Watching the debate tonight it dawned on me why no one seems to lay a glove on Mitt Romney; he never says anything. He basically repeats a standard speech in bits and pieces in order to answer any question that comes up. He’s so utterly bland and empty that there is nothing to attack. He’s just an empty suit full of hot air and single minded ambition.
So unless the shit really hits the fan tomorrow morning – and really, does anyone expect things to get crazy on a Sunday morning – this thing is really over except to watch in amusement as a terribly earnest but deranged Rick Santorum nips at Mitt’s heels for a month or so. Santorum has a weird look these days facing the excited hordes of star struck republican shut-ins coming out to see him; like a college professor who unexpectedly woke up with a nasty hangover and now has to go teach medieval civilization to an 8:00 o’clock class. And it is hard to imagine him ever attracting much support in a nationwide race; he’s too much of a dangerous and unstable mixture of ignorance, stupidity, hate and bigotry with an overlay of heavenly voices in his head. But he has that zealot’s inspired confidence, like he’s somehow doing god’s will even if he is insulting and racist, confused and delusional.
Perry’s dead; he is not even on the radar in New Hampshire and looked like he’d rather be on somebody’s front porch in Charleston having a beer than standing there sporting the standard issue presidential red tie and a zombie grin. He apparently decided to double down on the traditional conservative red meat issue of belligerent and pointless militarism by suggesting we send our troops back to Iraq because that would assure us that the 4,500 American deaths there were not for nothing. I couldn't follow that logic exactly but it did allow him to try to hammer Obama with the Iranian boogey-man and accuse him of not understanding that part of the world.
I’d like to just stop and examine that bit of exuberant partisan ignorance for just a moment. Bush the Dull and his madcap Prince Regent Dick “Peckerhead” Cheney started an illegal war for no good reason and lied about it, a war that wrecked havoc on our country in so many ways, that included inept and amateurish administrative oversight and a blindingly stupid series of bad decisions until he finally said, “Fuck it; let’s get out of here”; whereupon he negotiated the withdrawal Obama just concluded. At the same time the secretive cabal of neo-con savants and seers meeting in the White House basement let Khaddafi run amock, supported a whole swath of autocratic dictators, let Yemen become a completely lawless wasteland and al Qaeda sanctuary, and fumbled away multiple chances to push an Israeli / Palestinian resolution such that there are more new apartment building in the West Bank then there are foreclosures in Vegas, all while allowing Afghanistan to slowly sink into chaos overseen by the Pakistanis. Whew…quite a legacy of conservative republicans “understanding that part of the world”. Now another blowhard Texas pea-brain – all hat and no cattle if there ever was one – thinks he has all the answers to managing the single most volatile region in the world today. And we’re confident about this vision why exactly…?
The rest of this stuff was so boring even Diane Sawyer was seen nodding off a couple of times. There was the obligatory bitching about birth control, abortion, gay sex and who is or isn't a racist. Santorum and Paul were seen playing rock, paper, scissors over that one. Santorum is discovering to his surprise and dismay that people are actually recording the shit he says, making it really hard to later deny saying it. And Paul is still pulling an OJ Simpson and trying to find the real writer of the homophobic and racist newsletters bearing his name. Ron doesn't have a deep enough well of belief and goodwill to try to pull off the “Well, it might look like I did it but trust me, I didn't” thing and he obviously needs to go back to the Ed Meese memorial school for political hacks and take the course in plausible deniability again.
The real surprises were, first, that these idiots ruthlessly hammered on each other, as if finishing second was the big prize, and left Romney standing there brushing lint off his sleeves all night instead of having to put a tourniquet on anything. And second, Gingrich the nutty professor was unusually placid, making the breathless media build up seem tremendously anti-climatic. From what I read I expected Newt to come on stage with war paint, wearing a loin cloth and looking for Mitt’s scalp. Instead he spent the night jousting with Paul and the others over arcane points of republican ultra-right orthodoxy and trying to use big words to denigrate Obama. He could have at least cut Romney who, even though he will surely win this primary, is still vulnerable, especially heading closer to Newt’s home turf in South Carolina and Florida. (Paul may very well win Nevada and really, who cares; I think they have a third of an electoral vote).
As Chris Matthews said, Romney is being rejected by a large part of the republican voters like the human body rejects foreign tissue. He may skate in New Hampshire but letting him wander around give his standard stump speech over and over like the automaton he is lets him off way too easily if this is really going to be a contested nomination process. But maybe someone got to Newt; pointed out that if he plays nice and doesn't drive a wedge into the party that he could scam an ambassadorship to someplace really cool and he and Callista can go off and live like the important and influential people he clearly wishes they were. Greece might be nice, if they could figure out the whole “going bankrupt” thing.
If no one is going to lay a glove on Romney he’s going to play rope-a-dope right into Super Tuesday and by then it will be over. And if it’s going to happen it has to happen in South Carolina or Florida and it looks as if it is going to have to be Newt who muses Mitt’s hair. You just know he wants to; Mitt is the guy who has always gotten the hottest chick and laughed at Newt and you just know he wants to take him down a peg. But if it is a choice between being ambassador to Monaco or getting into a slap fight with Mitt, you have to feel that Newt’s not going to hit on 17. And for that I am terribly disappointed.
