The Nikki Haley Case

 

Trump says moderate Republicans are no longer welcome in the GOP: We are 100 percent MAGA now pic.twitter.com/Q2mvgGAR0x

— Biden-Harris HQ (@BidenHQ) March 3, 2024

Although Kristin Welker is in some ways, Chuck Todd but different, in addition to her idiotic claim this morning that Trump "allegedly" tried to overturn the 2020 election as if he didn't do it on live tv, she managed to tease out of Nikki Haley an admission of sorts that she might not support Trump for president despite the loyalty pledge the GOP imposed on its candidates. 

This is something I wanted to hear, not because I support Nikki Haley, but because I need to see Republicans walk away from Trump because our national security and national sanity depends on it. 

Trump said he didn't want Nikki Haley people to sign on to his campaign. They were "permanently barred." What is that supposed to mean? Is that like when Kari Lake said she didn't need the "McCain Republicans", lost her election, and then got so groveling she nearly begged Meghan McCain to not treat her like the dirt that she is? 

I feel like he gave her all the off ramp she needed to never do his business again. 

The Forgetting Engine

 

The picture above is the American flag being taken down by Trump's little 1/6 fan club meeting attendees who then raised a Trump flag. That image, even more than a Confederate flag being carried through the Capitol, was what filled me with rage that day. For the sake of Trump, the man, the tradition of peaceful transition of government was being interrupted. For the sake of a cult of personality built around the former host of Celebrity Apprentice, a man who ranted about how many times he needed to flush a toilet and claimed windmills caused cancer. 

It was violent. Over 140 law enforcement professionals were injured in brutal combat. The lives of elected officials were threatened. Some of the insurrectionists had deadly weapons. They weren't feds and they weren't antifa. They were people who heeded the call to come down to the Capitol by the promise "it will be WILD."  The rally started as the third "Stop the Steal" rally. Trump campaign money--$3.5 million of it, went into those rallies. 

Campaign money. Because the election was over, but Trump was still campaigning. (He claimed just recently he wasn't still campaigning--for some reason.) The popular vote was over, but he knew the ones that mattered were those electoral votes. So maybe the decision of the people (who were they, anyway?) could be overturned. And he sat on his ass and watched the violence play out that day unwilling, uninterested, in turning it off because it was what he wanted. 

When It Isn't Worth It

 

Mitt Romney said he was stepping aside to make room for the next generation. But here’s the real reason he isn’t running for re-election — and it’s a sad one…

Romney feels he no longer fits in the Republican party and he is physically afraid of his party’s base. pic.twitter.com/OvRprw9LIF

— Christopher Webb (@cwebbonline) September 14, 2023

I'm not going to be misty-eyed over what the Republican party has lost or make over-effusive praise of Mitt Romney because both things would be both highly disingenuous and out of character for me. I don't think it can escape one that in the course of his 2012 presidential campaign and in trying to maintain ties with the GOP's newly-crowned leader in 2016, Romney wasn't above the kinds of comments and sacrifices of his dignity that we associate with the Trump era of politics. If anything, his realization that Trump was a disaster that his party was all too willing to follow seems too late because Trump isn't that new--his is just the most-recent incarnation of where the party has been headed for the entirety of Romney's career. 

Of course, it's easy to view Romney as one of the "good ones" and appreciate his intelligent and dishy commentary on the perfidy, fakeness and fears of his Senate colleagues, but the reason he seems like such a stand-out is precisely because the GOP has become so bad that criticism of his own party and its members and taking a stand in favor of facts as if it were his job have become acts of courage and never should have been. Such behavior should have been commonplace. More members of his party could have tried it over the years and simply...never did.

What we've experienced instead over the years from right-wing media and Republican politicians alike is an extremism, ideation of violence and oppositionalism for its own sake from the conservative wing because a kind of positive feedback loop has existed that exacerbated the inherent paranoid tendencies extant on the right for ages. 

So, when Romney (or John McCain or Liz Cheney) buck that trend, even marginally, they earn some liberal admiration--and the enmity of their party. I can't like Mitt Romney more than a true MAGA might hate him for being insufficiently loyal. 

