Romney, Rep. King Continue "Apology Tour" Myth At the Values Voter Summit this weekend, Rick Santorum said that social conservatives would "never have the elite smart people on our side." He also ruled out anyone who dedicates her life to teaching and research: "our colleges and universities, they're not going to be on our side." Mr. Santorum offered this prediction not in sorrow, but as a point of pride. Because smart, educated types "believe they should have the power to tell you what to do," whereas values voters "will always be sustained through two institutions, the church and the family"-meaning they think the church and the family should have the power to tell you what to do. Social conservatives have given up on smart people (Mr. Santorum said it, not me). Meanwhile, it seems the Romney campaign has given up on what Karl Rove once called the "reality-based community." Last week, Mitt Romney responded to the attacks on American diplomatic missions in Egypt and Libya by claiming the Obama administration "sympathized" with the aggressors. Everyone who pays attention to facts knows that the embassy in Cairo, not the White House, issued a statement condemning "efforts to offend believers of all religions." And that the embassy sent the statement before the siege on the consulate in Benghazi that led to the death of Ambassador Stevens. But even when reporters called Mr. Romney on his distortions, he persisted in attacking the president for something he'd never done. It's never too early for the United States government to condemn attacks on Americans and to defend our values. I'm not the first person to ask-even before the attacks have taken place? The "sympathy" canard is best understood in the larger context of Mr. Romney's oft-repeated lie that Mr. Obama undertook an international "apology tour" after taking office. As Jonathan Chait observed in New York Magazine, the Cairo Embassy statement sounded sort of like an apology (even though it wasn't) so Mr. Romney just slotted it into the false apology narrative. He's not the only Republican committed to spreading the "apology tour" myth, or to seem undaunted by the fact that it never happened. On CNN's Starting Point this morning, Soledad O'Brien made a heroic effort to foist reality on Rep. Peter King. "Everyone keeps talking about this apology tour and apologies from the president," she said. I'm trying to find the words 'I'm sorry, I apologize' in any of those speeches. Which I have the text of all those speeches in front of me. None of those speeches at all, if you go to factcheck.org which we check in a lot, they all say the same thing. They fact check this and they say this whole theory of apologies  Then Mr. King interjected, "I don't care what fact check says." Later he added, "Any commonsense interpretation of those speeches, the president's apologizing for the American position. That's the apology tour. Mr. King would have us believe that "commonsense interpretation" reveals the legitimacy of the "apology tour" narrative. Underlying Mr. King's statement, and the whole "apology tour" attack, is the presumption that it's never OK for a president to admit that America can do, and has done, wrong. But those of us in the "reality-based community" reject that presumption. Even George W. Bush rejected that presumption. Here's what he had to say about Japanese-American internment: "we can take a clear stand for justice and recognize that serious injustices were done to Japanese Americans during World War II." And here's what he said about slavery, on a trip to Senegal: "One of the largest migrations in history was also one of the greatest crimes of history."