St Louis, en route to Des Moines
Tom Edsall at Huffington Post has the latest on what has been the least honorable campaign of any major candadidate (Tancredo doesn’t count, though Mitt received the Tank’s fetid endorsement).
And I’ve got to say, having covered a lot of campaigns, I’ve seen dirtier (Bush in South Carolina in 2000), angrier and far more extreme, but…
I’ve never seen a candidate who showed such arrant disrespect for the public–and for himself. Indeed, Romney has performed a political self-lobotomy. Not just on his brain, which seemed an impressive instrument a year ago, but also on whatever nagging moral sense he might have had. He did this in order to conform–in the primaries, at least–to every last polling preference, no matter how skeevy, of his party’s base. Worse, he has chosen to demagogue on issues–like illegal immigration–where his own record shows a history of moderation…and an embarrassing tendency toward private hypocrisy (Those gardeners!) I’ve also never seen a candidate so loathed, privately, by his competitors.
I’m not as sure as Edsall that the public has caught on to this, that the Romney garbage barge is headed south. He still could win both Iowa and New Hampshire. Hell, he could still win the presidency…but then, he’d have to re-contort himself for the general election. (Romney the Middle East Peacemaker! Romney the Universal Health Insurance Giver! El Senor Romney, Amigo de los Mejicanos!) I can hardly wait.