The End of Mitt
... and his lie of a campaign.
The best thing about Mitt Romney’s atrocious Super Tuesday performance came early in the afternoon when his campaign released the statement excerpted below. In direct response to losing something called the West Virginia State Republican Party Convention, where voters cast ballots until a clear majority emerges, Romney’s irritated campaign unleashed a vitriolic screed that reeked of the juvenile sulking that increasingly defines this torpedoing campaign. More and more, he’s simply looking like a pissed off 11th grader, mad because nobody wants him to serve as class treasurer.
"Unfortunately, this is what Senator McCain's inside Washington ways look like: he cut a backroom deal with the tax-and-spend candidate he thought could best stop Governor Romney's campaign of conservative change. Governor Romney had enough respect for the Republican voters of West Virginia to make an appeal to them about the future of the party based on issues. This is why he led on today's first ballot. Sadly, Senator McCain cut a Washington backroom deal in a way that once again underscores his legacy of working against Republicans who are interested in championing conservative policies and rebuilding the party."
The West Virginia situation was actually straightforward enough: following the first round of balloting, the former Massachusetts Governor helplessly watched his original lead evaporate into a cloud of Appalachian coal dust as John McCain’s supporters flipped their support to Mike Huckabee – Evangelical America’s Occasionally Favorite Son.
Now, rather than accept this cold political maneuver for the “Anybody But Mitt” strategy that it clearly was, Romney instead did what he’s been doing for the better part of the last two-years, which is take the Delusional Train way out past Edge City in an embarrassing effort to deny tangible reality.
Which has of course been his fantastical game plan all along. He’s already made a living pretending that he never served as a moderate governor of a left-of-center state; pretending that his weird faith rests squarely in the mainstream of American religiosity just because he says it does; pretending that his tenure as a scorched-earth venture capitalist appeals to cash strapped families in the throes of an increasingly depressing economic downturn. His entire campaign has been an exercise in make-believe, an effort based exclusively on the outlandish presuppositions that history doesn’t actually happen, that video cameras don’t actually work, and that Republican primary voters are actually stupid enough to be habitually lied to – as long as you feed them constant film of a perfect family that nobody in America either has nor wants.
So, on Tuesday it came as little surprise when Romney scanned the day’s discouraging start, slapped a little midnight-polish on that hockey helmet scalp of his, and quickly dispatched his staff with the conspiracy laden image of McCain and Huckabee skulking into an abandoned Charleston mineshaft to coldheartedly sodomize the state’s originally noble electoral result.
Which is maybe what happened. Who knows? Regardless of the tactical specifics behind Huckabee’s Appalachian victory, however, Tuesday’s first Republican result was important not only because it set the tone for a day that would see McCain go off on a certifiable orgy of cross-country delegate grabbing, but also because it gave voters one final opportunity to see Romney behave like a spoiled brat incapable of processing even the smallest bit of honestly bad news.
Ultimately, even if McCain and Huckabee colluded to defeat Romney in West Virginia, it doesn’t have much at all to do with why the candidate got thrashed all over the rest of the country on Tuesday. The real reason is that Romney, who has enjoyed no less than three stints as the Conventional Wisdom Republican Frontrunner during this fiasco, has ran one of the most blatantly dishonest campaigns in the history of recorded elections. That’s the simple nut of it, and one can only hope that when the wheels officially fall off in the coming weeks, Mitt’s family will be around to help the goofy bastard deal with it all.
Because in the end, Tuesday’s result is something too dark for even Mitt Romney to delude himself out of. He’s already assured us of his intent to move this campaign forward, delivering a sad little speech that saw the candidate brag half-heartedly about winning the three states where he’s actually lived, but at some point Romney and his people are going to see the writing on this wall.
Of course, nobody should devote much time to feeling badly for the former Captain of Industry. In a more just universe, Romney and his entire campaign staff would be purified by fire outside Epcot Center as punishment for their dumb little campaign, but in reality, the modern American private sector will probably be there waiting for all of them – and I have to believe that a guy like Mitt could make an absolute killing on the motivational speaking circuit.
So, if you sell real estate for a living or have another occupation that requires frequent attendance at ten-step, airport Radisson luncheons, you might be seeing a lot more of this guy. Graciously, the rest of us will have him and his bummer of a campaign out of our lives very soon, and not even Mitt Romney can tell us otherwise.