So unless the shit really hits the fan tomorrow morning – and really, does anyone expect things to get crazy on a Sunday morning – this thing is really over except to watch in amusement as a terribly earnest but deranged Rick Santorum nips at Mitt’s heels for a month or so. Santorum has a weird look these days facing the excited hordes of star struck republican shut-ins coming out to see him; like a college professor who unexpectedly woke up with a nasty hangover and now has to go teach medieval civilization to an 8:00 o’clock class. And it is hard to imagine him ever attracting much support in a nationwide race; he’s too much of a dangerous and unstable mixture of ignorance, stupidity, hate and bigotry with an overlay of heavenly voices in his head. But he has that zealot’s inspired confidence, like he’s somehow doing god’s will even if he is insulting and racist, confused and delusional.
Perry’s dead; he is not even on the radar in New Hampshire and looked like he’d rather be on somebody’s front porch in Charleston having a beer than standing there sporting the standard issue presidential red tie and a zombie grin. He apparently decided to double down on the traditional conservative red meat issue of belligerent and pointless militarism by suggesting we send our troops back to Iraq because that would assure us that the 4,500 American deaths there were not for nothing. I couldn't follow that logic exactly but it did allow him to try to hammer Obama with the Iranian boogey-man and accuse him of not understanding that part of the world.
I’d like to just stop and examine that bit of exuberant partisan ignorance for just a moment. Bush the Dull and his madcap Prince Regent Dick “Peckerhead” Cheney started an illegal war for no good reason and lied about it, a war that wrecked havoc on our country in so many ways, that included inept and amateurish administrative oversight and a blindingly stupid series of bad decisions until he finally said, “Fuck it; let’s get out of here”; whereupon he negotiated the withdrawal Obama just concluded. At the same time the secretive cabal of neo-con savants and seers meeting in the White House basement let Khaddafi run amock, supported a whole swath of autocratic dictators, let Yemen become a completely lawless wasteland and al Qaeda sanctuary, and fumbled away multiple chances to push an Israeli / Palestinian resolution such that there are more new apartment building in the West Bank then there are foreclosures in Vegas, all while allowing Afghanistan to slowly sink into chaos overseen by the Pakistanis. Whew…quite a legacy of conservative republicans “understanding that part of the world”. Now another blowhard Texas pea-brain – all hat and no cattle if there ever was one – thinks he has all the answers to managing the single most volatile region in the world today. And we’re confident about this vision why exactly…?
The rest of this stuff was so boring even Diane Sawyer was seen nodding off a couple of times. There was the obligatory bitching about birth control, abortion, gay sex and who is or isn't a racist. Santorum and Paul were seen playing rock, paper, scissors over that one. Santorum is discovering to his surprise and dismay that people are actually recording the shit he says, making it really hard to later deny saying it. And Paul is still pulling an OJ Simpson and trying to find the real writer of the homophobic and racist newsletters bearing his name. Ron doesn't have a deep enough well of belief and goodwill to try to pull off the “Well, it might look like I did it but trust me, I didn't” thing and he obviously needs to go back to the Ed Meese memorial school for political hacks and take the course in plausible deniability again.
The real surprises were, first, that these idiots ruthlessly hammered on each other, as if finishing second was the big prize, and left Romney standing there brushing lint off his sleeves all night instead of having to put a tourniquet on anything. And second, Gingrich the nutty professor was unusually placid, making the breathless media build up seem tremendously anti-climatic. From what I read I expected Newt to come on stage with war paint, wearing a loin cloth and looking for Mitt’s scalp. Instead he spent the night jousting with Paul and the others over arcane points of republican ultra-right orthodoxy and trying to use big words to denigrate Obama. He could have at least cut Romney who, even though he will surely win this primary, is still vulnerable, especially heading closer to Newt’s home turf in South Carolina and Florida. (Paul may very well win Nevada and really, who cares; I think they have a third of an electoral vote).
As Chris Matthews said, Romney is being rejected by a large part of the republican voters like the human body rejects foreign tissue. He may skate in New Hampshire but letting him wander around give his standard stump speech over and over like the automaton he is lets him off way too easily if this is really going to be a contested nomination process. But maybe someone got to Newt; pointed out that if he plays nice and doesn't drive a wedge into the party that he could scam an ambassadorship to someplace really cool and he and Callista can go off and live like the important and influential people he clearly wishes they were. Greece might be nice, if they could figure out the whole “going bankrupt” thing.
If no one is going to lay a glove on Romney he’s going to play rope-a-dope right into Super Tuesday and by then it will be over. And if it’s going to happen it has to happen in South Carolina or Florida and it looks as if it is going to have to be Newt who muses Mitt’s hair. You just know he wants to; Mitt is the guy who has always gotten the hottest chick and laughed at Newt and you just know he wants to take him down a peg. But if it is a choice between being ambassador to Monaco or getting into a slap fight with Mitt, you have to feel that Newt’s not going to hit on 17. And for that I am terribly disappointed.
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