe, a racist."
Another Tea Party favourite, Herman Cain, invoked the words of a poet to describe his campaign.
"Life can be a challenge. Life can seem impossible. It's never easy when there's so much on the line. But you and I can make a difference. There's a mission just for you and me...Just look inside and you will find just what you can do."
Turns out the words came from a Donna Summer song called "The Power of One" that was in Pokémon: The Movie 2000.
In December – after allegations of sexual harassment and an extra-martial affair forced him out of the campaign - he gave Pokemon credit for the line at a campaign-style rally with comedian Stephen Colbert.
Sarah Palin piled on enough gaffes to force her to take a long, hard look at her chances of winning the Republican nomination. Much to the chagrin of comedians, she didn't enter the race.
Missteps like calling North Korea an ally didn't help her chances.
Two years ago, during the campaign for governor of New York State, Republican candidate Carl Paladino had some explaining to do after he sent emails of a woman having sex with a horse, President Obama and Michelle Obama dressed as a pimp and prostitute, and various other pornographic and racist chain letters. The reason was simple.
"I'm in the construction industry," he said.
But the Republicans don't hold a monopoly on political gaffes or messing up history. During the last campaign in 2008, vice-presidential candidate Joe Biden invoked the immediate action of Franklin Delano Roosevelt.
"When the stock market crashed, Franklin D. Roosevelt got on the television and didn't just talk about the, you know, the princes of greed. He said, 'Look, here's what happened."
Except, there were no nation-wide television broadcasts when FDR was in charge. And the stock market crashed in 1929, long before Roosevelt was elected.
And then there's George Bush. Well, that's another story.
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