I've been considering Mitt Romney as the inevitable winner of the GOP Best of the Worst 2012 match-up on the basis of electability, but I might have been thinking about this all wrong. Sure, Romney isn't thoroughly unelectable, but electability might not be the point. If instead of electing a president, I just wanted a mean, cranky, low-down brawl that got Barack Obama into the mudpit, I might back Newt Gingrich. Let's say I was
Roger Ailes or someone like that--there's definitely more entertainment value in Gingrich's particular brand of "say anything, no matter how bugfuck nasty it is" politics, than in Mitt Romney's somewhat more restrained, not to say thoroughly calculated, style.
After all, what is more refreshing to the ears of the disgruntled Fox viewer or Rush Limbaugh listener: Mitt Romney's subtle dig that in order to create jobs, you first have to have had a job? (har de har, har--everyone knows that one job Obama has definitely had the past few years is POTUS, and Romney's most significant business venture involved lots and lots of job losses.) Or would they far rather hear that President Obama is an anti-colonialist socialist foodstamp president who is trying to destroy capitalism with the unholy mechanisms of the EPA?
Even though a lot of people might find Gingrich's style unattractive, for the GOP base, it might just scratch that old "let's piss off the liberals by not being PC" itch in a way that Romney's refinement just doesn't.
Or I could just be overthinking it.
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