Pinkerton Academy, (Alma Mater of Astronaut Alan Shepherd)
Who the hell books a rally at 8:20am EST?
Mitt Romney does, blissfully assured that the helots of the Granite State will turn out in droves to hear him "preach it".
Ah but the former Viceroy is changeless, I haven't seen him in person in exactly four years and he is a veritable Dorian Gray, a perfectly coiffed hologram of a candidate, not a line on him.
And yet I have never seen anyone look so uncomfortable and agitated in an open necked shirt, it's as if he immediately dons a necktie, windsor knot and all as soon as the crowds disperse and heaves a heavy sigh of relief.
As for Mitt's allegedly much improved rhetoric, he simply isn't speaking as long or taking questions from the audience anymore. Mostly these days he yammers on about his family (preferably introducing as many as possible in order to eat up time), slags the President of the US for doing all the stuff Mitt Romney promised to do four years ago, nervously pimps himself as a conservative by saying the word conservative a lot, and meditates on various patriotic song lyrics.
He did not promise to balance the budget, merely to cut Federal Spending to the point where we will no longer need to borrow money from his former Business Partners the Chinese.
This is a patently vague pledge and pretty meaningless since he promises to maintain global military superiority at the same time without recourse to new taxes.
I love how Mitt Romney claims to have "cut taxes" in Massachusetts, he has been pushing this bullshit for six years now. Yet no one ever takes time to list all the fees he jacked up to quietly balance the budget via executive fiat.
Mitt Romney talks a lot about a "merit society" (all men born to wealth and privilege love this sort of rhetoric) and "The soul of America" (a thing Romney claims that Barack Obama does not understand) so aside from projecting a sense of chilly entitlement and obnoxious smarminess, Mitt is very very good at slaughtering straw men.
His weirdest trope?
Mitt Romney wants to make America "Attractive Again", I guess by sending it out to a fat camp, maybe buying it a face lift and some new bling or something.
To hear Mitt Romney tell it, the Founding Fathers all happily worked part time at Walmart until they could get the Declaration of Independence debugged and uploaded.
In all a mere eighteen minutes of useless rubbish, which is good for the audience as Romney tends to speed up his delivery as his speeches go on, as he wound up he was getting mighty close to the machine gun delivery that characterized his 2008 performance in the New Hampshire Primary.
Mostly, though, Romney whined on about Barack Obama, tellingly he never mentioned once any of his GOP rivals in the entire eighteen minute eructation. Clearly in his own mind, he has already been nominated and wants to start the general election immediately, thus his current game plan from now til Tuesday night is to "run out the clock" and hope his polls hold up.
And they just might, a mere twenty six years ago, the New Hampshire Primary lasted for months, ginned up around Halloween and ran flat out til Primary Day in late January with six minutes minimum on all the nightly news broadcasts.
Now thanks to the Iowa Caucus and early primary crowding, the damn thing really lasts about ten days tops, scant time for a anxious batty Falangist like Rick Santorum or a nasty Golem like Newt Gingrich to overtake "Brand Romney".
Now,the last time the Former Viceroy did the New Hampshire Primary they went with the dippy Game Show Theme "Ask Mitt Romney Anything", this time it is "Mitt Romney will Say Anything...To Win".
Still and all that, it was a typical listless Romney crowd, the gym at Pinkerton Academy was hardly filled to capacity and the attendees were evenly divided between actual New Hampshire Voters, Out of Staters (likely campaign volunteers) and of course The Press all crammed in close to look good for the video feed.
They were hardly stomping their feet and pumping their fists in the air for Mitt, he got a few desultory laughs with his jabs at Obama...But the crowd only seemed to come alive when they were shouting down an expeditionary force from the local Ninety Nine Percenters. The police hustled off the protesters pretty quietly and Romney went back to blathering on sans worry woe or an unseemly excess of applause.
Much as I hate to say it, I think Romney is gonna win the New Hampshire Primary on Tuesday at which point a great howl will go up demanding the closure of ranks and "party unity".
And what the hell, he may get it.
New Hampshire voters seem resigned to Romney, his competition one and all are twitchy and weird. If there was anyone else of the caliber of a statesman to be had, Mitt would be dropped in an instant, but there is not and so there stands Romney a veritable colossus until you give that image some real thought and the giggles begin.
As for the general election campaign it seems clear to me that Romney is gonna harp on the deficit a lot by way of bitching at China and will likely attempt some political jujitsu with respect to social security and retirement.
Debt mongering doesn't win Presidential elections, ask Fritz Mondale if you don't believe Humble Elias but the emerging Romney line on Social Security must needs close observation.
That having been said, Mitt Romney has lost none of his smugness, condescension nor his campaign's capacity for the conceptual gaffe: In the lobby of the gym were two tables selling "Mitt Romney for President Buttons", one of them depicted the famously adaptable and supple candidate as "Mister Fantastic" Marvel Comics' elastic super hero.
Bad metaphor for a candidate who flips and flops and zigs and zags, I wish I had bought one.
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