Romneys get ribbed over Olympian horse CAMPAIGN 2012

Republican presidential candidate, former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney addresses the 113th National Convention of the Veterans of Foreign Wars in Reno, Nev. Tuesday July 24, 2012.(AP Photo/Rich Pedroncelli) Republican presidential candidate, former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney addresses the 113th National Convention of the Veterans of Foreign Wars in Reno, Nev. Tuesday July 24, 2012.(AP Photo/Rich Pedroncelli) Photo: Rich Pedroncelli, Associated Press Photo: Rich Pedroncelli, Associated Press Image 1 of / 3 Caption Close Romneys get ribbed over Olympian horse 1 / 3 Back to Gallery

A horse is a horse, of course, of course - unless, of course, it's a fancy Olympic dancing horse.

And if that horse is partly owned by GOP presidential candidate Mitt Romney, who has been struggling with his rich-guy image and his refusal to release his tax returns, it turns into four-legged fodder for political jousting.

The former Massachusetts governor plans to be in London for Friday's Opening Ceremony of the Summer Olympics, where he and his wife, Ann, have a personal stake: They received a $77,000 tax credit in 2010 for their part-ownership of Rafalca, a 15-year-old Oldenberg mare worth a reported $100,000.

The stunningly elegant animal will compete for the U.S. dressage team in the delicate equestrian sport. She'll be ridden by Ann Romney's riding teacher, German immigrant Jan Ebeling, who co-owns the horse with the Romneys. Rafalca is boarded at a 10-acre farm in Ventura County, where Ann Romney rides her regularly.

In recent days, the former Massachusetts governor, who is expected to become his party's formal nominee for president next month, has been ribbed by comedians and criticized by political insiders for his family's decision to plunge into a blue-blood sport during an election year.

Comic fodder

Comedian Stephen Colbert joked that "the image of Romney as a privileged princeling ends today - because now Romney is just your average blue-collar fan of dressage."

Democrats have made hay of the high-class horse, saying that it, along with Romney's friendships with NASCAR owners, is more evidence the GOP candidate is worlds away from the lives of average Americans.

Even some Republicans have raised questions about Romney and the Olympics going back a decade, when he took over as chief of the organizing committee for the trouble-plagued 2002 Salt Lake City Winter Olympics. Romney has often referred to that role as the "turnaround" of his public-service career, but Sen. John McCain of Arizona called the $1.3 billion federal bailout of the event "a national disgrace."

Beginning Friday, as millions of Americans watch the Olympics, the Romneys' direct association with the Games may take center ring. Their connection to dressage goes back more than a decade, when Ann Romney was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis. She has said that riding with Ebeling has been therapeutic.

The upper crust

The problem, their political foes say, is that the Romneys' sport of choice - in which prancing horses with elaborately braided manes are guided in delicate ballets by riders in top hat and tails - is associated more with kings than the "King of Beers" crowd.

Rich Walcoff, a longtime sportscaster for San Francisco's KGO radio, said dressage is not the pastime of the "hoi polloi," the great unwashed, because it's "fancy horse riding, when you have the horse maneuver at your slightest flick of the wrist. It's very sophisticated."

Labor groups and the Democratic National Committee put up an ad last week starring the dancing horse and jabbed Romney as "dancing around" on his tax returns.

ABC later reported that the DNC warned party insiders to stay away from the subject, out of sensitivity to Ann Romney.

But others aren't backing off.

"The Romneys' dancing Olympic horse gets better health care than many Americans, and Mitt Romney is campaigning to take away people's health care," MoveOn.org spokesman Nick Berning said. "If he wants wealthy horse owners like himself to get more tax privileges and for teachers and firefighters to be laid off to pay for it, we're going to point that out."

Bad timing

Democratic strategist Garry South said the timing for the Romneys' entry into Olympic dressage couldn't be worse.

"If windsurfing was an effete and elite sport when (Democratic presidential candidate) John Kerry did it - then what's a prissy horse prancing sideways with a rider in top hat and tails?" South said. "This just gives more credence to the notion of him being totally out of touch."

Bill Whalen, a Hoover Institution fellow and a Republican strategist, said Democrats are "going to great lengths to portray Romney as Thurston Howell III," the stuffy, rich character on the 1960s TV series "Gilligan's Island."

But history shows that voters rarely buy such stereotypes, Whalen said, and such efforts come with a risk. Democrats "tried to portray Reagan in 1980 as a madman and George Bush in 2000 as a dry drunk," Whalen said. "It didn't work."

Jen Psaki, spokeswoman for President Obama's re-election campaign, declined to get into the riding ring with Republicans over the horse, opting for the carrot rather than the stick in this political competition.

"We are rooting for the Romney horse in London," she said.