Being physically afraid of one's base is a horrific thought. There's something to be said too, for what one might have to lose of oneself to be the person who doesn't have to be afraid of or in opposition to that mass of armed maniacs. It seems that it requires a kind of moral lobotomy. When a Mitt Romney looks with disdain on the younger characters of this scene, the J. D. Vance's and Josh Hawley's, maybe it's with some recognition and rue:

It isn't worth it.

Mike Lee Wrote Something for His Local Paper

 

It's not very long and it seems to be a campaign bio written in the third person, which is very nice, but couldn't he find someone else to put their byline under it? (Anyone?)

Mike Lee serves as a United States senator representing the state of Utah. Since taking office, Senator Lee has earned a reputation as a principled conservative. He believes elected officials are responsible for keeping the federal government within its constitutionally limited role.

His respect for the Constitution was instilled early in life by watching his father, Rex E. Lee, argue before the Supreme Court as President Reagan’s Solicitor General. Attending those arguments gave him an up-close understanding of the federal government’s proper role.

It's very nice. It doesn't really explain why he wanted to overturn the 2020 Presidential election, but "something, something, constitution: something, something, limited government." 

Ta-da!  

UPDATE: Mike Lee did indeed whip out his Constitution during his debate with Evan McMullin:

Mike Lee, the Constitution is not a prop. #UTSenDebate pic.twitter.com/xNgCwmLYJP

— Evan McMullin 🇺🇸 (@EvanMcMullin) October 18, 2022

Which in his hands feels about as valid as Herschel Walker's honorary lawman badge. He defended his part in the 1/6 events with what I call "just the tip insurrectionism" claiming he only did what was constitutionally necessary. Feh. He wanted to support the Republican presidential candidate at the expense of democracy, because he doesn't understand that a republic only exists because of democracy-the consent of the governed: including the 81 million that voted for Joe Biden. I consider every equivocator who answers the question "Who won the 2020 election?" with "Joe Biden is president", without admitting he won, a goddamn poltroon.  

The man showed himself in the debate.  That should be enough for the voters if they only looked. 

UPDATE: Oh heck, they changed the byline to "Campaign for Mike Lee", which I guess is a little less like a kid doing an essay on "Who do you admire most?" and picking themselves.  But the original byline remains in the memory of the internet. 

They Only Needed to Be Shamed

 

The PACT Act will be going to President Biden's desk to be signed after needless and spiteful delay on the part of Senate Republicans, who spent the weekend trying to defend their fist-bumping vote against the bill with sad claims of "gimmicks" and "pork". They got rightfully hammered for that, but 11 Republican senators still voted against--all of whom also voted against the bill in June.

This group includes Rand Paul of KY, who argued that veterans would take advantage of the program because one could not tell for sure that their illnesses were from service-related expose (that's right--he's basically accusing cancer-stricken vets of trying to pull one over on the government), Mitt Romney of Utah, generally incorrectly perceived as a moderate, and my outgoing (but not soon enough!) senator, Pat Toomey, who opposes spending money to help people or basically being useful at all, just on general principles. 

So, what happened here? It looks like the Republicans got caught out for being spiteful hacks that literally didn't have a problem with the bill, just with Democrats.  And some of them still pretty transparently seem to have contempt for the idea that after having served and made sacrifices on behalf of this country, veterans want to be compensated for the harm done to them.

This is who they are. Don't forget it. 

And as an afterthought, although so many people worked to make this bill a law, a lot of praise goes to Jon Stewart for using humor, outrage, the superpower of celebrity, to advocate forcefully for the Seante to just do the right thing. He's a good guy. 

