The Boston Globe conjures with

"The Attorney General's Curse" in today's edition, ergo that ambitious AG's never seem to achieve the corner office in a fair political contest. I think the problem is much broader than that, it seems clear to me that almost all statewide office holders are at a competitive disadvantage if they aspire to the Governorship in a general election. In fact, so far as I can tell the ONLY state wide office that is a reliable path to Gubernatorial Power is...The Office of Lieutenant Governor. The Late Paul Cellucci and Jane "Jingle Money" Swift can both reliably attest to that notion. I don't have a tested hypothesis on this other to note that if you run and win statewide what you pick up in prestige, deliverables and name recognition you lose in terms of a broader public perception of being an "insider". Consider the men who have been elected Governor in my lifetime, Mike Dukakis a Brookline State Rep, Bill Weld, a Federal Prosecutor, Paul Cellucci an incumbent Lt Governor and former State Senator, Jane Swift a Cabinet Jobber, Mitt Romney a man with no substantive public experience at all and Deval Patrick a former Assistant US Attorney General. Meanwhile over that span of time, the democrats nominated two attorney's general for Governor and a State Treasurer all defeated. Moreover at least one additional state Treasurer and another attorney general sought their party's nomination for Governor and came up short. A pattern of sorts emerges, most of the above cited politicians could make a claim (however strained at times) to being outside "the Beacon Hill Culture"....in fact nigh all of them ran at one time or another as a bulwark against said Beacon Hill Culture. So as the state democrats look forward (y'know when the Gloating Stops), they might wanna consider some of the hidden costs to a candidate with an established statewide portfolio...cuz at this point it's all looking like A New Glass Ceiling in State Politics.

Romney's "October Surprise"...

Just in time for leaf-peepin' season, The Former Viceroy has changed his mind about abortion for a sixth time and noted that as President he would not seek any new laws  "restricting access".
He must be desperate to change his profile with women voters at this point, what else accounts for this epic flip flop?
Keep in mind a scant six months ago he was loud in his intentions to defund Planned Parenthood and could not wait to appoint anti abortion witchburners to the Supreme Court.
Moreover the 2012 GOP platform opposes abortion even in case of rape....
Well keep in mind, Romney is a master of duplicitous smarm,  nowhere in the above flip flop does he rule out appointing Ralph Reed to the Supreme Court or passive aggressively defunding Planned Parenthood as part of some phony budget crisis....but he won't propose "new laws" to "restrict access"....Like hell he won't.
Romney is lying, he has been lying all thru-out his political career, the lies are the dark side of his intellectual disconnect from the great  issues of our times. If the issues are mere rhetorical abstractions to be gamed in order to garner votes for Romney (as I have argued elsewhere) then indeed why wouldn't he deliberately lie in order win an election?
It is one of the few natural things about Romney's public persona quite frankly...

Josh Marshall sez

Romney is trending towards the whole cultural warrior meme this week.
David Bernstein though, over in the Boston Phoenix thinks almost the exact opposite, that Romney is trying to rebrand himself as a family friendly moderate.
Who is right?
Both of them.
Mitt Romney regards rhetoric as mere manipulation, a means to fool the trogs into voting for him, he is man  who does not feel himself bound in any way by what he says in public, thus he contradicts himself virtually on an hourly basis.
He has been doing this for years, when the media catches him on it they sort of accuse him of either lying or hyperbole before backing off in a surly fashion. He is actually doing neither thing, Romney doesn't believe in truth, he believes in Steven Colbert's "Truthiness", in other words if it "Sounds good"and helps his electoral bottom line he'll use it. If he gets called out, he accuses the media of bias or else drops the trope and finds some other rubbish to spout.
If you discount the existence of truth, then you cannot have much shame about lying...this is why Romney never seems to turn a hair no matter how outrageous his fabrications.
Quite literally, Mitt Romney will figure out what he believes in only if he wins the election...and even then it is all in flux.

On Civility

A scant week ago, the Presidential Campaign was being hyped as an almighty clash of ideas, a pseudo intellectual pundit's dream in other words.
That was before the Vice President cracked that the banks wanna put us all in chains and then Mitt Romney started howling that the President is a hate monger...
Didn't take long for the usual unseemly slanging match to kick in now did it?
Of course, incivility is a relative thing, political passions tore the nation in two back in 1861 and the state of civility in public discourse has hardly improved since then.
The basic legitimacy of one's captioned opponents seems to have always been debatable in this country,hard thing to admit but it's true.
Moreover lets put aside this farcical self image that we have of American's being "nice people"
We aren't, we really never have been.
Yuu don't rise to our current international eminence and prosperity, without a certain degree of callousness and insensitivity.
Which is not to say we are brutal or sadistic or authoritarian, but purely civil....no.
A civil polity does not stage a revolution, create a democracy, survive a civil war or become great prosperous or most of all, keep it's freedom.
And unfortunately, rhetorically rampant politicians is a tax we pay to that freedom.

