Landslide Romney on the march!

ONE OF THE things we've noticed in Landslide Romney's response to issues is that he seldom thinks before he talks. It's sort of a daring frontier quick-draw style that shoots first and asks questions later. So it was on Mitt's post-Iowa blast at President Obama's announcement in Shaker Heights that he had appointed Richard Cordray to head the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau - a hitherto leaderless government watchdog that dyspeptic Republican lawmakers have likened to Willie Sutton inside Wall Street's bulging vaults.

Upon hearing of the appointment of the former Ohio Attorney General, Romney erupted that the move was "Chicago-style politics at its worst". Having spent some time in Chicagoland and reporting on dead bodies of hoodlums exported from Gary, Ind., it's obvious to me that Romney knows very little about Chicago-style politics - a city that runs very well. Very little. Besides Obama's many opponents four years ago were using the same insults and nothing came of it.

On many other questions hurled at the president, Romney has a nanosecond response: "He's failed!" But he never really defines failure other than resorting to it as a form of verbal gadgetry so spare of moving parts that nothing more need be said.

As for GOP complaints that Obama was guilty of abusing recess appointments,

ThinkProgress provided some curious information. During his presidency, Reagan

Augustus made 240, contrasted to Obama's 28 during his first term in office. Reagan raised taxes in seven of his eight years and...well, let's not get into that right now,

P.S. Sen. Scott Brown, the Republican from Romney's home state, has congratulated Obama for the appointment. But as everybody knows, Brown is trailing Democrat Elizabeth Warren, the Harvard Law School professor who withdrew from consideration for the consumers' job after Republicans stonewalled her for being too antagonistic to the one percenters.

Cordray: The GOP threatens a filibuster

IN THE CURRENT chaotic state of the Republican Party, intelligence is never equated with public office. And so here we are , on the verge of another rejection of Richard Cordray, the former Democratic Ohio attorney general who had the terrible fortune to run for reelection in 2010 when Republicans of all measures waltzed into office, some whose only credentials were that they were the Other Party in bad economic times. Which is why we have a Republican, Mike DeWine, as our attorney general despite the fact that every major newspaper in the state had endorsed Cordray. (When the history of DeWine's term of office is finally written, he will be remembered primarily for having vigorously opposed the healthcare reform law.)

Cordray, exceptionally intelligent (Oxford scholar) , honest and progressive, has since been nominated by President Obama to head the new Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, a product of the 2010 Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform Law. When the confirmation of Cordray comes up in the Senate on Thursday, few Republicans say they will support him. But as everyone except a few Eskimos north of the Arctic Circle must know by now, anything that smacks of consumer protection at the expense of the financial industry is ghoulish. The GOP's price for their support: Across-the-board restrictions on the bureau's regulatory power. It would mean that Cordray would be all dressed up with no place to go.

Ah, the Republicans insist that it has nothing to do with whether it's Cordray or some parish priest. It's the threat of regulating their friends' daily bread.

But the aginners had better be careful about what they filibuster against. Obama's previous choice, Elizabeth Warren, pulled out under heavy attacks on her liberal reputation by the other side. (And we thought it wasn't the person but the agency that worried her opponents!)

She decided to run for the Senate in Massachusetts against Republican Sen. Scott Brown. It could cost the GOP a senate seat. She's running slightly ahead of Brown. Will this be an unintended consequence?

Brown and Palin: Two may be a crowd

JUST WHEN I WAS beginning to resign myself to President Sarah Palin it now happens that I have to come to terms with President Scott Brown. As everyone knows - at least that half of America that pays a little attention to politics while the other half tweets and texts - Brown has become a cult sensation among Republicans since he dared to put an inept woman candidate in her place up in Massachusetts. His name has already been smartly encoded on Capitol Hill as "No. 41" by admiring senators on his side of the aisle because he is empirical evidence that the Democrats are no longer filibuster-proof. Some of us, however, have known that for some time with guys like Joe Lieberman and Ben Nelson always hanging around with a suspicious rash.

So No. 41 is the party's Wave of the Future, which will surely embolden some of his ossified colleagues to unapologetically meet with their constituents who might have preferred waves of health care or cleaner air. Americans have long enjoyed waves, particularly at athletic events where fans have leaped to their feet without really knowing why.

Some of No. 41's nitpickers have sneered that he posed as a nude model for a magazine, a blip of moral exposure that no one could find in the GOP's book of family values. But that should be on his plus side. Despite the headiness of the moment, no one can possibly imagine the likes of Chuck Grassley or Jim Inhofe duplicating No. 41's immodest behavior.

Speaking of posing, the question now is how President Palin, who had been No. 1, will respond to No. 41. Having two presidents would not be out of the question. There was a time when there were three popes. I doubt that she would thrust herself onto a magazine centerfold. But politicians do strange things when they are running scared. In pre-No. 41, President Palin was doing fabulously. The Harper's Index noted that 65 pct. of Republicans would support her candidacy although only 58 pct. thought she was qualified for the job. But it is only fair to report that no more than 27 pct of these Republicans believe Barack Obama was "legitimately" elected.

In any case, the GOP presidential wannabes have shrunk to two people who are already president, No. 41 and No. 1. Rudy Giuliani disqualified himself by forgetting things like 9/11 or whether the President mentioned terrorism in his speech. Mitt Romney lost much of his luster of being elected as a Republican governor in Democratic Massachusetts. Mike Huckaby would never pose nude. And a few others were sleeping around with girlfriends.

I imagine the alchemists at Fox News who have been spending so much time with Palin to turn base metal into gold will now have to take a second look at their investment, if not a centerfold.