“Ann Romney, Release Your COSTCO Records!” — Only Days from Election, Investigation Offers Two Reasons to Support Their Demand

“Listen up ladies! I can buy white truffles – by the case, mind you – for just half the price of three average-sized bald eagles. No more annoying transpacific trips to Chinese truffle auctions for the Romneys! And it all starts at LaJolla California’s convenient Saks Fifth COSTCO!”

Ann Romney, you brought this on yourself. You couldn’t leave COSTCO alone. Last week, on the Rachel Ray Show, you claimed that thanks to the magic of COSTCO you can feed your large extended family of 30 for $137.50, or $4.50 per head. In fact, that sounds about right. I shop there. Ten COSTCO rotisserie chickens would come to just over $50, and that would feed thirty Romnites comfortably. Just add, as you did, some veggies and a mess o’ frozen chocolate syrup covered cream puffs and you’re home free, or, for just $137.50, the next best thing to free for a cento-millionaire.

And we all know that many wealthy people stay wealthy by shopping wisely; by most measures COSTCO is wise shopping. Brava, Mrs. R.! And you’re not likely to run out of COSTCOs. there are more than 400 in the U.S., with tens of millions of members like my family, paying a yearly membership for the privilege. So I agree with you on the benefits of the COSTCO lifestyle. Being a leftwing nut, agreeing with you makes me queasy, but there you have it. No disrespect intended.

Yet, among us loopy lefties questions arise. Do you COSTCO, or do you not COSTCO? I, for one, have trouble imagining you roaming the aisles of COSTCO with Mitt in tow. Can you even visualize that, Mrs. R.? Can you, lefty reader? Here’s some help:

“No, Mittens, the dressage department is over there.”

“Rafalca just loves Saks 5th COSTCO jewelery, and ladies, I do too!”

It does seem counter-intuitive, does it not, that this wealthy woman who has sometimes acted imperiously on the campaign trail could cozy up to so middle class a habit as COSTCO? Pushing a shopping cart? Planning her “boom, boom, boom”? Squeezing melons and pinching peaches? Loading her cart with rotisserie chickens? Standing in the checkout line? Standing in the checkout line!? Mrs. Ann Lois Davies Romney? COSTCO doesn’t sound Romney. Does it?

“I always start at Costco,” Ann Romney said on the October 25th “Rachel Ray Show.” She’s committed to her story. TWSA! staff undertook a thorough investigation into the matter. Our findings are below, in two sections: 

1. Romney chow down: $137?
2. Mitt’s “3-Pack” of dress shirts?

Ann Romney’s COSTCO claims (and, to a small extent, Mitt’s) will be rated by our trademarked “Temperamental Turnip” ratings service. As illustrated below, left to right, there are three temperamental turnips, each quite a bit grumpier than the first, “Everyday Grumpy.” Our staff turnip examined the evidence our TWSA! gumshoes collected, and registered its results for each of the two issues researched here. Our Temperamental Turnip system is widely used by ratings companies like Gallop Polling, Inc., and magazines, including Sportsters Illustrated (bathing suit issue), Consumer Reportage, and Garden & Gun (Yes, really, “Garden & Gun,” see TWSA! article here, but first, read on . . .)

Grumpy, Grumpier, Grumpiest 
(Clicking the image ought to
give you a clearer version.)

See whether Ann and Mitt earn any Grumpies!

Does M’Lady COSTCO, or Does M’Lady NOTCO?

Question 1. Romney clan chows down: $137? 

 As noted at the outset, the price is right, and the amount is right. $137 of COSTCO rotisserie chicken, veggies, and frozen cream puffs can easily feed 30, and come in at $4.50 per Romnite. But, again, has Ann Romney herself ever shopped “in person” at COSTCO for these items?