Just Ten Good Men and Women

 

Senate Republicans are ready to use the filibuster to block a bill creating a commission on the deadly Jan. 6 insurrection. It’d be this year’s first successful use of a filibuster, which blocks legislation unless 60 of the 100 members vote to advance it. https://t.co/iIYvWOyLLi

— AP Politics (@AP_Politics) May 27, 2021

I'm not staying up all night for this one, because I feel like I can hum the score to this drama in my sleep. Maybe I'll be proven wrong in the morning. But when Mitch McConnell asks his people to fall in line as a "personal favor"--my hopes are pretty low that Republicans will do the right thing. He put it that very way for a reason. It's about loyalty to the party, not the Constitution or any interest in justice. It isn't a mystery to me. McConnell and others know very well that an investigation into January 6 makes Republicans look bad. It makes political actio groups who brought busloads of donors to Washington look bad. It makes donors who funded same look bad. It makes GOP elected who spoke at "Stop the Steal" rallies, including that last one, look bad.

And what am I always saying about things Trump-adjacent? If it looks bad, it is bad. McConnell can tell us he doesn't think we'll find out anything we don't already know from a Jan. 6 commission. Well fine then--but why does that make him so unwilling to put that theory of his to the test? Does it take a lot of imagination to think it might have something to do with his lack of interest in getting more evidence in both impeachments, or more investigation into the Kavanaugh confirmation, or any of the other things he's shut down?

My dad once told me if ignorance is bliss than stupid people are the happiest, and Mitch McConnell has opted for a very specific kind of joy. But I'd like to think it is very stupid.  Mitt Romney gets it--it looks like Republicans are ducking the truth.  If McConnell doesn't think negative messaging for literally siding with the idea that insurrection is no big deal is possible, he must be a merry old soul, because that kind of ignorance is rare and special indeed.

Lisa Murkowski has a point too--there's more at stake than the next election cycle. What about our democracy?

Susan Collins, always one to disappoint, lets us know that if the Republicans in the Senate don't approve the January 6 Committee then there won't be any reason to accept the finding of any select committee Speaker Pelosi authorizes, because it's partisan. Well, uh. Thanks for your concern. That's almost as dumb as Tommy Taterhead claiming that the bipartisan committee needs to be bipartisan enough for him, except with more practice at uselessness. It's too soon, it's too late, it's too specific, it's not broad enough, but overriding all of it--

It make Republicans look bad, because it was wholly a Republican enterprise. There wasn't antifa agitators in the mix--all the goofballs they have arrested are exactly who they seemed to be. And Republican messaging encouraged them, and encouraged them, and encouraged them. There has been more than one major lie served up here, and Republicans will allow maybe something less than ten defectors, but surely, not enough to clear the air. 

Maybe I'll be proven wrong and McConnell will be eating his heart out--but I doubt it. But if they do shut it down, first thing--if we didn't believe McConnell's decree that his purpose in life is shutting down any Democratic agenda, let this be the first shovelful on the grave of any thoughts of bipartisanship--that should have ended when they went and acquitted Trump. And we tie this albatross around their necks, because an attack on democracy, on our institutions, like this, going unanswered for the very obvious and only reason--

It hangs around them. It's a dagger in the middle of their table. It's a ghost that haunts everything they do and say from now on. We shouldn't ever let it drop. The hypocrisy. The fake patriotism. The sham. 

And all the open questions of who among them knew what, and why so  many challenged the certification of the votes. And who Trump and his campaign contacted and when. Killing the commission should not make this die. It should make this worse. 

Kudos to Mitt Romney

Senator Mitt Romney (R-Utah) just broke with the Republican party to vote for the removal of Donald Trump from the presidency. pic.twitter.com/wF2jM1BQb2

— Mother Jones (@MotherJones) February 5, 2020

Although he is just one Republican, and will, perforce, be on Trump's shit list for life, I think Senator Romney expressed his decision in the most effective of terms: it's about his own conscience, his own oath, and the judgment of history. Of course, one voice doesn't change that acquittal is still likely--but by registering his dissent from the weakest of possible positions*, he accomplished looking like a person of strong principle.

This will earn him some daggers. (But he has expressed his opinions about Trump before.) It's worth noting that some Republicans will now claim he never was a real Republican, when he was the party's 2012 presidential contender.

Of course, he isn't up for election this year, and arguably, a Democrat like Doug Jones, up for re-election in a red state, has a harder political calculus. But what is the point of holding office if you can't take a stand when it matters?


