Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Seamus (dog) (2nd nomination)
Most of the "Delete" !votes amount to people saying, "I personally would not give this incident much weight in deciding how to vote, therefore it's objectively not important and doesn't merit an article."  Well, the objective standard is whether it actually ''is'' a matter of widespread interest, not whether it should be in some ideal world in which most people agreed with the judgments of a handful of Wikipedians.  The extensive media coverage is by itself enough to demonstrate that this is notable.  Further, although we usually have to make do with drawing inferences about notability from facts like that, here we have an impartial expert directly stating that it is notable: "Mark Halperin, the senior political analyst for ''Time (magazine)|Time'' magazine and MSNBC, opined that 'for a lot of voters' the incident was 'a serious issue'." (from http://thepage.time.com/2012/01/15/newt-seamus-story-paints-a-picture-of-mitt/)  We have standalone articles on comparable political attacks against Democrats, such as John Kerry military service controversy and Bill Ayers presidential election controversy.  Both of these, IMO, were complete horseshit meritless attacks, achieving notability only because of the relentless blaring of the right-wing noise machine (the Kerry smear was contradicted by Navy records and by the prior statements of the liars recruited by the Republicans; the Ayers thing tried to attack Obama for all the past acts of someone with whom he had only a slight connection).  Nevertheless, these articles are properly kept because the subjects achieved notability -- undeserved notability, but still notability.  Finally, the support for "Merge" is unrealistic.  It's a call for endless edit wars about how much information (if any!) gets merged into some other article.  The standalone article is a correct application of , with the Mitt Romney bio having a very brief mention plus a link to this more detailed article for the benefit of readers who want more information
— User:JamesMLane, 19:26, 25 April 2012 (UTC)
Stance: keep
Cited policy: WP:SS (Wikipedia:Summary style)