Mitt's mini-Olympian fanfare for the common man

Mitt Romney, posing as the average commoner,  happily totes a grocery bag to the counter with Sen. Rob Portman at his side  during a campaign stop in Cincinnati.  Another photo-op for the archives to demonstrate Mitt's down-to-earth regular guy-ness. It's sort of self-flagellation with a smile for a guy who will  never have to suffer the awkward ordeal again after the election.

Still, the reports of his post-Richard Mourdock moments were less aglow.  He dodged all questions from the media  about how a man of his keen concern for at least half of America could still be supporting Mourdock with a TV ad in Indiana that suggests the Republican senatorial candidate will help him rid Capital Hill of Obama  evil.  (Mourdock, in case you haven't been paying  attention, says God wills rape victims to bear children.)

Mitt continually  rambles about in the farthest reach of the oddball Republican right.  As for Mourdock, the polls show him to be ahead of his Democratic opponent.    Albert Camus was so perceptive  when he  wrote in The Plague:

"Supidity  has a knack of getting its way; as we should see if we're not always so much wrapped up in ourselves."

UPDATE:  While wandering through the land of Nod, we came across this incredible  assessment of Mourdock from Josh Mandel, the  Republican candidate for senator:  "He's a class act!"  No, the Whiz Kid wasn't looking into the mirror this time.

Mourdock leads way as the only way

ARE YOU READY for it,  America?  The Indiana voters, formerly known as Republicans, have pushed the Party of Lincoln over the cliff.  They replaced Richard Lugar, a grey eminence of the old GOP, with a truculent Tea Partier, state Treasurer  Richard Mourdock.  Who?  Never mind. The name could be generic fringe, for all that matters. In the teabaggers ascendancy to power, they have now become the other half of the two-party system with the old GOP gasping in extremis.

That's not as crazy as it sounds.  The remnants of Republican moderates have left the stage and those who haven't  don't dare question anything about the intruders, unless it's by gaslight. Mourdock has already forewarned conscientious objectors on either side of the aisle that the Tea Party mentality is in supreme command with no margin for compromise even, I suppose, on dunking one or two lumps of sugar in the morning coffee. Aglow in his landslide victory, Mourdock was on Fox News charting the Draconian course that he believes lies ahead to Congress. If his ilk prevails,  Congress, which should represent the needs of  America, will be paralyzed by deadlock for years to come.  There will be, in Mourdock's words, no compromise.  None.  A graphic clue:  he opposed the bailout of the auto industry without which an enormous number of Hoosiers would have lost their jobs.

In his concession speech, Lugar  captured the essence of a Mourdock mindset:

"In effect, what he has promised in this campaign is reflexive votes for a rejectionist orthodoxy and rigid opposition to the actions and proposals of the other party.  His answer to the inevitable roadblocks  he will encounter in Congress is merely to campaign for more Republicans who embrace the same partisan outlook.   He has pledged his support to groups whose prime mission is to cleanse the Republican Party of those who stray from orthodoxy  as they see it.  This is not conducive to problem solving and governance."