Romney and Broder Re-Write History on King Jr.

Mitt Romney is suddenly, falsely claiming that his father marched with Martin Luther King Jr., and the lie is being propped up by David Broder's lousy reporting and or intentional dishonesty.      

Mitt Romney says his dad marched with Martin Luther King:

In the most-watched speech of his political career, speaking on "Faith in America" at College Station, Texas, earlier this month, Mitt Romney evoked the strongest of all symbolic claims to civil-rights credentials: "I saw my father march with Martin Luther King."

He has repeated the claim several times recently, most prominently to Tim Russert on Meet the Press . But, while the late George W. Romney, a four-term governor of Michigan, can lay claim to a strong record on civil rights, the Phoenix can find no evidence that the senior Romney actually marched with King, nor anything in the public record suggesting that he ever claimed to do so.

In fact, this false historical claim was invented by David Broder in 1967:

[...] Broder, in that column, references a 1967 book he co-authored on the Republican Party, which included a chapter on George Romney. It includes a one-line statement that the senior Romney "has marched with Martin Luther King through the exclusive Grosse Pointe suburb of Detroit."

But that account is incorrect. King never marched in Grosse Pointe, according to the Grosse Pointe Historical Society, and had not appeared in the town at all at the time the Broder book was published. "I’m quite certain of that," says Suzy Berschback, curator of the Grosse Pointe Historical Society. (Border [sic] was not immediately available for comment.)

Mitt only recently resurrected this Broder canard..

 

[...]Nor did Mitt Romney ever previously claim that this took place, until long after his father passed away in 1995 — not even when defending accusations of the Mormon church’s discriminatory past during his 1994 Senate campaign.

Will David Broder stand by his account?  Will people buy this demonstrably false version of events?