One Puny week of pressure from the right...

And Mitt Romney caves in with respect to his tax returns.
And it is pressure from Newt Gingrich no less an unstable egomaniac trying to rise to the threat level of Frank Hague.
The Former Viceroy has no one to blame but himself for this predicament, he could've tossed it all out there months ago with no ill effects, but with all his inept waffling it all looks like he is concealing something.
And he is concealing something, something though he can't properly hide, and that is that Mitt Romney is a preposterously rich and entitled man with little in common with the GOP base in any manner shape or form. Somehow witholding his tax returns was supposed to obscure all that...heaven knows how.
As for the returns themselves, I doubt there is anything illegal on them, merely documentary proof that Mitt Romney takes full advantage of all the advantages offered by a thorough reading of the tax code.
Which is all the more reason to get them out early and get your spin on them well spun...but no this is Mitt Romney and as I've said before, the man could screw up a two car funeral.

Former State Senator Scott Brown

has come out against higher taxes on the "Above $250,000.00" bracket on grounds that it would unduly burden "policemen, nurses and firefighters".
Yeah some of that cohort have made it into the quarter of a million cohort, but on the other hand it means at the very least that Michael McLaughlin (the boodling head of the Chelsea Housing Authority) and the gang down at the Probation Department, would at least be compelled to pay their fair share.

Well what can I say? These are the thoughts a Junior Senator has when all he has to work with is a smooth round fragment of New England Granite to serve for brains.

If...

Newt Gingrich does win the South Carolina Primary today, it will be for two reasons:

1.) He threw the right tantrum at the right time in the right debate when John King tried to ask him about his second ex-wife's allegations that he wanted to have an "open marriage".
You'd think a loathsome thing like would damage Newt's candidacy, but no, the whole "I'm being victimized by the liberal media"meme is apparently much more powerful.

2.) Mitt Romney really can screw up a two car funeral, a week ago he was on the brink of wrapping up the GOP nomination, but a bungled debate performance and complete melt down on his tax returns coupled with the revelation of his mysterious Grand Cayman Island Bank accounts and voila the former Viceroy is once again on the ropes.
Clearly the taint of wealth supercedes the taint of personal debauchery in the current political environment.

Still and all that, I don't give long odds to Newt Gingrich his backstory is thoroughly weird and he has many many financial shenanigans in his baggage to explain...but unlike Romney he has credibility with the Southern Base of the GOP and the rhetorical gifts to back that up.
Ah but it's funny, this might be Newt Gingrich's last stand. I mean he has three wives and two exes on his rapsheet to date. If spouse #3, Callista cannot boot strap his ass into the White House then Newt cannot easily follow his instincts and change up wives again, he is a convert to Catholicism and the RCC does not permit divorce.
So its "conquer or die in 2012" for Newt so to speak.

Newt Gingrich's second wife versus Mitt Romney's offshore doomsday accounts?

Certainly Newt's tacky personal vices hasn't crowded Romney's tawdry financial chicanery off the front pages.
So which species of bad news will triumph in the South Carolina Primary?
For once I'm not gonna guess, save to note that once again it would just be funny if Romney & Gingrich damaged each other sufficiently for Rick "High Pitched Rich" Santorum to sneak through to a plurality.
But even then, advantage Romney, Santorum lacks the resources to deny Mitt the nomination...unless of course the Former Viceroy gets panicky as he did in 2008 and starts sweating and promising the eschaton to anyone still awake...

Perry bails

and thus sets a minimum intelligence standard for GOP presidential aspirants.
You cannot be dumber than Rick Perry and still hope to prevail...
Governor Perry is endorsing Gingrich of all people, which might do the former speaker some benefit in the South Carolina Primary if Newt's second ex-wife wasn't about to sing like a canary to Nightline tonight.

Honestly, it doesn't not get better than this.

So Romney has Eight million large stashed in the Grand Cayman Islands?

Is that all??

I mean the man is worth a quarter-of-a-billion, where this the rest of it, Zurich, Qatar, Barsoom?
Anyone else think this is Mitt's "Doomsday Money", designed to used only in the event of an asteroid collision or a mass rising of flesh eating zombies?
I wonder where his Bunker is?
Provo Utah undoubtedly, just down from the Osmond Family's disaster redoubt.
***
Still if nothing else this whole situation neatly illustrates the vast gulf between the Mitt Romney's of this world, and the everyday individual.  The average person wracked as they are by recession and worry looks to a democratic government for some impetus to prosperity and jobs.
Mitt Romney simply expects the Government to continue to enable his own entitlement at the expense of damn near everyone.
I mean the nerve of this guy barnstorming from town to town in South Carolina braying about patriotism and meanwhile the Former Viceroy is hiding money abroad like he was Ernst Stavro Blofeld or some damn thing.

Note to the Laity

in solidarity with the current on-line Anti SOPA protests, the Chimes at Midnight will not be updated tomorrow.

BTW how the hell did Humble Elias get 212 hit yesterday? Was my Huntsman riff that good? Normally I'm good for about a quarter of that number on a Sunday.