* The weakest of positions, as expressed by Alexander and Collins, to the effect that Trump will learn from all this, has to be the most foolish imaginable. How does Trump learn from anything when he doesn't even grasp that what he had done was wrong?

Check out Mitt Romney!

It was not so very long ago you could hear folks saying things like Utah was a great place for Mitt Romney to run as an anti-Trump Republican for the US Senate this year, and it almost sounded right because, sometimes, Romney would sound off on Trump, like after his racist Charlottesville comments.  Romney made it clear that Trump had revealed himself to be quite different than what Romney expected of him:

But he just doesn't know how to quit him. I would say this is because Romney has an overweening sense of ambition and self-regard that makes principle itself seem like a trifle. But then, one can not forget that Romney is, however nicely he presents himself, dirt--or so I have viewed him since he politicized a tragedy on 2012. 

The Benghazi Select Committee Report is 800 Pages Long

This page is very apropos to my comment, so let me just explain that this 8th investigation onto the Benghazi event has been one of the longest Congressional investigations in US history, and one of the least necessary. I'm saying that even though the Select Committee on Benghazi's very own report claims that it "Fundamentally Changes the Public’s Understanding of the 2012 Terrorist Attacks that Killed Four Americans". It does not. What they have produced is an 800 page report that is largely duplicative of earlier efforts that on balance has, as some of its weightiest criticisms, that politics played a part in statement the White House and other federal agencies made after the event, and that nothing was done to stop the tragic attacks--even though it is acknowledged that nothing could really be done in the time that elapsed and there is no real evidence that any prior concrete warning existed that such an attack would occur.

If there's any question about the part politics played in the statements made post-Benghazi attack, I'd like to point out that there's a timeline showing when this became politicized, and the answer is it happened right away, and it wasn't the Obama Administration doing it. Look at the date. Mitt Romney, the GOP candidate for president, was condemning the Obama Administration for a statement that came out of the Cairo Embassy prior to the Benghazi attack, when Secretary of State Clinton's immediate response was to condemn the perpetrators:

I condemn in the strongest terms the attack on our mission in Benghazi today. As we work to secure our personnel and facilities, we have confirmed that one of our State Department officers was killed. We are heartbroken by this terrible loss. Our thoughts and prayers are with his family and those who have suffered in this attack.

This evening, I called Libyan President Magariaf to coordinate additional support to protect Americans in Libya. President Magariaf expressed his condemnation and condolences and pledged his government’s full cooperation.

Some have sought to justify this vicious behavior as a response to inflammatory material posted on the Internet. The United States deplores any intentional effort to denigrate the religious beliefs of others. Our commitment to religious tolerance goes back to the very beginning of our nation. But let me be clear: There is never any justification for violent acts of this kind.

The Libyan Embassy had deficient security, which was in part a question of funding, but that had to do with Congressional oversight over that funding, and Secretary Clinton herself took responsibility for the handling of security and changes were made.  This is how things are supposed to work--but this self-admitted political anti-Obama, then anti-Clinton advert was a waste of time and money. And what do we get? An 800 page nothingburger. Oh! And a 48-page nothingburger with cheese, with all the comments partisan Republicans would have liked to stick into the 800 pages, but couldn't substantiate, so, really?

But 800 pages all on its lonesome is a major read, and gosh dang it, who reads anymore? So partisans are liable to just depend on the opinions they had before. And if your opinion was RW conspiracy-theory trash, like Trump lawyer Michael Cohen's opinion, well, you'll stay ignorant.

I almost can't be disgusted by crap like this Trump Tweet:

If you want to know about Hillary Clinton's honesty & judgment, ask the family of Ambassador Stevens.

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) June 21, 2016

Even though he's just making up what he imagines the real people impacted by the horrific death of their loved one actually feels.

I hope this puts the travesty of trying to make political hay out of these dead patriots behind us, but as Steve M. documents here, some folks have even made this their bread and butter. I don't really expect it to end.

