A weasel is a weasel is a weasel

There seems to be a rash of never-minds from politicians who, as Mitt Romney once described his own linguistic detours, didn't express something as "elegantly" as it might have been stated.  Now we have word from Rep. Don Young, the long-serving  Alaska Republican, that he was sorry he referred to workers on his father's California ranch as "wetbacks".  Even speaker John Boehner recoiled from that remark.

All of which leads me to the Spring issue of Lapham's Quarterly (from Lewis Lapham, the civilized former editor of Harper's Magazine).  There you will find the following insight attributed to The Simpsons:

"Weaseling out of things is important to learn.  It's what separates us from the animals - except the weasel."   

Guru Mitt is back. We knew him when...

I know it's not on your short list of things to know, but I will say it anyway:  Want to know what chutzpah is? I think I've figured it out beyond dispute.  It's Mitt Romney, the fellow who just lost an election by 5 million votes, piggybacking on Fox News as the emerging guru of choice to advise President Obama on how to run the Ship of State.

He hasn't learned that the political class doesn't really care what losers think, particularly those losers who were expected to win.  Is it rehab time for Mitt?  Republicans should hope not.

Speaking of Republicans, they did display a hint of intelligence by not inviting Chris Christie to the CPAC conference. Can anyone imagine a governor with a near-perfect approval rating in his home state appearing on the same program with House Majority Leader Eric Cantor, who  has a 27 pct. approval rating in Virginia (apart from his very conservative congressional district just  outside Richmond.)

And speaking more of Cantor, the March 4 issue of  the New Yorker examines the turmoil within the GOP in great depth to reveal how Speaker Boehner and Cantor serve at the pleasure of the Tea Party - the "unrulies" who have taken over the  Republican majority in the House, writes Ryan Lizza.   It's a long piece, but well worth a reader's time.

Israel honors Obama, but not from under a bus!

Although Mitt Romney is somewhere off in California looking after his investments, including the car elevator at his  homestead, he's still suffering some blows to  his futile campaign rhetoric.   We can all remember that he and his allies  accused President Obama of being "disrespectful" to Israel  - and in his words "threw Israel under the bus".  ("The beginning of  the end, as we know it for the Jewish state," huffed then-Rep. Allen West, of Florida, who later  lost in November, too.)

Alas, among the many who didn't  take Mitt seriously was Israel.  Israeli  President Shimon Peres announced that Obama will   be honored with the "Presidential Medal of Distinction'"  when he visits in March  for his "unique and significant contribution to strengthening the State of Israel and the Security of its citizens."

The medal compares with France's Legion of Honor.  Better that you stick to car elevators, Mitt, things that you know about.

Jindal Bells:Taking sides in the GOP stupidity crises

Bobby Jindal, a potential Republican presidential  candidate in 2016, thinks his party should stop being stupid. That's what  he told the slamfest of the Republican Natiional Committee meeting in Charlotte. "We've got to stop being the stupid party,"  is what he asserted to his stupid audience as the keynote speaker.

His words so stupified some of the stupid committeemen that a couple of them met later over  pitchers  of empowering Gatorade and declared Jindal as being stupid for calling them stupid in his stupid  version of Jindal Bells.

Indeed, one of the members' wives, who tagged along to carry her stupid husband's luggage, even thought it was inappropriate for the stupid Louisiana governor to ruin a nice break from the routine to take some stupid tours of Charlotte - all underwritten by the host city.

One delegate even confronted Jindal, eyeball to eyeball, and blurted:  "You're stupid!'

To which Jindal replied, "No, sir, you're stupid!"

"No,  you're stupid, governor!"

That playground exchange lasted a good 20 minutes  before they thought it would help if they took a break from the hostilities to  slip over to the Gatorade bar for a stupid nightcap. (Real men actually need Gatorade as a cheap high for their testosterone.)

Frankly, we don't know what the fuss is all about.  Two of the party's deepest thinkers tried to rally them with good news.  George Will , who is best remembered for his stupid TV prediction that Romney would win in a landslide, assured stupid Republicans that President Obama's inaugural speech was nothing more than stupid "rhetorical cotton candy - sugary and mostly air''. Conservatism, he argued,. is alive and well - no matter the polls that show Obama and Americans aligned on major issues.

Paul Ryan, the stupid vice presidential loser, was once again upbeat, scrubbing pots and pans that had already been scrubbed, and  declaring that if given half a chance, stupid Republicans will show they can govern despite the stupid outcome of the November election.

