A hero shall arise from among them, and his name will be...Mitt?

Apparently the only thing the republican party fears more than a Romney nomination is the specter of a Caligula-like orgy of sweaty delegates clumped together in Tampa in August feverishly trying to decide on an alternative to a delegate deprived Mitt.   Listening to him try to speak extemporaneously while Newt works the floor for uncommitted delegates and Santorum holds court in the adjacent conference room, speaking in tongues does not make compelling television.   So one after another, the jowly and powerful, treacherous and Machiavellian have come out and grudgingly endorsed Romney.  “Well, uh, I guess…I mean I think…er…that is, I believe that Mitt will do an OK job…I mean, a much better job than that terrible negro we have now…”

Today’s slim Wisconsin primary victory – 43% to 38% - was immediately trumpeted as the latest sign of the inevitable coronation in Tampa, and brought a fresh round of plaintive urging for the other candidates to “do the right thing” and leave the playing field to the champion.  Mitt as the conquering hero appears with the weasel-like Paul Ryan standing beside him - his little tail wagging – and sincerely and politely stammers out a less than convincing victory speech and some perfunctory Obama bashing and then disappears into the night.  What a scene…!

The two of them tag-teamed Obama today after Barack gave Ryan and his cockamamie and monumentally regressive budget a few crisp verbal back-hands.  Ryan accused him of choosing “tired and cynical political attacks as he focuses on his own re-election." 

Wow, Paul, that’s hurtful…Mitt took a turn as well, chirping, “Instead of standing up and saying his policies haven’t worked, this president is unwilling to take responsibility”, his eyes wide with surprise.  Both of them acted as if it is unnatural for the sitting president, running for re-election, to tout his accomplishments and attack his opponents, who produced this grotesque budget and practically teed it up and handed him his driver.   Meanwhile Mitt’s more enthusiastic supporters, like Wisconsin Senator Ron Johnson, spew incomprehensible gobble-de-gook like, “I’ve spoken to Mitt; I totally believe he is committed to saving America”, once again turning policy differences into full blown insurrection-worthy crises. 

And we should probably get used to his jabbering spokes-person, Andrea Saul, who chimed in with a fetid blast of utter nonsense, saying Obama had done more to devastate the middle class than anyone since…well, Nero, and calling Romney a “job creator”. 

The GOP stable of hatchet men and take-down artists is running full blast these days, as a Romney candidacy seems ever more certain and their choice of issues ever smaller.  Can they attack Obama on foreign policy or, better yet, tout the candidate’s foreign policy expertise?  Not really.  Progressives may be unhappy with Obama’s performance in this domain but there are no make-or-break issues percolating there and Romney is not exactly known for his intimate grasp of foreign policy issues.  Can you imagine him confronting Iran and Amahdinejad?  “Why we’ll just sail the sloop right on up there and give him a proper talking to…”  Romney thinks the biggest threat to the US is Russia, an idea whose expiration date was 10 years ago.  Bin Laden is dead, Ghadafi is dead, we’re out of Iraq, on the way out, (albeit, ever so slowly), from Afghanistan, working through nuclear disarmament with the scary Russians and – despite the jingoistic screeches of John McCain and his ilk, showing admirable and adult restraint in dealing with Syria. 

 Plus the electorate doesn’t give a shit about that at this point in any case.  Strange as it may seem to the republican gentry, people want jobs.  They want to be able to go to Walmart and fill one of those big ass shopping carts with all manner of cheap things they don’t really need – it’s as good as sex without all the messy bodily fluids, shame and remorse.

It’s on the domestic economy that the desperate republicans are pinning their hopes.  What is the battle cry?  “It’s not as good as it could be”, seems to be about the best they can muster.   They seek to combine this idea with the royalist-friendly budget of the little ferret, Paul Ryan, and make one last attempt to convince voters that the deficit should be their biggest fear, that lower taxes for Wall Street money-changers and swells like Romney are the path to overall prosperity, that oil companies know best how to fix the economy and if we just kill all of the old people and poor people and sick people we could have that shopping cart full of stuff and everyone would be happy.

There is a scene in the movie, Trading Places, when Eddie Murphy is talking about pork belly traders and says, “They panickin’ out there; I can feel it”  That’s what’s happening now with the GOP.  When you stick Sarah Palin on the Today Show to drop steaming non-sequitars like, “Anyone but that socialist, Obama” into a discussion of Oprah, it stinks of fear.   When the personification of the dream of America is reduced to Mitt Romney, that fear is justified. 

I thought that somewhere along the line the delusional but somehow popular Rick Santorum would get some traction, raise some money, and hump Mitt’s leg all the way to Tampa, causing chaos and disruption and the mad-cap theater of an open convention.  Alas, it’s seems it’s not to be.  Wiser heads have prevailed; out of a haze of Cuban cigar smoke and the delicate aroma of 20 year old scotch, the word came down to all of the Kings’ men to clear the stage of the clowns and let their robot give it a try.  It is still a puzzlement that these are the guys they ran with.  It doesn’t make sense.  Maybe they were so cocky at the time that they loaded up the clown car, they thought it didn’t matter; that anyone could take Obama down.  And maybe at some recent point that thought made sense.  But today, in 2012, asking the public to buy into Stiff Mitt the Savior; that’s just not going to work.