Dancing Around the May Poll

I know there is some hay being made out of this spring grass already,  but I just don't know how to relate to May polls when I know that Barack Obama wasn't supposed to win in 2008 according to a poll done as late as September.  After McCain picked Palin. I don't even know what all was going on at the time because I was unplugged in Reggio Calabria on a personal vacation, but as far as I know--my individual data from people I knew didn't match the poll numbers. I thought Obama would win, and he did.

A poll in May of 1988 showed Dukakis comfortably kicking Shrub Senior's ass. Belief in polling strength was nothing but stupid for Romney. And we all have anecdata of where polls were especially wrong.

I like quantifiable data, but polls are kind of a snapshot suggesting a direction, but aren't actually a "story" outside of horserace politics. Take the poll numbers suggesting that Sanders has better "unfavorable" numbers than Trump and would be better able to beat him than Clinton.

The Trump Problem

Joe Scarborough Says He Won't Vote for Trump Unless He Changes His Tune https://t.co/8mC2hbfTD0 pic.twitter.com/NmpV7EK2Rj

— Mediaite (@Mediaite) May 5, 2016

The Morning Joe team is so known for their velvet-glove treatment of Donald Trump that Larry Wilmore made a colorful joke about it at the White House Press Correspondents' Dinner--so it's actually kind of a howler for Joe Scarborough to say now that he just can't support Donald Trump unless he "changes his tune":

“I gotta say I was surprised and disappointed … that yesterday, he stuck by the Muslim ban. That’s a loser. It’s a loser with the majority of Americans. And you’ve got Republicans like me. I just, I’m not going to vote for a guy” like that, Scarborough said, according to Politico.

Well, sure. But wouldn't it have been better to just be a little bit surprised and disappointed the first time he said it? And the disappointment--is it that Trump really seems to mean it--or that he keeps saying it out loud where the general election audience can hear? Does he just want Trump to change what he's saying for the general election regardless of what he believes? Oh! I get it! He wants a principled Republican!

This is why I can't take Senators Susan Collins or Kelly Ayotte as having a credible, sensible, or even half-assed stand when they offer their non-endorsement-level support. That isn't a needle you can really thread, is it? When Speaker of the House Paul Ryan bats his baby-blues and juts his manly jaw to say "I am just not ready" to support Donald Trump at this time--isn't he implying he's looking for a reason to be gotten to "yes" by some silver-tongued art of the deal? When the older, grayer heads of the party simply decline to show up, are they withdrawing support--or is it more like they are backing down from fighting for their party's values in the most conspicuous place?

That last ship has probably sailed. I think Nebraska Senator Ben Sasse has been admirably consistent in rejecting what Trump stands for--he'd be a Constitutional nightmare and I think there could be real agreement between left and right on that--but looking for a third-party conservative to rescue Republicans from the disgrace of considering voting for Hillary Clinton on the basis of knowing what she is actually doing and not being a conspiracy-theory-chugging whackaloon is a bit late. There was this thing called a GOP primary where there were 16 other people, all of them with resumes of varying degrees of seriousness. And nobody wanted them more than the people who wanted Trump, wanted Trump. And I noticed how no one put in their strong endorsements for any of the puppies in that slushy sled race. Folks didn't all pile on in Summer of 2015, when it might have counted. And it would have been a lie anyway, because they all applauded secretly when this jackass was calling for Obama's birth certificate and school records back in 2011. They courted his attention. They mainstreamed his ass.

Boo-hoo.

My advice to the GOP is take the knee on the presidency and focus on the down-ticket races, because those poor exposed congress-critters who can't figure out whether they want to support Trump for president or not need all the help they can get. That's my free-of-charge feelings on how to partially handle the Trump Problem, and I doubt you'd get better from experts at any price.

But as a lifelong Democrat, this problem is only my problem if this doofus gets elected, and I already know I'd do anything I can to not let that happen. I wish everyone else saw it that way--but I wouldn't be surprised if any number of Republicans get into that voting booth when it's only them and their conscience and their Maker, if they believe in one, who know a time for choosing when they see it.

