Flunking the Governorship

so sez the Boston Herald of all things, which yesterday gave Mitt Romney "poor marks" in many areas of gubernatorial performance.
Could be that Pat Purcell (or whoever is in charge over in One Herald Square, I can/t keep track, I am a blogger after all!)is simply tracking back to the center for campaign 2006.
Be that as it may, Mitt is politically moribund, and even the Herald knows it now.
The roots of Romney's stagnation aren't hard to see, he is a dilettante and an amateur politician of the first rank. HE may have the skills to get elected or simply the money to do so, but the art of governance eludes him.
The venerable Tammany Hall Sachem George Washington Plunkett once opined that politics was "a business like any other. You have to be trained up for it if you want to be a success".
That is Romney in a nutshell, he is an amateur, an unskilled politician all of which might make him a success, but it'll be in spite of his amateurism and not because of it.
Plunkett had another relevant aphorism "reformers is only morning glories" in other words, windy promises of reform are made with very little long term follow through due to the deficit of political acumen on the part of the alleged reformers.
Again, look at the Herald's gubernatorial "report card" not much there in terms of real accomplishment despite many many proud bumptious threats and pronouncements.
And believe me, things aren't gonna change much between now and election day 2006.

Romney still gets a good press, Scot Lehigh still sighs at the mere mention of his name and shills hard for Mitt's alleged "sharp political instincts".
Yeah but instincts without accomplishments very often degenerate into mere opportunism, and that seems increasingly Mitt's main strength as a politician.

The Kelo Decision and Jeff Jacoby...

Jeff was livid on Sunday over the SC's Kelo Decision which granted broad powers of eminent domain to the municipalities.
And indeed, it is probably too great a grant of power to the localities (traditionally the most easily corrupted level of governance).
So yeah...Jeff thinks home seizures are bad.
Of course, he has nothing to say about bank foreclosures now does he?
When the City forcibly buys your house, dats a bad thing, when the Middlesex Bank and Trust seizes the house because your wife's brain tumor bankrupted the family, well...c'est la vie sayeth that Laughing Young Senescence.
This is the core of the current conservative dilemma, in a contest between ideology and justice or simple compassion versus agenda....agenda wins all the time.

Sick
Demented
Typical

Thanks to Blogger.com's unrequested and

unscheduled "upgrade" my blog now looks like it has been formated by a retarded chimpanzee.
Thanks guys, you like to-tally promote dialogue y'know...

Its all Joseph Nye and Howard Zinn's fault...

or so Senator Rick "High Pitched Rich" Santorum reasons over at Catholics On-line.
Therein, the Junior Senator from Pennsylvania states in respect of the clerical sex abuse scandal in the Boston Dioceses:
It is startling that those in the media and academia appear most disturbed by this aberrant behavior, since they have zealously promoted moral relativism by sanctioning "private" moral matters such as alternative lifestyles. Priests, like all of us, are affected by culture. When the culture is sick, every element in it becomes infected. While it is no excuse for this scandal, it is no surprise that Boston, a seat of academic, political and cultural liberalism in America, lies at the center of the storm.

Now I could point out that sadly, clerical sex abuse is a world wide phenom, something that has happened in rural New Hampshire as well as Tampa Florida and points beyond. I could do that...yadda yadda yadda.
But what would be the point?
Rick won't listen, a profound truculent ignorance lies at the core of his ideology....how else could he ever satisfy modern conservatism's first commandment "thou shalt blame the liberals in all cases no matter what"?

No, his line of reasoning interests me because it is so decadent and eloquent of declinism. Essentially, what Senator Santorum is proposing that when a religious leader indulges in forbidden carnality with children...it is society's fault!
This is the sort of naive' elitist reasoning that we haven't heard since the palmier days of New York Mayor John Lindsay.
By blaming American society, Santorum takes the heat off his beloved catholic clergy and like Abbie Hoffman or a young Jane Fonda can now condemn the very culture that has nurtured and protected him all his natural life.
If this line of reasoning didn't work for the Weathermen and the SDS in 1969, why then should it be credible for today's rightical chic agitators?
Rick has never known an hour's worth of oppression in his entire miserable life, certainly none that he couldn't call a cab to escape if he so desired. These wowsers have long forgotten that they live in the free-est nation on earth for religious believers. No Santorum et al want to force us all to live in something they think is better than freedom, that being theocracy. Hence their entirey preposterous but also dangerous sense of greivance.
They are mad, not because society is so decadent, but because it hasn't surrendered to them yet.

Lyndon Baines Johnson invented the Internet...

yup its true, I heard it on NPR yesterday.

:)
As part of a discussion from their "On the Media" program a clip was played of LBJ's speech on the occasion of the creation of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting circa 1967. At one point, LBJ started ruminated on sources of education and knowledge that would "go beyond mere broadcasting". He then began idly speculating about vast electronic knowledge banks that would simultaneously hook up scholars, doctors and students all over the nation.

Gawd-damn...its only taken us forty years to catch up with one of Lyndon's idle conjurations.
Ah...but LBJ was an artist at heart...other had canvas, marble, film or words....Lyndon had that most malleable and yet most frustrating of substances to work with....legislation.

New Link...

Blog for Boston has seen fit to link to this, the little blog that cried. They seem eminently sensible, go check them out.
Meanwhile, the Federales must be closing in on this Jack Abramoff character, cuz' Tom Delay (a genial countrified character who never saw a bribe he didn't like)has exhumed the living corpse of the flag burning amendment and sent it lurching through the halls of congress in an attempt to panic all and sundry.
So clearly indictments must be pending.

Piece and Feedom

So let me get the straight, the much ballyhooed Romney health care Plan essentially boils down to forcibly enrolling the uninsured in HMO's which then clears the way for the State Government to start charging a fee for using the local Emergency Room without insurance.
So really, isn't this yet another one of Mitt's user fee increases? The ones he uses in lieu of a sensible program of taxation?
Who else but Mitt Romney would dare dream up what amounts to a coin operated hospital emergency room.
I'll bet his vicregal majesty is all proud of himself too.

Yeah supposedly everyone will get coverage, but its the usual private and public sector hash which means at the end of the day everyone will be at the dual mercy of grasping HMO accountants & the Cheap-ass Mofos who currently run congress.
Christ no wonder Charlie Baker wants to run for Governor, as a HMO CEO he must realize thars gold in them thar hills!
Okay, I exaggerate but still....

Still, I detect yet another failure in Romney's at best amateur class political sense here. No doubt he believes a big health care bill will burnish his flimsy policy credentials when it comes time to go all out in the 2008 NH Presidential Primary. This is a mistake in Humble Elias opinion, the inhabitants of Barnstead and South Policy Road cordially couldn't care less if every third citizen of the Commonwealth was infected with Typhus. A health care fix here means nothing to New Hampshire, they conflate all government innovation with socialism & high taxes...Mitt's health care proposal as a campaign gimmick, will go over like the proverbial lead balloon, count on it.