David Shuster: Romney Must Have Autism, and Must Kill His Wife's Horse With a Hammer?

Anyone looking for how low this campaign rhetoric can go should just tune in to Current TV. Brian Maloney at Radio Equalizer found that on the Stephanie Miller radio show (or Talking Liberally on Current TV), former MSNBC host David Shuster suggested Mitt Romney is so "socially inept" that he probably has some form of autism or Asperger's syndrome.

Shuster also suggested that since Ann Romney's horse Rafalca performed so poorly in dressage at the London Olympics, Mitt Romney should say "I bought a hammer to hit Rafalca over the head for getting, you know, 30th place after we took a $77,000 dollar tax write-off." Video and transcript below.

(Shuster's use of medical experts who haven't examined Romney is interesting, considering Shuster was one of the media liberals who slammed Sen. Bill Frist for diagnosing Terri Schiavo from the Senate floor. On MSNBC's Hardblogger site, Shuster wrote:

"Bill Frist is a heart surgeon not a neurologist. But even more disturbing to his medical colleagues is the fact that he has never examined Terri Schiavo nor looked at her lengthy medical records...William J. Winslade, a bioethicist and law professor at the University of Texas Medical Branch says Senator Frist "has no business making a diagnosis from a video." Unfortunately for his medical colleagues, Bill Frist is no longer in the business of medicine... he is in the business of politics.")

DAVID SHUSTER:  Every time you hear Mitt Romney speak these days I keep thinking about I have an uncle who specializes in the field of Asperger's, and people with autism, and has been making the point to me for several years that there’s some very brilliant creative people who have Asperger's and he’s suggested perhaps that Mitt Romney has some sort of form of Asperger's because he’s so socially inept in terms of being able to connect with people.

What he thinks is funny is really sort of not so funny. I sort of wonder if there is some sort of tic or something that he has or something that’s related to that. [...]

CHRIS LAVOIE, Miller sidekick: He (Romney) has a bucket in his car and he just said hardware stuff.

STEPHANIE MILLER: He doesn’t know what a donut is.

SHUSTER: Yeah I bought a hammer to hit Rafalca over the head for getting you know 30th place after we took a $77,000 dollar tax write-off.

LAVOIE: Oh David Shuster!

MILLER: Oh David Louise Shuster! All right.

LAVOIE: Ha ha ha ha!

SHUSTER: I must say, I you know the Rafalca issue is really personally offended me because I was embarrassed. I don’t think our Olympians should be getting in 30th place and especially when they’re taxing tax write offs and if Mitt Romney is pleased of Rafalca proud of Rafalca then he’s got even more problems than he knows.