When last seen, all of the stupid  committeemen went out and cracked open another keg of Gatorade.

Even Mitt Romney stupidly declared elsewhere that he will be back.

Moral:  Stupid is as stupid does.  Did we really need   Bobby Jindal to tell us that?



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Today's GOP: a group of leaderless old white guys

The Obama Inaugural festivities are now over and the reviews are in.  While many national pundits  parse every sentence in the president's rousing speech, one thing is certain:  For the grim Republicans and their fellow-snivelers, there is no joy in Mudville.  The Grand Old Party  is neither grand nor a party.  It is rather a chaotic collection of old white guys in vain search of a leader.    Twice defeated by an African-American Democrat  - the latest by  5 million votes! - who has deftly connected with a new generation of voters,  woebegone Republicans have only a beleaguered John Boehner to try to put his House in order in a cave teeming with Tea Partyers.  

Still, there is no evidence that Obama's opponents have learned anything  as they whimper that the "foxy"  Obama  must come out of the chicken coop to meet them halfway in solving the nation's problems.  Of all things, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell is demanding compromise - a word that collides with his notorious  earlier mission for his routed party after Obama's first victory:

"The single most important  thing we want to achieve is for President Obama to be a one-term president"

The quote even made page 190 of the Mann-Ornstein best- seller, It's Even Worse than It Looks.  And that was published before  the 2012 election. Can anyone now guess what Mitch's second most important thing is?

Their  post-inaugural chorus was filled out by many of the usual tattered suspects complaining about the usual irritants that guaranteed them a shot at the usual TV cameras.  Sens. McCain and Graham, a couple of tiresome cronies  from past debacles, expressed their displeasure, to name a few.  And Wayne LaPierre, the NRA megaphone, pathetic as he is, isn't going to let anybody forget that tyrannical government is at the doorstep and you can only be saved by even arming department store mannequins.   Fox News, Rush Limbaugh  and the Tea Partyers were heaped among the vanquished.

These folks will never change.   Their work is too profitable. And as  Tennessee Ernie Ford used to sing: They owe their soul to the company store.

They could only deal in playground dares as Obama reeled off his agenda that was immediately described as liberal but dealt with ideas and programs that a majority of Americans support. It's now OK to mention liberalism in polite circles. And about time! 

There was another aspect of the Inaugural that was lost in the excitement:  Mitt Romney's absence from the historic  event.  Few people asked, and most couldn't care less.  Where  was he? We learned that he was at home in California.

Watching the parade as a broadly-grinning Obama waved and Joe Biden sprinted here and there,  I tried to imagine what the scene would have been if Romney and Paul Ryan had won.  It would have been a dreadful setback for a nation whose people would have been  so well ahead of its new team: a presidential  candidate of whom his son asserted never wanted  the job anyway, and a vice president who is a disciple of Ayn Rand. Neither Mitt nor his Tonto had much to say about the dramatic change underway in America because they didn't recognize it.

 To the vanquished go the snivels. And why not?  It's the only thing that seems to make the losers happy these days.

Mitt's painful role as the reluctant dragon to save America

As if Republicans aren't  suffering enough blowback from their whining ever since they lost the election, Tagg Romney has  set more tongues a-wagging by declaring that his dad never really wanted to be president anyway. So there!

Even the overseas media are quoting him these days.  The Daily Mail of London, for example, screamed:  "Tagg Romney makes shocking revelation".   Some Brits complained that Mitt had only succeeded in wasting a lot of conservatives' time.

Shocking?  Well, yes and no.  Tagg, after all, is the same son who once declared that he felt like punching President Obama during the course of the presidential debate with Dad Mitt. As the hostile action of some conservatives goes, that remark was good enough to downgrade the fury of Rick Santorum's disclosure that a speech by President Kennedy made him want to puke.

For anyone caught up in holiday shopping or gift returns,  the critical secret revealed by Tagg went like this:

"He (Papa) wanted to be president less than anyone I've met in my life.  He had no desire to...run.  If he could have found someone else to take his place...he would have been ecstatic to step aside.  He is a very private person who loves his family deeply and wants to be with them, but he has deep faith in God and he loves his  country, but he doesn't love the attention."

"Yeah, right," declared blogger Daily Kos, which further noted that Mitt Romney was "preparing  to run for President of the United States even before he took the oath of office as Governor of Massachusetts 10 years  ago."