Have a Nice Day....

A misanthrope's progress....

Mitt Romney makes a "triumphant" tour of the UK, Israel and Poland, something that only a serious xenophobe could love.
He called the Brits ineptoids, the Palestinians a bunch of lazy moochers and his press secretary dropped an f-bomb on the attending journalistas in Poland, live on camera.
And the best his spin doctors can do is insist that no-one is paying attention to Mitt's foreign tour (the very thing he was desperately hoping to garner attention) instead it's the economy that is suddenly everyone's concern.
Anyway soon enough the argument will be made that Mitt's many gaffe's were really a deliberate bid to shore up the famously xenophobic GOP base.
But if Romney needs to gin up the base in August of an election year then he has problems wedon't even know about....

Good Lord I think

Mitt Romney is one good overseas gaffe away from wrecking the whole NATO Alliance.

So much for a week of soft news from Romney in London eh? Thats one way to stop all that rampant speculation about your mysterious Swiss Bank Accounts, go to the UK and start saying the stupidest things imaginable.

Program note to the Romney campaign

Do Not send Mitt out to do an 11th hour Friday Afternoon media blitz answering charges that he is a heartless plutocrat sans necktie.
Romney looks more uncomfortable, mendacious and stiff than when he goes all open collar & casual.
You just know that breakfast waits in the Romney Household until Mitt gets his windsor knot just right....

Oh and his defiant promise not to release any more of his tax returns (for fear of fueling additional "opposition research")....Is a virtual confession that indeed somewhere in his Bain Capital Record and all those offshore bank accounts Mitt Romney does indeed have something to hide.

So let me get this straight...

For Shits and Grins at Stanford, Mitt Romney used to get tarted up in Police Officer Drag and pull people over for speeding in his own ersatz cruiser?
Y'know I could make a crude joke about the dangers of spending your college years in a degraded state of sobriety.
But then again, think of mayhem Mitt might have perpetrated if he'd a been drinking, the blood runs cold at the thought.
This does raise an important question though: "Has Mitt Romney ever been on the Side of the UnderDog? Ever? Ever? Ever????"
I think not, from youth to today Mitt has been constantly toadying up to power or else trying to set off a rightical chic counter revolution, one that will preserve and or expand his own almighty sense of entitlement.
Where else does the desire to dress up as a cop and hassle people come from anyway???

Hear Hear Kid, Hear Hear!

A Brother Eagle Scout speaks up!

If Mitt Romney ever wanted a "Sistah Solja" moment this might be the one. But lets face it, the Former Viceroy's fagbashing bona fides are rock solid and long established, they are about the only constant thing with him. Well, that and his inept and transparent ambition to exceed his Father.

Note to the Laity

Humble Elias is on vacation til after Memorial Day, lets hope the Usual Suspects refrain from doing anything bloggable while I am gone.  I mean I'm gonna be p*ssed if Mitt Romney takes to cross dressing in his campaign appearances, man I'm tryin' to relax here!

Mitt Romney has come under fire for

some loutish bullying behavior back when he was "The Governor's Son" at Cranbrook Academy in Michigan.
Lordy imagine what the Boston Herald would have done with this story if only it was perpetrated by a member of the Kennedy Family?
***
Back in the Day, Cranbrook was renowned at the time for turning out a particular type of overconfident twit armored with a thick protective layer of sheer entitlement.
And you can't get more entitled than Mitt Romney circa 1965, the Son of Michigan's Governor who was himself a likely Presidential Candidate in 1968.
So it is not surprising that Mitt Romney in a passive aggressive rage against the fabled "other" whomped together a crewcut Nadsat Gang that held some poor mook with a pompadour down and give him a nasty little haircut.
"Difference" was much much tolerated in America's Prep Schools back then and clearly Mitt Romney made himself the scourge of "nancy boys" and the like.
Y'know I snipe away at Mitt Romney and of course this story has much snarkage potential to it.
Romney is the poster boy for detachment, he is uncoupled from any emotional links to the issues he allegedly espouses, his wealth insulates him from he cares of everyday society and it's citizens and he has always been comfortable in the wealth, power & status that is his birthright. Anything else, just doesn't matter.
So I wonder...Can Mitt Romney learn anything?
Cuz a lot of learning goes down when you have "hostages to fortune" in play, if your life is lived at an Olympian Altitude, what is the impetus to question oneself?
My point, what if that kid that Romney held down and "barbered" had reared back and punched Willard in the nose, hard, real hard?
Would Mitt Romney had learned anything from the encounter?
I mean other than the perfidity of the gender-role challenging "other"?
Therefore, do we really want a President who is unteachable by nature?

