BartBlog

Willy Mitt Romney, taking himself out of the running for the GOP presidential nomination at the Conservative Political Action Committee convention Thursday, could have graciously quit by simply saying the people had spoken and chosen the other man, or even that he felt the sudden urge to spend more time at home with his money – er, family – but instead this creepy Republican magic underwear-model, a flip-flopper who could shame a dolphin into retirement, actually tried to spin his dropping out of the race as an altruistic patriotic gesture! Only a truly dedicated jerk, a king-high monomaniacal creature like Romney would even conceive of such a thing. While I think he would have been the easiest for the Dems to beat, I’m glad he’s gone: The idea of watching his phony Father-Knows-Best mug spout GOP political pieties for the next nine months makes my skin crawl. Say, now that his sons aren’t doing their patriotic duty attending to Daddy’s campaign, perhaps they could volunteer to serve in Bush’s bungle in Iraq, one of two places Gen. Mittens has identified as our front line on the all-important war against ‘Islamofascist terrorism’ – or will they wave the white flag of surrender as they quietly take cushy jobs with the Romnoid’s Country Club buddies, and leave the fighting and dying to the peasantry? (Bet the bank on the latter.) How would these Republicans fight the terrorists if one day the poor folks stopped enlisting? (Oh, right, the wars would end post-haste.)

Meanwhile, whispers are that some GOP poobahs are willing to let ‘Bob Dole’ McCain take a drubbing and write this year off, blame the Bush Disaster on the Democrats for the next four, and in the meantime find the ideal Empty Vessel to don the threadbare Reagan Republican cloth coat. (Hell, McCain was booed at the CPAC convention, even after the audience was ordered not to boo him – not a good omen for the Apparent Frontrunner.)

McCain has his own innate creepiness going – his repeated blinking makes it look like he’s lying every time he opens his mouth, and I don’t believe it can be fairly stated that he actually lies more than ninety-five percent of the time. He should be a soft target for either top Dem – McCain’s got a record as long as your arm, and when you stick the fork in, it doesn’t come out clean. From the Keating Five Scandal in the 1980s that our intrepid Big Media (BM) resolutely ignore, to feathering his political nest with fat earmarks, to his bizarre love-hate relationship with Bush Junior, McCain is a shambling wreck of contradictions, a ‘Straight Talker’ only in the sense that he speaks words and is probably not gay.

Still, the BM are enamored of their illusions, and they love that McCain will deign to speak with them as decent human beings instead of the noxious hog fodder they are; of course they’ll ceaselessly flog his ‘maverick straight talker’ buncombe, true honesty being a laughable political trait these days to the press gang, right down near the bottom of the list with concern for the Constitution and media apologies for shamelessly flacking us into this neocon nightmare.

But it shouldn’t be hard for the Dems to slap together an effective oppo ad showing Johnny and The Decider hugging for the cameras, and then the immediate aftermath where the post-embrace McCain, thinking the cameras are shut off, disgustedly spits, “Are we done here?” Shows the True Man and his Strong Heroic Character, sculpted out of rancid butter and horse droppings.

The Tattler has paid attention to the Arizona Senator at his campaign events as replayed by C-Span: For a healthy 71-year-old man, he looks pretty ill without make-up, he often fumbles his punch lines, and he has the disturbing tendency to suddenly go blank, gaping like Grandpa Simpson as he tries to remember his next line or even what century he’s in. One Simpson interlude during a 90-minute debate and it’s all over but the shouting.

Mitt Romney would have been easier to whip in the fall because he’s a complete ass – John Sidney McCain’s only half of one, but that’s enough to send him packing with an electoral map that’s almost solidly blue, a 1984 Reagan in reverse.