Romney: If you can't say something bad, cool it

MITT ROMNEY is having trouble dealing with an economy that is creeping upward.  Down in Florida,  Romney's campaign people have told Republican  Gov. Rick Scott to cool it  on boasting that more people have jobs today in the Sunshine State.  For a candidate for whom good economic news is bad news - at least until after the election - Romney must hope that we'll all be on welfare by November in order to  sell his  vague jobs plan to the voters. Next thing you know, he will ask Republicans to stop buying new cars and  homes until you-know-when.

 His position remains as he stated it during the primaries:

 "Of course the economy is getting  better, but Obama made it worse."

So "worse" in Summit County  that home sales were  up 18.5 pct.  and 19 pct. in Ohio over a year ago. During that period  Akron's unemployment dropped from 9.2 pct. to 7.6 and in the county 8.3 pct. down to 6.6 pct.   Those are figures that Team Romney may prefer to discuss in a quiet room.

And another thing, while we're at it:  Does he really think it will be all that helpful to substitute one word for another to avoid suspicion that there is less in his orations than meets the ear?  His campaign has now banished the use of the word "outsourcing" - a killer thought among people who want to keep the jobs in America.  His euphemism of choice is "offshoring". But that sounds like a better fit for rich investors like Romney who keep their mega-accounts in non-taxed offshore vaults.

Down among the not so sheltering palms

ON THIS SPECIAL DAY that we set aside for acknowledging fools, we need to look no farther than the sometimes-sunshine state of Florida. That's where the voters in November elected Rick Scott, a Republican, as governor. It either forgave him, or didn't know any better, for once running a company that morphed into the biggest private for-profit health care company in the nation. On the other hand, Columbia/HCA , where Scott had been forced to resign in the midst of a massive Medicare fraud scandal, pleaded guilty to 14 felonies and paid $1.7 billion in fines. As a candidate, Scott solved the problem by telling the voters that although he was a can-do businessman, he wasn't aware of what was going on in his company. (Some folks down there will believe anything. My father, who lived in Miami, was sure that Florida had such great weather that its inhabitants seldom died. Alas, he wasn't among the lucky ones.)

But more on fools: During a legislative debate in Florida on Republican hostility to unions and regulations that impact on corporations, State Rep Scott Randolph, a Democrat, declared that his wife could "incorporate her uterus" if that's what would it take to keep the GOP from demanding greater restrictions on abortion. Well, ladies and gentlemen, the Republicans were outraged that he had said uterus on the House floor. According to Randolph, he was told by them that they were concerned about young pages hearing the word. (I wonder where the R's think the young pages have been for sex education in their maturing years.)

Finally: Apparently not satisfied that there are more than adequate, if clandestine, channels to political campaign coffers, the Florida legislature recently passed a law reviving an old law that will permit political donors to dump their cash directly into what they call " leadership funds" but are nothing more than old-fashioned slush funds created by the very lawmakers who will benefit from them.. It will be all in the open with no questions asked about the propriety of the scheme. One thing it's sure do: It will clean up a lot of the laundering and lying to disguise the the revenue flow.

To the G0P: Don't crack open the champagne yet

WHILE REPUBLICANS are celebrating their newly-found glory in Massachusetts as Democrats fall on their swords, may I add two cautionary words for the GOP? Tea Party. Throughout the land the adrenalin is flowing for the political upheaval that has taken over the dialogue, for which the traditional Republican soldiers might pause. The Tea Partyers are up and running, like unleashed pit bulls, against the Republican officeholders in the primaries. A brief recap:

In Texas, where its governor, Rick Perry, has talked of secession when it has suited his audience, eleven Republican congressmen are being challenged in the state primary by the TP's. That's not a misprint. E-L-E-V-E-N! As in football.