Donald Trump and The Snake

It has come to my attention that Donald Trump has made a habit of reading the lyrics to Al Wilson's The Snake at his rallies, and I find that really fascinating. It works for Trump's message because it is a simple and multipurpose allegory--a woman takes pity on a frozen snake, who revives and bites her, saying "You knew damn well I was a snake when you took me in." He can apply it equally to Syrian refugees or immigrants--by implying that we can't show sympathy to those people, because we should already be aware of the dangers of being "bitten".

It fascinates me because it vaguely reminds me of the relationship Trumpism has to the Republican Party. Tomorrow, it looks almost certain that Marco Rubio will be sunk off the coast of Florida wearing Trump's popularity like a pair of cement shoes, and John Kasich could very well find himself in a similar predicament in Lake Erie, notwithstanding Mitt Romney's heartfelt suggestion that Republicans extensively employ strategic voting in a bid to rid themselves of this meddlesome billionaire.

Notwithstanding, by the by, a week that might have clobbered the credibility of virtually any other candidate for office, ever. Trump at around this time last week stood next to steak, wine, and water with conspicuous "Trump" labels (or conspicuous labels advising they were not possibly true Trumps) as if to, neurotically, display that, as with the rumor of his stubby fingers, he certainly had no problem in the "brand" department. (Is that so? Because it looks to me like he's got more problems than, um, expired meat.) And then of course there is the escalating violence, which Trump appears to actually be encouraging rather than discouraging, and which he appears to condone against protesters and even journalists. And then there's the peculiar way he accuses protesters of being ISIS. I wouldn't be in a big hurry to accept as POTUS some guy who can, straight-faced, repeat unchecked garbage conspiracy theory bullshit, and defend himself with "All I know is what's on the Internet."

But the Republican Party knew damn well what Donald Trump was when they took him in. His flirtation (which seems to have been legit, and well as hella racist) with birtherism should have absolutely barred him from serious political consideration--especially after his humiliation at the 2011 WHCD, where President Obama savaged his birtherism hours before it was revealed that an operation to take out Osama Bin Laden was successful. He looked, then, like an outclassed smacked ass. But as we all know, the GOP tucked poor wounded Trump into their bosom because his endorsement was so pretty.  He gave crazypants sizzle and had mad donor stacks--what's to hate?

I don't know--who he is and what he does? What any competent oppo research on him would show?

But now the Republican establishment and even conservative media is basically bitten. They knew what he was. They handled him--dealt with him--anyway. And who knows? When he recites that little allegory, maybe he knows he's the snake, too.

It's Complicated

Mitt Romney basically made an anti-endorsement of Donald Trump today at one press thing, and Chris Christie at another press conference explained at that he is not either a hostage, so stop saying that. Then Trump called Romney a "choke artist" and suggested he could have gotten Romney to blow him back in 2012.

It's not politics or drama--it's reality tv.

Tragedy, then Farce

It seems like it was only a couple months ago (it was only a couple of months ago) that I was lamenting the current GOP field and strongly suggesting that Mitt Romney had certain qualities that not any of the current challengers could even fake, up to and including the ability to fake it.

It took them two months to catch up with me, but some of the good conservative show-runners are thinking of knee-walking to Mitt and seeing if the dream is still alive.

What do you think they'll get?

This city is afraid of me...I have seen its true face. The streets are extended gutters and the gutters are full of blood and when the drains finally scab over, all the vermin will drown. The accumulated filth of all their sex and murder will foam up about their waists and all the whores and politicians will look up and shout "Save us!"... and I'll look down and whisper "No." They had a choice, all of them. They could have followed in the footsteps of good men like my father or President Truman. Decent men who believed in a day's work for a day's pay. Instead they followed the droppings of lechers and communists and didn't realize that the trail led over a precipice until it was too late. Don't tell me they didn't have a choice. Now the whole world stands on the brink, staring down into bloody Hell, all those liberals and intellectuals and smooth-talkers... and all of a sudden nobody can think of anything to say.

Or he'd be like "If I have to, but you have to hold your fucking end up, peasants." And we'd be having something like an election I even recognize.

I Sure Would Like Mitt Romney to Run

On some level, it's wrong that I want someone on the Republican side to make the electability argument and offer up Mitt Romney again. But if you forced me at gunpoint to say whether I thought Romney was better than Bush or Trump or Rubio or Walker--well yeah.