Tagg  blames himself and Mom Ann for pressing Mitt onto the painful martyr's  path to save the country from the Obama menace.  And as far as Mitt's failure to find  "someone else to take his place"  there was a phalanx of eager others on the GOP  debate stage who would have gladly accommodated  his hunger for privacy.

NOTE:  Grumpy's column  on the state of today's  newspapers is posted on Plunderbund.






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PolitiFact: Here lies the biggest 2012 lie

Despite his poor showing on Election Day, Mitt Romney has bounced sideways with a national award:  PolitiFact cited him for  spreading the 2012 "lie of the year".  In a business where exaggeration and embellishment are common tools of the trade, Mitt's sin was that he continued to repeat it  even after it was repeatedly shown to be untrue.

In short, he claimed that Chrysler would cost American workers their jobs by moving its Jeep production to China.  PolitiFact described his campaign ads as "brazenly false". So did Chrysler's front office. (An Italian company that has controlling interest in Chrysler said that although China will  start building Jeeps, it would have absolutely no effect on Jeep production in the U.S., which, in fact, is expanding.)

That wasn't good enough for Ohio Sen. Rob Portman, one of Romney's top advisors, who's waving to you in the above photo.  He went on CNN just before the election to defend the political handiwork.  "I thought it was an important ad to run,'" Portman said in an effort to convince Ohio voters that President Obama was destroying  the company in America.

But he added:  "It doesn't mean that we'll have fewer jobs here, because hopefully our market will improve here as well, particularly under Mitt Romney if we get an expanding economy"

While we're at it, Talking Points Memo listed  all of the Republicans on Capitol Hill who have pulled away from the Grover Norquist tax pledge.  There is only  one Ohio Republican , retiring Rep. Steve LaTourette, who originally signed it, then backed off.    Portman remains firmly on the signers list.

A Stark reality: Mitt didn't reimburse either

Recalling the fuss that a Beacon Journal columnist made over  the costs of President Obama'a campaign stop in the  Akron area  that  fell into the laps of local taxpayers, it only seems fair to refer to an article in the Canton Repository that told of a similar free ride by Mitt Romney for his rally at Hoover High school on Oct. 26.

The paper reported that local requests by  Canton  and Stark County for reimbursement of $l4,500 have been rejected by Team Romney.  An additional $600 bill for Paul Ryan's visit to North Canton wasn't paid.  Mayor David Held said he s was "disappointed".

Probably not as much as all of the Republicans in Stark County who voted for Mitt , a Red County that supported him in a losing cause.

What Obama offered Romney at lunch

Washington insiders, from the pols to the media, have buzzed for a  couple of days to figure out what  President Obama and Mitt Romney talked about during their  private lunch at the White House.  They should have asked me. My inside source at a little-known Washington diner says the President offered Mitt the ambassadorship to Kenya.  Trust me.  You don't make up things like this!   No word on whether Mitt accepted it.

Mitt won, but Barack made it worse

ln case you've been busy with the week-old leftovers from Thanksgiving, I should inform  you that  after deep reflection, the vanquished Republicans have now decided  that they won the November election.   It didn't really go into the history books that way, of course, because  the Obama Machine didn't play fair in its socialistic, fraudulent attempt  to  give every voter "stuff".   Cheating was particularly true in a crucial Ohio County (Wood) where Obama got 108 pct. of the vote.  Not even PolitiFact/Ohio could convince the crazy people that their math had gone awry.  The county was so important to the subversive  scheme  that the scandal became a perfect fit for  Aesop.

Now Mitt Romney's chief campaign advisor, Stuart Stevens  has raised a helluva brouhaha by pouring  more gasoline on Fox News' fire breathers insisting ...I want to be sure I have this right ...that  the final election count betrays what would amount to a moral victory  for the ex-governor.

In an Op-Ed column in the Washington Post this week, Stevens argued,

"In the debates and in sweeping [!] rallies across the country, Romney captured the imagination of millions of Americans.  He spoke for those who felt disconnected from the Obama vision of America.  He handled the unequaled[!]  pressures of a campaign with a natural grace and good humor that contrasted sharply with the angry  bitterness of his critics."

( Stevens didn't mention it,  but Romney also sang "America" off-key with the same tone deafness  in which he ignored the rising voices of those groups who were dead set on votitng against him.)

But about that 3.5 million popular vote Obama victory margin.

Undaunted by mere numbers, Stevens characterized the outcome as a moral victory for Mitt because he captured a majority of voters  who earn more than $50,,000 a year - as opposed to, well,  let's not go into that.