• Connecting to COSTCO. One thing is for sure, when Ann Romney is at home in Utah’s Park City, just 30 miles from Salt Lake City, she could throw a baseball in any westerly direction and hit a COSTCO square on the nose. The area’s swarming with them: nine total in a city of some 90,000. Clearly, if Ann actually shops for groceries, in the Salt Lake City area there’s no shortage of COSTCOs. Also, when the Romneys inhabit Belmont, Massachusetts (still in son Tagg’s basement?) there are three COSTCOs within acceptable driving range. Although the Roms do not yet use their LaJolla, California beachpad, the same COSTCO-friendly environment exists there as well. Finally, when they’re cooling their heels at Lake Winnipesaukee, the closest COSTCO is about an hour and a quarter away, in Nashua, New Hampshire.
• Missing Person Report.While TWSA!‘s investigation could find no one who has personally witnessed Ann Romney shopping in a COSTCO, we do have one item to share: Mrs. Romney’s recent appearance on The Rachel Ray Show featured a two-minute video of a Romney shopping expedition at a COSTCO, titled “Ann Romney’s Warehouse Shopping Secrets.” Check it out here
• So, in light of the video evidence, she has at least once shopped at a COSTCO. In all fairness as well, she comfortably managed the affair, seemed at home while deftly opening and closing refrigerator doors to grab cream puffs. Apparently, she weathered the Arctic Circle temperatures of the produce section, although if so, she did it off camera. Less likely, she may have gone through the checkout line, but Ann Romney in a checkout line is literally unimaginable . . . except directly below:

“Good Rafalca, good boy. Be patient, sweetie. When we’re done, we’ll go to the food court. You can have two of those Jewish hot dogs with a berry sundae,
 a churro for dessert, and a latte freeze! Just the way my Rafalca likes it!”

• Summary. As a result of TWSA!‘s gumshoeing, can report witnessing Ann Romney, on the Rachel Ray Show video engaging in the following activities:
  1. Entering a COSTCO with an appropriate cart;
  2. displaying her membership card in a dutifully respectful manner;
  3. pushing her cart down numerous aisles, by herself and while talking to the camera;
  4. finding, identifying, inspecting, and placing in her cart the following items:
     • two bags of spinach;
     • one container each of raspberries and blueberries;
     • one 32-pack of Fruitables;
     • two buckets of cream puffs, each bucket capable of securely holding a medium sized beagle;
     • and two rotisserie chickens.

TWSA’s Temperamental Turnip’s Rating:

Ann Romney shops at COSTCO but not nearly as often as she and Mitt want middle class voters to believe. Notable is that during this entire COSTCO campaign, not a single person stepped forward to report seeing Ann Romney (or Mitt) inhabiting a COSTCO. Sure, that fact is inconclusive, but c’mon. Someone would have come forward, dontchathink?

Our beloved Turnip calls out the Romneys’ exaggeration of their allegiance to COSTCO:

Listen up, vertebrate!

“It’s a huge pander to middle class voters. It’s mostly humbug. I’ve go a lot of contacts with turnips at grocery chains all over this country, and not a single one backs up her stories. And these turnips I know? They’re observant as hell!

That said, that video? Well, she seemed to know her way around a COSTCO pretty good. So, maybe, just maybe, she’s sorta truthful. But I’ll tell you one thing. I don’t believe a Romney has ever stood in a  COSTCO checkout line! Too many brown people. You can quote me on that.”

We have.

The Turnip Rules. Apparently the Romney “buffet” of moderately dishonest puffery didn’t please him, but neither did he go nuclear. Ann & Mitt’s fibbing earned Ann Romney – and, to a much lesser extent, Mitt – four minutes in the penalty box,in hockey, a pretty bad penalty, but not an outright ejection:

Four minutes in the penalty box

Question 2. What about Mitt’s “3-Pack” of dress shirts? 

Ah, now for that mysterious 3-Pack of men’s dress shirts . . . In the August FOX interview, Mitt corroborated Ann’s claims, by referring to the shirts, saying how much he liked them, and indicating he’d received them “the other day from Costco. People  didn’t buy into most of this, and TWSA!‘s investigation uncovered troubling issues:

• The Silence of the Nashuans
  1. During the Romneys’ joint interview at their Wolfeboro New Hampshire summer home on Lake Winnipesaukee, Mitt told Chris Wallace,“She [Ann] also got me one of these three-packs of shirts the other day from Costco.”
  2. The previous day was Saturday, August 25, but the term “the other day” would apply to August 24 and 23. As mentioned above, the closest COSTCO to Lake Winni is in souther New Hampshire’s Nashua, 76 miles away, and a more than two hour round trip.
  3. Obviously, wherever Ann Romney goes her visit is firstly, the news of the day, and secondly, accompanied by a caravan including Secret Service, press pool, gofers, and various useless campaign minions like loopy John Sununu who resides in NH.
  4. For these reasons an Ann Romney visit to Nashua’s COSTCO would have been a biggie, generating local interest even if it had been an unannounced, spur of the moment stop and shop. People would have noticed: COSTCO folks, shoppers, etc. Nashua is a moderately sized city of nearly 90,000 residents – would everyone have missed a black van caravan? Local media would have converged asap, like bad taste on a turnip (not our turnip, mind you).
  5. A search of Nashua area newspapers found no reporting of an Ann Romney visit to Nashua’s COSTCO or to Nashua itself anytime in August 2012. Even the famed reticence of New Englanders and their generous disinterest in brouhaha can’t explain why no one appears to have noticed Ann Romney and her small army at COSTCO.