Jeb Bush is a lousy anti-Trump. He's following Trump's lead and screwing up his responses. He thinks he can Trump himself. And gets Trumped, himself.

But here's what Mitt Romney brings--he got endorsed by Trump. Bam. He's a businessman in his own right, and did more in business than in politics so he could, if he wanted, approach his run as much about being a concerned outsider than not. He can modestly discuss his conservative bona fides without faking them, in the way Trump can't always. And his hair is perfect.

Jeb is too low-energy to beat Trump. Anyone can see that. Romney doesn't need energy, He just needs to be a more-or-less decent-seeming grandfatherly guy who will govern to the best of his ability and demonstrates that one can have money without out being a moneyed braying arse about it

Yeah, Sanders, Clinton, and O'Malley are all still preferable to me--hell, even Webb is. But it would be a sign of sanity if some remnant in the GOP still thought that Romney might be, as Brother Pierce puts it, all the GOP has left, bitches?

And maybe the collected genius of the GOP would say no. But in my heart, I know better, You coulda backed Romney. You all coulda backed him harder. But you got Obama's second term and whatever this is.

Scared Mittless?

I can't help but start this post by considering how very nearly it was entitled "You People are Making Romney Run Again, You Know". It looked for all the world like he was planning on running again. The very insider-y Mark Halperin had been persuaded by the knowledge that Romney still believed he would be the best candidate in the field. It was a strong, plausible argument, and a lot of media outlets bit on it before former MA Gov. Romney announced that he would not be seeking the nomination.

Can't blame them though--it's way more likely that someone is going to notify the press that they are planning to be doing something than that they aren't. But by making the announcement this way, Romney ends speculation and I suspect makes room for other candidates, like Christie and Walker, to start doing their serious preliminary calculus. (This announcement likely has no impact at all on the decisions of Huckabee, Santorum, Jindal, Perry--you know. The guys Romney knew he was a better candidate than, already.)

...Good News for Mitt Romney?

I'm not even sure I'm being facetious about claiming that the announcement of former AR Gov. Mike Huckabee that he was dropping his FOX News show to explore a White House run in 2016 is "good for former MA Gov. Mitt Romney".  On one hand, I'm just basing this on the likelihood that the affable Southern pastor is more likely to catch on with the FAMiLY Leader folks in Iowa than will my former senator, Rick Santorum.  Sen. Santorum camped out in Iowa for 2012 for a long time, and so barely squeaked out a win over Romney in that primary race that it simply did not register until after New Hampshire was over. As I recall, Huckabee took Iowa pretty solidly in 2008. Second place finisher in 2012 or not, with Huckabee's entrance into the race, Santorum can expect his race over before it's begun.

Which would be great for Mitt Romney if, as sort of expected, he does run again--even if some family members suggest he never really even wanted it last time. Which I don't believe for an instant because when I last saw him in 2012, he was running like somebody who wanted the job. But then there's Bush, Jeb Bush.

Seriously, in 2016, Will the GOP Re-Mitt?

The picture for some of the the newer GOP hopefuls for the 2016 Goat Rodeo isn't at all rosy, is it?  I'm not sure that Sen. Rubio will ever catch fire (well-wetted as he is) and Sen. Cruz is going to be awhile shaking off the shut-down karma.

Is there any wonder then, that some rueful Republicans are wondering once again if there's a little something at least electable about Mitt Romney?

No, I don't know how electable people think he is. I just know that the "Mitt" documentary and the "slow-jam" segment on "Jimmy Fallon" has him back in the popular consciousness again.   If he is thinking about another run, (even though his family say he wasn't even that keen to run last time around, as if) might I suggest less Ann Romney?

Also, he might benefit by not even bringing up Benghazi ever again, The idea that this privileged knob thought the best thing to do 9/11/12 was wave four bloody shirts in the face of the Obama Administration before the bodies were cold actually remains, to my mind, the most appalling thing I can imagine any politician, however hopeless regarding foreign policy he might be, could even do. Although he's also hair-disturbingly awful in other respects.