In Ohio, a TP candidate, State Rep. Seth Morgan, from rural Huber Heights, has declared his candidacy for Ohio Auditor with strong backing from the TPs who refer to him as a "man of principle". Should the folks at the State GOP Headquarters in Columbus risk the enmity of the hard-right conservatives by giving full support to a party-backed candidate? In Ohio's Second congressional district, a seat already held by U.S. Rep. Jean Schmidt (a birther and hardly a lib) now comes Libertarian-TP activist, Marc Johnston, who has entered the race that includes Schmidt and several others. The Ohio U.S. Senate race has at least one TP-friendly candidate, Tom Ganley on the Republican side, and at the top of the ticket, gubernatorial candidate John Kasich has appeared at a TP rally or two to assure them that he is one of their brethren.

In Florida, Gov. Charlie Crist has a challenge in his bid for the U.S. Senate from a TP. In New York's 23rd District, the Republican congressional candidate withdrew from a challenge by a TP who was supported by Sarah Palin (in this instance the TP came up empty as the Democrat won.)

In Massachusetts, Illinois and other states, we may see more TP candidates in the mix. ( I was going to mention Michael Steele, the RNC chairman, too, who is fond of the TP's. But nobody takes Steele seriously these days.)

I wouldn't think that GOP regulars (read: the ones back at the club) could comfortably sniff away these challenges. The TP's are now operating on web sites named Patriotic Resistance, Tea Party Nation and FreedomWorks and they don't speak that highly of either party up on Capitol Hill.

Win or lose, any serious primary challenge will only serve to drain money that could be spent against the Democrats in November. And after all, isn't money what politics is all about these days? Well, that and, eh...socialists.

Tea Partiers: A third party where losing is good

THE WORD from the Tea Party front in Florida is not reassuring to fogies who feel that two parties are more than enough. The rebels down among the sheltering palms have filed papers, not to indict President Obama for treason, but rather to create a third party to oppose Gov. Charlie Crist, who is the GOP's choice to run for the Senate. I'm not sure where they got the idea but the Tea Partiers are outraged that Crist is rumored to have hired a retired liberal to fix a leak in his sink without clearing the guy with Glenn Beck.

Such maneuvering to offer the TP's a seat at the table on Capitol Hill should bring joy to Democrats, who may find a way to contribute to the TP's . As we have all been told, 2010 will not be a vintage year for the D's without outside help. With a civil war under way in the GOP, even President Obama might agree to sit down at Fox News to argue that the TP's are merely proud evidence of democracy in action and should not in any way be discouraged. And in what better place to encourage these rebels than in Florida, where there is precedence for rogue alligators lumbering across the residents' backyards?

Besides, who can blame the TP's for being encouraged by their defeat by a Democrat in New York's 23rd Congressional District after forcing the moderate Republican candidate out of the race. The predatory campaign even brought on what is the formative array of conservative immortals to the scene - Sarah Palin comes to mind - to encourage the execution. For them it's not the loss that matters but rather what you insist you've won by losing. It may sound bizarre, but these folks always think of something.

Down in the Sunshine State, they're going after Crist with a guy named Marco Rubio, Florida's House speaker. Rubio has already attained the Holy Grail with the endorsement of the Club for Growth, a mega-rich collection of self-serving political philosophers who would argue that sea waters are rising because the burden of taxes on the affluent is making the globe flatter with each passing day. The club's president is a former congressman from Indiana, Chris Chocola, who once boasted that his old manufacturing business sold most of its stuff overseas. I'm not sure how that will figure into the blitz against Charlie Crist. But we should look for it in clues posted at Tea Party rallies.

Rubio has also won the endorsement of the usual commandos, transient people we've come to recognize from other right-wing stages. That would include ex-Gov Mike Huckabee, and Sens. Jim DeMint and Jim Inhofe, as well as the folks from the forever purifying Family Research Council. They are framing their crusade on the necessity to avoid sending any old Republican to Washington but rather someone we can all trust not to be the neighborhood grocer with a left thumb on the scale.

So far Charlie Crist has survived the third party's assaults, leading Rubio 50-28 in the polls. But by TP logic that losing is winning, , they will doubtless be more inspired by an earlier poll in which the score was 50-35. With those kind of numbers in their tank, it wouldn't be surprising if they extended their reach into other campaigns. If it worked in a heavily Republican district in New York, even South Chicago could be next.

It's quite confusing, I know. But hang on. It will take a little time to figure out the rules of this revolution.