Mitt spits the bit in moment of unscripted candor...

There’s not a lot more that can be said about Mitt Romney’s presidential campaign that hasn’t already been said recently and if I pummeled him like I’m inclined to, it would just seem cruel; like piling on, kicking him when he’s down, lashing him to the roof of the car and driving for 8 hours in 50 degree temperatures.  No, that’s not my style.  I have no problem eviscerating the guy when he seems like a viable threat but to continue to hammer him now for all of the stupid, thoughtless, hysterical things he’s said in the last couple of weeks would be unseemly.

                                                                           
But much can be said about his party and, more specifically, the power guys in the party.  And make no mistake about it; they’re all men - men that smell like Cuban cigars and old money.   I’m sure they sitting around somewhere wondering how they fucked this up but if they could see beyond the bubble in which they all seem live, it’s really very simple.

They thought they could just throw their jock straps out onto the field and beat Obama this year.  A lot of things were in their favor; their criminal co-conspirators in the congress had successfully sabotaged any and all attempts by the president and the democrats to fix the economy, using the filibuster more times than during any other administration in history to block every initiative Obama naively put forth.  People were still hurting and by and large he was getting the blame.  But this overconfidence led to their current doomed situation and the candidate who is looking more like a monumental loser every passing day. 

Looking back it’s so obvious what happened; while it looked as if Obama was wounded, it also looked as if the problems plaguing him were long term with no easy solutions.  Anyone winning in 2012 was going to be in a position of “put up or shut up”, with enormous pressure to turn simplistic political promises into action; meaning jobs and economic growth.  At a time of global economic chaos there is only so much an American president can do.  My guess is, the smart guys in the room – guys like Christie and Rubio and Rob Portman – took a look around at the train wreck that Bush created and decided that running another day might be the wiser course, the better to preside over a more prosperous part of the 21^st century.  One by one they demurred.

That left the field open to what turned out to be a madcap clown car full of delusional quacks and long shots and, of course, Romney, who probably figured it was his turn.  Surveying the field and seeing the likes of Bachman and Santorum speaking in tongues, the nutty professor in Gingrich, long-time candidate Ron Paul and cockamamie pizza entrepreneur Herman Cain probably reinforced his belief that he and Ann could start picking out new curtains for the White House and not worry about the troubling details – like having some kind of coherent message.

What he didn’t expect – and what the suits with the cash didn’t foresee – was that this far-right field would suck the whole party to the edge of the cliff and cause moderates and independents to run away in terror.  Ceding the campaign to the tea party-wing made for a lot of bold talk but compressed the base so that when Mitt has a month like the last one – where he is buried in an avalanche of his own ignorance – there’s no one left to support him and his poll numbers look like the stock market charts for January 2009.  When Peggy Noonan calls you out for looking like an incompetent hack, you’re in trouble.

In a final bit of irony, the default choice of Romney, rather than holding the party together to achieve the goal of recapturing the oval office for the republicans, has cleaved it into a more profound minority status by alienating those party loyalists not captive to religious fervor or the cult of personality embodied in nut-cakes like Grover Norquist.   This leaves behind fertile ground for the emergence of a viable third party.

For all that he has accomplished, Obama is far from the perfect fit for the country at this moment.  He has alienated many progressives and libertarians with drone strikes abroad and what is widely seen as an excessive expansion of government domestically.  His justice department has been a nightmare.  There is plenty of room for support to coalesce to his right.  Center leaning moderate democrats - blue collar workers and union supporters who are socially conservative and the more business friendly but socially liberal supporters - could easily join with socially moderate republicans willing to compromise on economic and taxation issues and get to a number that would make a third party candidate seem more credible than the fringe third party candidates – sincere and earnest though they may be – currently on the ticket. 

Now as Mitt frantically turns up in swing state pancake houses and chamber of commerce luncheons to fulfill the campaign’s newest strategy of re-introducing him to an increasingly skeptical public, the short term result seems pre-ordained; Obama wins comfortably and brings a few members of congress with him.  If – and this is a biggie – he gets enough congressional support to actually implement some of his heretofore blocked initiatives, this whole scenario may be delayed and we may have some new political star emerge from an energized democratic party to run in 2016.  If, however, he scrapes out a narrow win with a recalcitrant congress remaining to hump his leg and piss on his shoes for four years, my prediction is a very angry and disillusioned electorate in 2016 hungry for a change that goes beyond flipping the same two-party coin to try the other side. 

Could we have a viable third party to stand the political status quo on its head for the rest of the 21^st century?   The next six weeks may hold the answer.  Stay tuned and make sure to vote!