If Stevens had any regrets about the campaign, it was simply that the Romney side  got the message too late to reach out to the various subgroups of  the white guys.   Which I guess you might ask, what took them so long?

Still, Stevens concluded that the race came down to

 "Republican ideas vs. fundamental Democratic ideas.  It was about lower taxes or higher taxes, less government or more government, more freedom or less freedom.  And Republican ideals - Mitt Romney carried the day.

  "On Nov. 6, that wasn't enough to win.  But it was enough to make us proud and to build on the future."

Stevens is a film writer and ardent athletic adventurer who is said to have once skied the final 100 miles to the North Pole.  But in acrobatically declaring that Romney was a veritable winner who fought for the essential core of America, he may have been inspired by Sen. Henry Clay, who gave us the historic line:

"I'd rather be right than president."

Clay, a failed presidential candidate himself,  was referring to his abolitionist views on slavery.

Unlike Clay, there were times when it was impossible to know what Mitt was talking about.

The same can be said about his man Stuart Stevens.

Mitt emerging as the true 47 percenter

As if Mitt Romney doesn't have enough bad news about his election loss,  his historic   47 pct. notion about the folks who would never vote for him is returning to haunt him in reverse.  According to the Washington Post,  when the final votes are finally tallied, President Obama will likely receive 51 pct. and Mitt...47 pct.  Writer Greg Sargent is relying on a projection by the nonpartisan Cook Political Report.

Writes Sargent:  "At risk of piling on,  a 47 pct. finish would represent a perfect conclusion to the Romney political saga. If Romney ran a campaign of unprecedented  dishonesty and lack of transparency, virtually all of it was geared towards misleading  people about the true nature of his - and his party's - actual beliefs and governing agenda.

I'd say that 51 pct. of the voters would agree with that assessment.

The anti-Obama crowd: poor post-election losers

If we've learned anything in the post-election days, it's that Republicans are poor losers.  Mitt Romney accuses the president of bribing voters.   John McCain pathetically  fumes that  there is a cover-up  in the investigation of Benghazi, and the worst incompetence  he has ever-ever  seen,  another botched Watergate.    A gun shop owner in Arizona says he will not do business with anybody who voted for Obama.  A Republican county party treasurer  in Texas refers to the Obama voters as "maggots". A Tea Partyer,  he is readying his friends to secede from the Union.  Bill O'Reilly sours that Obama won because people want, of all things, "stuff". We know who he's talking about, don't we?

About the secessionists:  They, too, are soreheads.  Tens of thousands across the land with nothing better to do with their time have signed petitions to secede.  Can whole states self-deport from America?
Quacks like Sean Hannity seem to be enjoying the secessionist uprising.  They're his people. This is the gift that will keep on giving for Fox News.  It's their Obama-caused Pompeii.

Their only problem is that Obama's victory shocked the hell out of Mitt's army, which had planned a major motorcade to his campaign headquarters on election night, a huge fireworks display and good ol' boys  conviviality for the 40 or so  wealthy friends - Donald Trump and that spooky billionaire Sheldon Adelson among them with overflowing piggy banks -- who flew into Boston in their private jets.

That's the awful news.  The good news is that Obama did, in fact, win,  because if he had lost,  Mitt and the Tea Partyers and the miscellaneous billionaires  would have been much more insufferable.



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Norquist's "poopy-head" reference is more genteel

Now that we  learned from the election that the tax-hating emperor  has no clothes, we should still keep Grover Norquist around for a few bizarre comments that manage to entertain us when he isn't getting elected Republicans to sign his anti-tax pledge.   His latest offering:  Obama won the election because he defined Mitt Romney as a "poopy-head".  It's obvious that he meant what we call in impolite society  a "s--t- head."  But Norquist was making his rounds on  national TV and decided to clean it up for the adults, if not their children.

The speculation continues: Portman? Kasich?

In Shakespeare's Hamlet, the long-suffering protagonist laments to his friend Horatio that his mother remarried so quickly after his father's death that the leftover "funeral bak'd meats" for his father's wake  were  served at his mother's wedding.  

Methinks there  is something Shakespearean  in the rush of speculation in the  wake of Mitt Romney's political death last week about what leftovers  will seek to succeed  him  four years hence. Alas, politics is forever impatient and doesn't provide for pauses or vacuums.

Amid all of the speculation, a case  in point arrived via the Columbus Dispatch that centered on an Ohio dream candidate featuring either leftover  Sen. Rob Portman or  Gov. John Kasich at the top of the heap.