I don't care what

what the Brian McGrory's of this world are saying, in the weary wicked end, this is the very same Mitt Romney who ran in 2008 with all his flaws, delusions and chiseling nature intact.
He is the first to run negative adverts, the first to decry negative adverts and when faced with pressure on the right, he toadies and truckles.
Same campaign tactics except this year the field is so weird and weak they are working....

Which is an object lesson to the Obama campaign, Mitt will go negative from the git-go and then cloud the air with smarmy insincere denials. Always remember, Romney makes all this smarm & passive aggression work for him.

Y'know,

the Brian McGrory's of this world will go sighing into the night, insisting that this time, Mitt Romney is at peace with his "Legacy As Governor of Massachusetts".
But then news like this comes thru, to the effect that the Former Viceroy spent 100K scrubbing state databases of emails and other important indicators that his governorship really was in Massachusetts after all.
It is a popular cliche' out there, that Mitt Romney has no soul, no core beliefs, at least he cares not to share any of it with the voters.
Humble Elias though, thinks this is a misapprehension. Romney does have a very deeply held core belief, his actions above and his public statements proclaim it unambiguously.
And that is, Mitt Romney firmly believes with religious conviction that if he had been elected Governor of Colorado or Utah or Michigan or New Hampshire (all states where I think he owns property) he'd be President by now.
To an outside observer, that is a remarkably cynical notion, but given Romney's almighty opportunism, it is the local conclusion in every way.

Mitt Romney wants to remove the "magnets"

that supposedly draw illegal immigrants to this country, like I dunno emergency room health care and the Micky D's ribwich I guess.
Of course the biggest and baddest "magnet" is a job, a shitty job to be sure, cleaning pools and or taking care of some monied slob's hapless offspring, but a job nevertheless. So if Mitt Romney really wants to drain the swamp, why not simply reclassify all those shitty jobs as closed shop positions?
The AFL-CIO will swoop down like a Klingon Bird of Prey and fill those slots up overnight with dues paying members all of them will rock solid birth certificates...problem solved no more Mexicano hedgeclippers.
Granted, the cost of a pool cleaning will increasing exponentially, but shouldn't we be willing to pay some price to keep the wogs out?
Granted this is all sheer sarcasm on Humble Elias part, but if you were to propose it to Willard's face, his poor head would probably explode because while he panders incessantly he is nonetheless bad at it.
Put two beneficial political outcomes into mutual opposition before Mitt and the explosive bolts that hold his psyche together auto-detonate every time.

Mitt Romney Makes It Personal...

Candidate Romney, caving in to pressure to be just as wingnut crazy as everyone else in the GOP presidential sweeps, has now proposed privatizing the Department of Veteran's Affairs.
Let me put it simply, Over My Cold Dead Body Willard!
My old man, he is ninety years old, and at the Crossing of the Rhine in 1945 he sacrificed everything short of his life for this Republic
Elias Nugator Sr. is ninety, riddled with Alzheimer's Disease, punished with war wounds,wheelchair bound and vexed by a list of health problems that would turn your hair gray.
By Act of Congress, the Department of Veteran's Affairs has to see to his care given the extent of his war related injuries.
Thank Ghod for the VA, they are taking exemplary care of him at a time in his life when he has a lot of medical needs.
Can't imagine the sort of raw deal he'd get if the care system was privatized, certainly the ratio of caregiver to veteran would go down...and if you don't like the paperwork from the VA, wait til your local HMO gets it's snout in the trough!
I know a lot of contemporary Vets are having big problems with the VA, Humble Elias sympathizes, the department is in sore need of sensible reform.
Mitt Romney though, he wants to throw everything on the tender mercies of A.I.G.
Just once, can't an institution that serves the common man or in this case the common soldier get the coveted designation "To Big To Fail".
I mean a well run efficient service oriented Department of Veteran's Affairs has to be at least as important as bailing out General Motors or Bank of America.
Privatization benefits the Mitt Romney's of the world, period end of story.
If I didn't like the man before, I plainly despise him now.