So, for the wistful, isn't there always at least Mike Huckabee, whose polls are up after basically calling women on birth control slaves to their libido and beggars in the face of their own reproductive needs?

Such princely pickings, you all!

Are the Benghazi Talking Points Quite Done, Here?

The use of the deadly attack on the embassy in Benghazi, Libya, that resulted in the deaths of four Americans as a political tool has frankly astonished me since the foreign policy naif Mitt Romney had the bad taste to broach it the very evening that it happened. For that reason, I see a kind of lukewarm vindication of the Obama Administration's public statements regarding the matter in the NYT's in-depth study on it,  which draws two meaningful conclusions: that al-Qaeda was not involved in the attack and that it did stem in part from the widespread protests over a rather dumb bigoted little video, just as was stated by current NSA Susan Rice.

It has long seemed to me that the Benghazi affair as initiated by the Romney folks was a matter of using President Obama's perceived strength (as having authorized the successful raid that resulted in the death of Osama bin Laden) against him. The failure on the Romney side began with the claim that a statement attempting to ameliorate matters from the Cairo  embassy was a sign that the Obama Administration actually sided with radical Islam, but this blew up into a claim that the administration was actually somehow derelict in defending the Libyan embassy from attack from several others on the Republican side, including Senators John McCain and Lindsey Graham, and House Oversight Committee Chair Darrell Issa. The use of the Benghazi tragedy as an indictment of the Obama Administration spans a number of criticisms that conservatives have had with the Commander-in-Chief--that he is Muslim or more sympathetic to radical Islam, that he isn't a real leader, or that he wants America to fail.

It's pretty much always been bullshit. Senators McCain and Graham did the best job of giving the game away when they failed to attend a briefing on the matter, opting instead to hang their faces in front of a camera pointing fingers. Rep. Issa, supposedly a kind of watchdog, has fluffed the matter at intervals, but is mostly of the school of investigation that insists that if he doesn't hear what he thinks he ought, there is surely a cover-up afoot.

And it appears that, for the time being, he is not apt to drop this very tasty rag while there is yet some flavor in it:

On Sunday, “Meet the Press” host David Gregory asked Issa to respond to The Times story, which was published online Saturday. The story also said the Benghazi attacks were “fueled in large part by anger at an American-made video denigrating Islam.” 

“We have seen no evidence that the video was widely seen in Benghazi,” Issa said Sunday. “People from this administration … have said under oath there was no evidence of any reaction to a video. 

“What we know, David, is the initial reports did not name this video as the prime cause,” he added.

Is that so? (No, it is not. And being a very concerned person, he might perhaps have looked at more than a few media accounts, no?) He's also said that if a group alleges it has some connection with al-Qaeda, then that is good enough for him, which must be very validating to jihadi-come-lately groups who can at least claim to know somebody who knows somebody.

I'm afraid until Fox News gives the high sign, the idea that there was something more than usually rotten in Benghazi will be as certain a thing as the unbearable whiteness of Santa Claus in some quarters.

What I do want to point out, though, is that there is a sobering side to this in that the militants who made this attack came from the people the US supported in the overthrow of Qaddafi. I think there is an analogy that could be preemptively applied to involvement in Syria, for example. If anyone has the ear of, say, Sen McCain, they might want to try to explain it to him. I sort of hope President Obama has figured it out, but I've no real idea. Something about good intentions.

A Portrait of the Candidate as a Bit of a Jerk

Well, we kind of knew Romney was a bit of a jerk, but this is really not very nice, is it?

Punctuality mattered to Romney. Christie’s lateness bugged him. Mitt also cared about fitness and was prone to poke fun at those who didn’t. (“Oh, there’s your date for tonight,” he would say to male members of his traveling crew when they spied a chunky lady on the street.) Romney marveled at Christie’s girth, his difficulties in making his way down the narrow aisle of the campaign bus. Watching a video of Christie without his suit jacket on, Romney cackled to his aides, “Guys! Look at that!”

Really? Binders full of chunky ladies might like a word with the former presidential candidate. I will settle for "jerk".