Mitt Romney: 'S Corporations are People with Spina Bifida'

DURHAM, NH — After asserting “corporations are people” at the Iowa State Fair in August, GOP presidential candidate Mitt Romney today took his anthropomorphic business analogy one step further, telling students at the University of New Hampshire that “S corporations are people with spina bifida.”

“Whereas corporations are people who are the backbone of America,” said the former Massachusetts governor, “S corporations are people with squiggly spines.”

Despite their differences, according to Romney, all businesses are people and should be treated equally under the law.

“That’s where America gets its diversity,” he stated, citing as examples shell corporations, front organizations, investment companies, laundering operations, hostile takeovers and organized crime, all forming a “melting pot of capitalistic personhood.”

Romney maintains even limited partnerships are people.

“They’re gay people,” he explained, “who are not allowed to merge to form a new entity, because it’s illegal — a position which I completely support at this time, and which I have mostly always supported, throughout many various specific moments in my career.”

When asked if non-profit organizations are also people, Romney widened his eyes and shook his head. “Non-profit?” he laughed. “Very funny!”