Romney Hears a Wha-?

This audience member in Ohio asked GOP presidential candidate Mitt Romney a question about restoring the Constitutional balance of the branches of government, but not before accusing President Obama of treason and "acting outside of the structure of the Constitution". She wasn't specific about what she found treasonous in President Obama's execution of his office, but without missing a beat, Romney gave an answer regarding the awesomeness of the Constitution, the Declaration of Independence, and some right wing boilerplate complaint about Obama's statement that the Supreme Court finding the ACA unconstitutional would be unprecedented. (Really? Is another Harvard Law school graduate actually going to accuse Obama of not understanding the process of judicial review, when he was talking about the historical precedents in favor of the commerce clause? Actually, that kind of got to me more than blowing off the treason charge did.)

But, wait--what about that claim of treason? Didn't Mitt find anything a little weird about that?

Well--no!  She did get a little applause for it, after all. These days, I don't think that sounds too weird to Republicans anymore.  He's been compared to Hitler and to Chamberlain. The Republicans are just looking for an angle to impeach him over, so, what the hell, why not accuse him of treason? After all, the candidate himself has accused Obama of apologizing for America all over the world (and would he be so good as to tell us where those speeches were so we can queue'em up on YouTube? Oh, that's right, it's a damn lie.)  By saying she wanted to see Obama on trial for treason. she was just saying "hello". It's not that Obama has to be guilty of treason, after all.

She'd just like to see him on trial for it, is all. Then watch the sentence and the execution thereof. Nothing to see here--just a Republican who wants a Democratic president facing a firing squad. And candidate Romney understands. So he gave a standard reply: Constitution, good. Declaration of Independence good. Obama, dumber than wet paint.

Now, he does develop a sense of endangered rep when called on it later by journos. But in the moment? Why would it sound funky at all? Of course Obama is guilty of treason.  He's in Mitt Romney's way.

I'd say it was another episode of Profiles in Something Other Than Courage for Mitt, but if I have to cluck every time he plays the coward I'll be thinking I'm a chicken before all this is over. And he wasn't being a coward right there, exactly. He was just being a Republican.