A top Democrat on Sunday defended Mitt Romney’s character, saying that despite recent reports that Romney was a bully as a young man attending prep school, he believes that has little to do with the man Romney is today.

“There’s not a single thing that I know about Mitt Romney in his adult life which suggests this kind of discrimination or this kind of prejudice. And so I don’t believe it was a telling moment in terms of who he is today,” Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Ill., said on CNN’s State of the Union.

“When you see somebody who is simply different taken down that way and is terrified and you see that look in their eye you never forget it. And that was what we all walked away with,” Phillip Maxwell said.

In what now appears to have become a debate within their own family, Peter Maxwell said his brother, with whom he speaks with frequently, has a tendency to “expound on things.”

“He kind of gets into the emotions of a situation or a moment in time and loves to expound on things,” Peter Maxwell said of his brother. “I’m not necessarily saying exaggerate, but wants to take things to a higher level and he made a comment the other day, ‘Oh God, today they would consider that almost assault and battery.’ And I said, ‘You sound like a prosecutor in Northern Michigan.’ … I said, ‘Come on, ‘What really was it?’ And he said, ‘The kid had long hair and it wasn’t really what people were into at the time.’ And I said, ‘Let’s kind of look at it that way. Let’s not make it a national media event for an incident that happened in 1965.’”

“Who sent the e-mail?” I asked Wright.

“It was from one of Barack’s closest friends.”

“He offered you money?”

“Not directly,” Wright said. “He sent the offer to one of the members of the church, who sent it to me.”

“How much money did he offer you?”

“One hundred and fifty thousand dollars,” Wright said.

Making Americans feel uncomfortable with Romney, in other words, won’t be enough if the economy keeps sputtering along. What Obama needs, instead, is to make voters fear a Romney presidency, even more than they fear four more years of high deficits and slow growth. And a re-election campaign that focuses on gay marriage, or the Dream Act, or birth control, or how Romney treated his dog and high school classmates is unlikely to stoke that kind of fear.

What might? Well, in a pocketbook election it helps to focus on pocketbook anxieties. It’s true that every day the White House spends talking about social issues is a day it isn’t stuck talking about the economy. But it’s also a day when it hasn’t talked about how Mitt Romney wants to take away your retirement security to pay for tax cuts for the rich.

This is a predictable Democratic argument, and a demagogic one. But it’s an argument that might actually make economically stressed Americans afraid of what a Romney presidency would bring.

The attack on Mr. VanderSloot is also notable for its focus on his wife’s contribution to the anti-gay-marriage cause. Gay-marriage activists are winning the debate in much of the country, but as they do they are becoming more intolerant.

After California voters approved Proposition 8 banning same-sex marriage in 2008, opponents published the names of donors, who were later linked with zip codes and Google Maps. Donors reported getting death threats. Boycotts were set against businesses, and activists encouraged customers to call and harass business owners. Among the activists’ arguments for why Mr. VanderSloot is antigay is that his wife donated to the campaign for Proposition 8…

Democrats and their left-wing allies should understand that Republicans and Mormons will not be the only targets. If Democrats think it is “legitimate” to prowl and publish the divorce records of Romney donors, no one should feign shock if some right-wing investigator is soon doing the same to Mr. Obama’s bundlers and super PAC donors. A President who claims to want “civility” in political discourse will reap what he sows if he plays by Nixonian rules.

Via CBN News/The Brody File.

Via the Daily Caller.

The following is a statement from Frank VanderSloot:

Extreme, far left blog sites have recently chosen to hammer Melaleuca and me personally because I had the audacity to support a conservative candidate for President of the United States. They chose to misconstrue the facts and post false and damaging data about us, and then criticized us for asking these sites to take down the false information. For those who are interested in the truth about us, we provide the following facts addressing the accusations…

In the case of any company, many livelihoods are at stake. Melaleuca employs over 3,000 people worldwide. And thousands more rely on us to send them a check in support of their independent businesses each month. Damage to Melaleuca results in damage to their lives also. When we defend our company, we are also defending them and their income. We agree that we need to do that fairly and responsibly. But it is simply unfair to accuse us of bullying people into submission.