Or as the Dispatch's Jack Torry wrote on Sunday:

"Less than one week after President Barack Obama defeated Mitt romney,  Kasich and Portman are being talked about as serious candidates in 2016.  If they run, they could provide that most prominent moment for Ohio politics since 1920, when Republican Warren. G. Harding of Marion defeated Democrat James Cox of Dayton for the  Presidency."

The article even quotes John Brabender, a senior advisor to  Rick Santorum's dead-end campaign (!),  as describing both guys as "certainly credible."  Some other Republicans gave pro-forma applause to both Ohioans.  That much alone could get the juice  flowing.  Are you ready for it, Iowa?

Oh, about Harding... He was dead-set against taxes, opposed America's entrance into the League of Nations and on other matters raised the generic Republican flag.   Some historians also suggested that his rise was clearly aided by the fact that he very much looked like a president.

Some familiar?  

Mitt needed a lift from the pizza man

Back in September, Florida pizza shop owner Scott Van Duzer guaranteed himself a place in political photo-history with his impromptu bear hug of Barack Obama during the president's  unscheduled campaign stop in Ft. Pierce. Some onlookers were said to gasp at the sight.   It was all in fun and although it didn't seem so at the time,   you could  later look back on it to define  the differences  between the campaign souls  of the two presidential candidates:  Obama's easy spontaneity  in a crowd and Mitt Romney's herky-jerky body movements and unconvincing smiles. For all of the money spent on his campaign, you'd think they would have set aside a little to match the pizza owner's  spirited scene.

I, and apparently a lot of other people, couldn't quite get past the notion that Mitt was  unable to break  from the mold of a powerful  businessman who wanted to  incorporate every store front (and pizza shop, maybe) in America.  From body language to scripted repetition of thought-lines - "I've done it before and can do it again", he repeatedly pledged, as though we hadn't heard him the first thousand  times -  never convinced a majority of the 99 per centers that he could relate to our worlds.

By all previous notions of winning politics, he should have coasted to the White House. A slowly recovering  economy, the every-present racial undercurrents, a flood of more campaign money than could be restrained by Hoover Dam, or more succinctly, the three Rs of this year's campaign - racism, religion and Rovism.  Obama was undermined by the U.S.Conference of Catholic Bishops, the Republican Jewish Coalition, evangelicals and countless religious broadcasters, including Mike Huckabee, who loudly protested the nation's movement toward a more liberating  social gospel that accepted same-sex marriage, contraceptives   and other individual lifestyle choices.   "Sociocultural rot," cried Plain Dealer deputy editorial page editor Kevin O'Brien,  a fully accredited Hard Right thinker, in another weepy outburst on today's Op-Ed page labeled "It's twilight in America".

Clearly, even for the stubborn CEO like Romney, he ecountered more on his plate than he could handle and raced to the tall weeds in the Tea Party for cover.  Whether it was personal choice, health care,   climate change  or the auto industry, Mitt remained a Tea party captive and never deviated from the script - at least his current one, not the older one as governor  of Massachusetts.  On Tuesday, the same state rolled over him , with 61 pct. favoring Obama.

Now, the post-mortems are piling up from the right, declaring him to be a traitor to the conservatives' cause, that he wasn't really one of them.

Oh? Then who was he?

We may never know.

Life challenges on the white-guy track

There's been a lot of attention  given to white guys , the pejorative term for white males,  during this election season.  That's because the polls once again showed white guys strongly favoring Mitt Romney, a self-iconic success story,  over President Obama.  Political thinkers, sociologists and the producers of Romney lapel buttons have all checked into the long-running phenomenon of why white guys prefer Republicans.

Still unsatisfied with the GOP quarry, Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina went so far as to complain that "We're not generating enough angry  white guys to stay in business for the long term."  What he fears as a generic white Southern Republican is that minorities will become the majorities in the U.S.over the next decade and where will that leave the white guy party?  Well, where?

A number of theories are around.  The Economist recently reported a paper published in Psychological Science that suggests that muscles have something to do with the political profile of white guys.  Researchers Michael Petersen  (University of Aarthus in Denmark) and Daniel Sznycer (University of California, Santa Barbara) asked their subjects whether  resources should be redistributed to the poor.  Musculature identified those who opposed such redistribution.

The scholars didn't say so, but it does seem that one clue to the white guys'  preference for Mitt Romney could be their  desperate  remedy for erectile dysfunction against groups of rivals.

