Meet the Romneys: With Mitt on the ascent, media focuses on his immediate family

WASHINGTON – With polls suggesting Mitt Romney could be the next president of the United States, the focus is sharpening on his immediate family — and his eldest son, in particular, is providing plenty of material for Americans now taking a closer look at their potential new First Family.

A report that Solamere Capital, a company owned by Tagg Romney, has invested heavily in electronic voting machines to be used next month in the critical swing state of Ohio lit up the political blogosphere on Friday.

U.S. President Barack Obama is still leading Romney in Ohio, despite the Republican’s recent surge in the polls. Tagg Romney campaigned for his father on Friday in the southeast reaches of the state.

Ohioans are sensitive to suggestions of voter machine shenanigans, with some liberals in the state long suspecting wonky voting machines played a role in George W. Bush’s sudden, late-night win there against John Kerry in 2004.

Those voting machines were owned by a company called Diebold, which avidly supported Bush.

Tagg Romney’s investment in the machines emerged two days after Romney’s 42-year-old first-born — reportedly now helping to manage his father’s campaign — caused a stir by saying he wanted to “take a swing” at Barack Obama after the president’s feisty showing against his the Republican nominee in their second prime-time debate.

A day later, Tagg’s younger brother, Josh — who levelled an enduring death stare at Obama from the audience throughout much of Tuesday’s debate, prompting its own Internet mini-meme — tried to undo any damage.

“That brother has slugged me a couple times,” said Josh Romney, who once compared Obama to an “obstinate child,” said from the audience as his mother made an appearance on ABC’s “The View.”

“I assure you, President Obama has nothing to worry about …. I think that was just something he was saying off the cuff, and I assure you he didn’t mean it.”

Nonetheless the fallout from that remark was on full boil all week, with MSNBC’s Lawrence O’Donnell challenging Tagg Romney to a duel.

“So you want to take a swing at someone for calling your old man a liar? Take a swing at me,” O’Donnell said. “I’ll make it easy for you. I’ll come to you …. Go ahead, Taggart. Take your best shot.”

There was even a painting of Tagg Romney throwing a punch at the president — entitled “Tagg Romney Ichthus Interruptus” — on sale on eBay by Friday.

Ann Romney, meantime, raised some eyebrows herself with some of her comments to Barbara Walters, Whoopi Goldberg and the rest of “The View” crew this week, in particular when she hinted that women who vote against her husband due to his stances on reproductive rights care less about their childrens’ futures.

“Women are going to have a choice,” she said.

“If you really want to make a choice and if those choices are about reproductive rights, that’s your choice. If they’re about economic issues and making a better future for your children … that’s the beauty of what we have in this country, is being able to have those choices.”

With less than three weeks until the Nov. 6 vote — and at least one pollster, Gallup, putting Romney well ahead of Obama nationally — the Romneys are increasingly under a media spotlight.

Some of the attention has been unkind.

“Which Romney Son Is Creepiest?” asked Gawker.com earlier this week.

For the record, Tagg seems to have emerged victorious, based on the completely subjective impressions of the New York website’s writers and editors. Josh Romney didn’t escape unscathed, however.

“Josh could play a Batman villain as is,” wrote one Gawker wag.

The New Republic, meantime, published a story about Tagg Romney on Friday — entitled “Growing Up Romney” — delving into Tagg’s relatively new career as a venture capitalist, most of it fuelled by his father’s millions, and how the Romneys raised their four boys in Belmont, Mass.

Some of it is heartwarming, although the story is harshly critical of Romney’s stand on social issues, welfare in particular.

“Tagg wasn’t known around Belmont as a rich kid; he was known as the kid with the cool, if slightly eccentric, parents,” reads the piece by Noam Scheiber.

“The Romneys were, in fact, unusually tight-knit. One visitor recalls a family ritual: Every night at around 9:30 or 10:00, Mitt and Ann would meet at the foot of their staircase, clasp hands, and escort each other upstairs to the bedroom, in full view of their brood.”

Indeed, the Romney clan is known to be genuinely close, vacationing together with their children and grandchildren. Romney’s photogenic five sons have been actively present during both his runs for president, often seen beaming behind him on stage during various events.

And the attention has hardly been all negative. The youngest Romney son, Craig, has had a blog devoted to him for months all but declaring him a dreamboat.

“Hey girl,” is the caption on one of the photos featured on the blog. “My binder is only full of you.”