Mitt Romney Dog controversy

In 2007, the Boston Globe reported that, in 1983, Romney transported his pet dog Seamus on the roof of their automobile for twelve hours enroute a family cottage in Beach O'Pines, Ontario. Seamus was enclosed in a carrier on the roof of the Romney family's station wagon. Sometime during the trip, the dog became afflicted with diarrhea, causing excrement to flow down the windows of the car. Romney stopped at a gas station to wash Seamus and the car, put Seamus back in his carrier, and continued the twelve-hour trip to Ontario.
During the 2012 campaign, candidate Newt Gingrich aired a television advertisement that featured the story. In order to contrast Barack Obama with Mitt Romney, David Axelrod, Obama's chief political consultant, tweeted a picture of Obama and his dog, Bo, in the presidential limousine, with the caption "How loving owners transport their dogs". Mark Halperin, the senior political analyst for Time magazine and MSNBC, opined that "for a lot of voters" the incident was "a serious issue". An entrepreneur selling "Dogs Against Romney" merchandise said that the incident had "struck a chord" because, unlike more important issues, it was "something that everyone can understand." In 2012, a campaign was initiated to create a neologism 'romney' which has the definition 'to defecate in terror'