It comes down to fear of losing the dominance that only Republicans can offer in their campaign bombast about success in a rapidly changing marketplace.    Will, for example, the white guys'  traditional cookout role of grilling steaks  be diluted by pushy females who escape from the kitchen?  Or as Executive Chef Elisabeth Karmel asks: Is the grill the last bastion of masculinity?

As one who grew up in a family with many cousins of Republican toughs with Popeye arms,  I can say that yes, there is anger  and resentment over minorities and women's roles  that have been coming on for decades.  A college professor once complained to me that female professors were  getting too sassy around him.  And a former boss didn't know how he could survive  after his company had placed a woman executive above him.

Stricken by such thoughts of servitude to The Others, some fearful white guys still rely on holstered sidearms, barbells and hairy chests to prove they are not sissies.  How else can they disguise their resentfulness and insecurity over the threats to their masculinity?  To them, seeking refuge in the brave old world of Republicanism would at least give them a temporary  safety net.

Christie: High praise for Obama's efforts in critical times

While New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie was praising President Obama's intense engagement  in  the post-Sandy devastation of Christie's state,  Mitt was doing photo-ops in Ohio on a day when he said he wouldn't be campaigning at all.  Christie emphatically described Obama's  quick action  to expedite FEMA's assistance as ''outstanding" and said he didn't care  if such  praise violated party loyalties in the presidential race.

Meantime, Romney was more circumspect about  FEMA, the agency that he has long dismissed as a drag on the federal budget,  having once said that critical disaster work could best be handled by the private sector!   He didn't say  how that would be fail-safe but it is a clue to his secret plan to end the deficit.   Does that make you feel more secure these days if your town is hit by another disaster with him in the Oval Office?

On Tuesday,  trapped by his past feeble notions, he ignored  all questions from reporters on  whether he  now felt that FEMA was necessary for the nation's domestic emergencies.  It was just Mitt being Mitt when he faces an unpleasant situation that can't be solved by metrics and IPOs.

Having watched this guy since the start of the primaries, I've concluded that his campaign is much like the Seinfeld series:  It's a campaign about nothing.

That being the case, the narrative must find a way to gain traction with lies.  Not that he nor his supporting cast worry much  that it all reflects on Romney's incurable waffling and dishonesty.   Indeed, any challenge to his plot devices is merely cause to repeat them.  When top Chrysler executives criticized his fictional  Jeeps-to-China  TV ads,  the trash talk continued to turn up on TV and radio, especially in the Toledo area where the auto industry has heavy impact  on the economy.

* * * * *

Poor John McCain.  He grows more erratic by the hour.  There he was in Ohio with Josh Mandel at his side - ya know, the old soldier and his young aide-de-camp -  asserting on TV that Obama was  "unqualified" to be America's commander-in-chief.  The only thing I  can figure is that McCain  is bored and needs to hug up to Romney for a possible appointment to Team Romney if Mitt lands  in the White House. I think he might be holding a pair of sixes against a full house.

* * * * *

The Columbus Dispatch today endorsed Sherrod Brown over Josh - the second conservative Republican paper forced to concede  the wide gulf that separates the two candidates.The other paper: The Cincinnati Enquirer.

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My column on the Romney campaign's lies about Obama and the auto industry is posted on Plunderbund.

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.

Romney endorsement: the Dispatch's 96-year habit

 No one should have  been surprised that  Mitt Romney picked up an  endorsement from an Ohio newspaper long sworn to fealty to Republicans - the Columbus Dispatch.  As Plunderbund pointed out recently, the Dispatch hasn't endorsed a Democrat for president since 1916.   You would agree,  I'm sure, that 96 years is a long time for the needle to be stuck in the groove.

But the paper had an even greater inspiration to praise businessman CEO Romney, noting that Mitt's   "effect on business confidence would be dramatic and immediate."   Mitt, it glowed, "knows what he is doing"  in economic matters.

And what the paper anticipates he would be doing would be furthering the business empires of folks like the powerful Wolfe family, the Dispatch's owners, whose  sprawling outreach in the private sector includes The Ohio Company,  land owning  and TV-radio outlets WBNS-TV in Columbus (Wolfe Bank, Newspaper, Shoes. - got that?)  

If a Democratic presidential candidate ever ran unopposed, the Dispatch would find a way to invent an opponent.  

The Womens binders chronicles (cont'd)

From syndicated cartoonist Mike Luckovich

                                         
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