Wednesday, June 20, 2012

Romney's gift at making pie shells

There was a picture in today's USA TODAY  of  one of those made-to-order photo-ops of Mitt Romney  on his campaign tour in Michigan. The sleeves of his white  shirt were rolled up to the elbows  to show that By God he was a regular guy among regular guys and gals  invoved in the common labors of the middle class and below.

The caption said the candidate was kneading dough to make a pie shell.  It was a fitting image of the empty shell his campaign has offered so far.  He has dodged the difficult questions, shifting from one position to another , as the moment dictates, spinning them as he would a pizza crust.  Aside from repeating that he would cut  taxes and create jobs,  he has yet to tell us how he would do this while eliminating the deficit.

 As one who occasionally watches TV 's Cake Boss solve impossible problems with imaginative solutions  (and a lot of icing) I would think Romney might  want to add him to the campaign  to offer  ways to fill the shell.  Or is it no more than a shell game?

(P.S. The headline on the story told us:  Romney mum on unions as he woos Mich. What did I just tell you?)

* * * * *

Speaking of newspapers:  The Plain Dealer  today editorially crtiticized Josh Mandel for being
"stuck on the low road."  That's a reference to Mandel & Friends dragging out the ancient published story of how Sen. Sherrod Brown was the source of domestic violence during his rancorous 1986 divorce.  (No matter now that he and his ex-wife have  remained friends and, indeed, she just  hosted a fund raiser for him. )

But Mandel is an incorrigible brat who raised false Muslim issues against his opponent when he ran for Treasurer. As someone once wrote of the Roman historian Livy's questionable accounts of wars, "He had a taste for truth,  but no passion for  it."

So allow me to quibble  with the PD's optimistic assessment of the Whiz Kid, which asserted :

"Mandel is capable of better".

There's no evidence of  "better" in his mad-dash  political career.  Or was the PD, as the corporate media are quite capable of doing these days,  merely trying to soften the blow?

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