If watching a dues paying member of the local punditariat

fall to his knees in helpless adoration before a politician is yer thing, then by all means pick up today's Boston Globe and read Scot Lehigh's column.
Rest assured his career-long man crush on Mitt Romney continues unabated.
I don't quite understand why, but on Morrissey Blvd there is this compulsion to anoint someone anyone the Moderate Messiah and Savior of the GOP & the USA.
Never mind the fact that moderate republicanism is as dead as the Bull Moose Party. Ignore the sad truth that Ronald Reagan, the Bush Family, Newt Gingrich and the Tea Partei hunted the Kenneth Keatings of this republic to extinction.
Nope, as long as Scot Lehigh can get to laptop and snag some free wifi somewheres, the myth and legend will live on and on and on. And if no suitable candidate presents him or herself, Scot et al will simply fiercely pretend that cold cynical aloof supremely self interested Mitt Romney (a man with five different positions on abortion, three on stem cells, and a great lover of the Tea Partei when he isn't calling them white trash behind their backs) is some sort of a...moderate.
Why they do this I do not know, but like all print based journalists the Globe has a irrational fear of conservative backlash on the Silent Majority-George Wallace-Tea Partei model, so clearly they think that a moderate republican is some sort of a bulwark against being deported or sent to a labor camp in Arkansas.
Which leads Humble Elias to the hilarious notion that Scot Lehigh actually thinks that Mitt Romney is gonna save anyone from the gallows when the purge comes down, not with his own hide to look after he won't!
So the worst accusation I can throw at Scot today is that he is naive...he has as I've said many times before a believing mind.
And I guess, he thinks that when the time comes, Romney will not sell us all out on the cheap just so he can git ta be President. The record says differently of the Former Governor but Lehigh is clearly functioning beyond the veil of factuality.
For that fact, moderate republicanism didn't die out because the constituency vanished, I do believe there are moderate republicans out there, either not voting or making bad deals with unfaithful candidates. No, the candidates and incumbents were swept out of office and either replaced by democrats (exp. Silvio Conte) or "primaried" by the usual rightical chic suspects.
To say the least, the house punditariat at the Boston Globe have not concerned themselves much with reporting that process...they might at least wake up for a few minutes to write a decent obit for moderate republicanism, but don't hold yer breath on that on folks.