This is a long comprehensive take down of Mitt Romney

from a fairly prominent conservative blogger/DC pundit. It is significant to Humble Elias simply because much of the arguments could have been cribbed from the Chimes at Midnight itself.
It is, nonetheless, food for thought.
Meanwhile this mook is living large on his Anti Mitt bona fides while I clip "Building 19" coupons...Clearly I'm working da wrong side of da street.

Keep in mind,

Mitt Romney is not "indecisive" in the Shakespearean sense of the term. He is opportunistic, there is a difference. To the indecisive, the issues loom large, complicated and concrete, making up one's mind and sticking to it is difficult given the imagined consequences.  To an opportunist like Romney, the issues are rhetorical abstractions to be acquired, promoted and discarded based on a calculus of personal benefit. So Romney's made is always made up, until the very moment that the potential pay offs shift and then he in turn shifts with them.
Mitt's mind is always made up, he has always been rock solid on what is best for "Brand Romney".
If you asked him about abortion in the summer of 1994 he was mildly pro choice, if you asked again in the summer of 2007 he was pro-life.
 What changed,?
The governorship of Massachusetts was no longer in play and the Presidency was.
I promise you on both mutually exclusive premises, Romney was an earnest advocate, or as earnest as he can seem to be when out campaigning.
Just don't call him indecisive, an indecisive person paradoxically cares about the issues even if they lack the willingness to commit whole heartedly to a particular policy or action, of the enormity of the issues before us, Romney could not care less...not with his own ambitions on the line.

New Hampshire is actually considering

moving it's date for the presidential primary back to December 6th, 2011?
All to ensure that the Granite State has the "first in the nation" primary.
Hum.
Dunno about that, seems like moving that damn thing out of a presidential election year has a diminishing rate of return...and it is just plain ridiculous as well.
And we all know Granite Staters, they hate to look ridiculous.
Practically speaking that puts the primary date within ninety days from now, serious advantage to Romney since historically a lot of "come from behind" candidacies up there don't coalesce til after the Iowa Caucuses.
I mean a decision like that more or less hands the state over to Mitt Romney without a vote ever being cast.
Just sayin' thass all.
Personally, I think the "first in the nation presidential primary" has become a rather corrupt cottage industry in New Hampshire for both parties equally. I will grant there is some advantage to having said primary in a small state with strong preference for retail politics, but there are smaller states out there, more diverse, with more competitive political parties, that are equally deserving.
Well what of it, no one wants to confront this issue,  I get that....but this is ridiculous period.

Mitt Romney wants to "save" Social Security

that is a laugh to be sure, he probably wants to turn it into a giant hedge fund for the amusement of the many many investors and beneficiaries of the Bain Capital Gruppe.
Ghod Mitt is so wonderfully craven and opportunistic, he'd sell out the nation to President and doesn't give a damn who knows it.
The really fun part of Mitt's sudden lurch to the middle in this week's debate will be reading all the Boston Globe columnists that'll be puffing and blowing on the embers desperate to get Willard to blaze up as a moderate.
They drank the kool aid last time and they'll do it with lip smacking relish this time.  I don't pretend to understand it, but there is a cadre of pundits here locally that're emotionally invested in converting Mitt to Republican Moderation.
It won't work, it didn't work in 2002, 2006 or 2008 and it won't work in 2012.
Besides am I the only blogger out there who recalls that as of MONDAY of this week, Romney was still kissing Tea Partei Ass?

Romney is quadrupling the size of his

Malibu Mansion, didn't even know he had one, but with 250 million large stashed away I'm sure it's a long list of houses, condos, mansions, castles and whatnot.
Allegedly, he is expanding this house to Hearstian proportions because his wife finds the climate sovereign for her ills and the horseback riding most salubrious as well.
I won't argue that point...
However, Mitt has links to Utah, Michigan and Massachusetts all for either political or religious reasons...so why wouldn't he expand "Brand Romney" to California?
Win or lose next year I'll bet he moves out there permanently, it is the "Romney-ish" thing to do.
As to whether or not it's a good idea to be building lavish mansions during a recession while calling for cuts, austerity and reduced expectations on the campaign trail, is another issue entirely.