Poll: Most People Don't Care If Romney Was an Antigay Bully

Mitt Romney

A new poll finds that most people by now have heard about Mitt Romney's past as an antigay bully and more than two-thirds aren't bothered one bit by it.

Ipsos asked poll respondents via the Internet about a Washington Post report that while Romney was in prep school, he led a "posse" of students who held down and forcibly cut the hair of a fellow high-schooler while the student cried, screamed and called for help.

Of those who had heard about the attack, Politico reports that 67% said the story doesn't affect their view of Romney one way or the other. For 28%, the story negatively affected their opinion, and 5% said it had a positive effect.

Romney doesn't deny the bullying happened. Instead he claims to not be able to remember it and laughs about the "pranks" he often pulled during school. Commentator Frank Rich said it's Romney's reaction that could worsen the polls to come.

"As many have said, what is fair game is his strange, chuckling denial of any knowledge of a fairly violent prank that other participants and eyewitnesses remember so vividly," Rich said in an interview in New York magazine. "If no other similar incidents turn up, that will be the end of it. How big an “if” that is, I don’t know. Much of Romney’s past remains a mystery to me, as it does to most Americans. Meanwhile Sondheim aficionados can savor a musical recounting of the bullying incident, 'Romney Mitt, the Demon Barber of Wall Street.'"