We ain’t no stinkin’
3-Pack, dude!

All the above is surprising, but doesn’t settle the question. Yet, was there no Nashua soul who saw Ann Romney and her heavyweight caravan of minions that day?

• Does COSTCO sell 3-packs of men’s dress shirts?
  • No one has found any evidence that COSTCO now sells, or has ever sold, 3-packs of men’s dress shirts.
  • The closest (literally) to a 3-pack was a 2-pack of men’s dress shirts that COSTCO once offered but no longer does. (See at right)
  • The only multiple item shirt packs at COSTCOare  T-shirts.
• Summary. On balance, TWSA’s legwork uncovered inconsistencies in the Romneys’ version of the COSTCO connection which are, at best, misleading. Each Romney enthusiastically offered up the “3-Pack,” without prompting. There are no 3-Packs, probably never were. All this seems familiar:  poor staff work, that serious disease infecting the Romney/Ryan campaign, perhaps fatally. In prepping the Romneys for their COSTCO framing, they simply screwed it up.

TWSA’s Temperamental Turnip’s Rating:

About this “3-Pack”episode, Turnip rules that Ann & Mitt lied with abandon.  Not just about the existence ot 3-Packs themselves – that would be minor – but, far worse, it seems almost certain that Ann Romney did not travel to Nashua to visit their COSTCO at anytime between August 24 and 26.

We can’t be certain. of course. As our Temperamental Turnip opined:

 “Perhaps she diverted the attention of her Secret Service detail, then jumped into a previously hidden 1997 Honda Civic, then, once in Nashua, and outfitted as an Eastern European refugee, featuring scarf, heavy coat, and black blocky shoes, she sneaked into the unknown portion of COSTCO where 3-Packs of men’s dress shirts reside, then . . .”

You get the idea . . .

This earned Ann Romney, with an assist by Mitt, a harsh rating carrying with it an obligation for both bad actors to be very very ashamed for at least two hours:

Be very very ashamed (two hour minimum)

COSTCO Needy? COSTCO Wanty?

As you can now see, we wore out a lot of shoe leather on this one. We don’t deploy TWSA! gumshoes unless we think an issue important. In the end, as your editor, I don’t agree with our Temperamental Turnip’s overall moderate rating of Ann Romney’s COSTCO nonsense. To me, taking the measure of her increasingly cranky presence on the campaign trail underscores what I imagined her character long ago. She’s an oligarch in full. It wafts off her persona like a far too liberal dose of an otherwise subtle cologne wafts off one’s person.

On balance it appears that Ann Romney uses COSTCO to pander on her husband’s behalf, and for her own purposes. Sure, she sometimes shops there, but does she actually “do COSTCO” like many do for fun – going from free sample kiosk to free sample kiosk and making a meal of it? Does she stand in a checkout line? Are we really expected to believe she buys clothing there?

More seriously, for the Romneys and the social strata they represent,

is COSTCO necessary?

Rhetorically speaking, does the Romney family economy require COSTCO to make ends meet?  Despite the  overwhelmingly middle class economic profile of the average COSTCO customer’s family, let’s face it, times are tough: an $80,000 income for a middle class two-child family has since 2005 garnered only a stagnant amount of disposable income in inflation-adjusted terms [see my chart here]. Even these comparably well-0ff families do indeed need COSTCO.  Ann Romney does not. And there’s the rub. That is what separates COSTCO sport from COSTCO reliance, de facto oligarchs from de jure just folks.

And so, to my thinking, COSTCO for Ann Lois Davies Romney is both a part-time hobby and an occasional trip to the circus. Little more. Oh, and a campaign talking point, as we’ve learned.  For her to attempt to portray COSTCO’s place in her life otherwise is beyond misleading. And typically Romneyesque.

So, Ann Romney, release your COSTCO shopping records!  Let’s add up the numbers. At least for the last two years. Follow Mitt’s lead.

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