Will The Real Mitt Romney Please Stand Up, Please Stand Up!

I felt badly for Obama during his debate with Romney and walked out (of my house) shaking my head and wondering how anyone could be expected to debate a congenital liar like Romney. And no one stopped him. Could anyone have? The media has rewarded him for his barrage of lies by crowning him the winner of the debate. They're encouraging him. One can only imagine what Biden is going to face tonight from Lyin' Ryan. I mean, he didn't get that name by admitting he chopped down the cherry tree. In his book about the crisis of authority, Twilight of the Elites: America After Meritocracy, Chris Hayes goes into why the breakdown of authoritative institutions-- like, say, the media-- is a big problem for... well, civilization. He wasn't referencing the barrage of lies from Romney and Ryan. He was talking about the barrage of lies from Big Oil and their political allies about Climate Change.

The challenge of climate change forces us to stare into the dark void left by the collapse of traditional institutional authority. One democratic political operative I know calls this feature of modern public life "post-truth politics." Without some central institutions that have the inclination, resources, and reputational capital to patrol the boundaries of truth, we really do risk a kind of Hobbesian chaos, in which truth is overtaken by sheer will-to-power.

...Public opinion in the United States is nowhere near where it would have to be to produce the kinds of dramatic policy changes we must make if we are to cap carbon at a level scientists say is sustainable. In 2001, 75 percent of Americans believed in anthropogenic global warming; as of 2012, that number is 44 percent. The fundamental problem is that too many Americans simply don't trust the various forms of scientific and elite authority through which information about the threat of climate change is transmitted.

And this is the crux of the problem. As unreliable as elite authority has been over the past decade, we can't fix what needs fixing without it.

And Hayes makes a point of turning to some noted validators who no one is going to claim are defenders of the status quo-- Julian Assange and Noam Chomsky. Chomsky said, in a 2011 video about climate change, that "We're marching over the cliff for institutional reasons that are pretty hard to dismantle... The anger and fear and hostility in the country about everything carries over to this. If you look at polls, everyone hates Congress, they hate the Democrats, they hate the Republicans even more, they hate Big Business; they hate banks and they distrust scientists. So why should we believe what these pointy-headed elitists are telling us? We don't trust anything else, we don't trust them." Listen:



Weeks ago the Romney campaign declared-- quite publicly-- that they won't be constrained by fact checkers nor, obviously, facts.

[Romney pollster Neil] Newhouse brushed off the fact check as par for the course in political campaigns.

“People are always going to get Pinocchios for this stuff,” Newhouse said. “We stand behind those ads and behind the facts in those ads.”

Newhouse suggested the problem was with the fact-checkers, not the facts themselves: “Fact-checkers come to this with their own sets of thoughts and beliefs and you know what? We’re not going let our campaign be dictated by fact-checkers.”

So the etch-a-sketch campaign from hell continues and the extreme makeover chugs along. So yesterday, for example, Romney told the Des Moines Register editorial board that "There’s no legislation with regards to abortion that I’m familiar with that would become part of my agenda.” And how blatant of a lie is that? In the past, Romney has made it clear that he’d be "delighted" to sign a bill banning abortion and called Roe v. Wade "one of the darkest moments in Supreme Court history," and has pledged to appoint Supreme Court justices who will overturn it. Last year he very unambiguously told National Review Online, in an OpED entitled My Pro-Life Pledge that "I support the reversal of Roe V. Wade because it is bad law and bad medicine” and on his own website quotes him saying "the 39th anniversary of one of the darkest moments in Supreme Court history, when the court in Roe v. Wade claimed authority over the fundamental question regarding the rights of the unborn. The result is millions of lives since that day have been tragically silenced. Since that day, the pro-life movement has been working tirelessly in an effort to change hearts and minds and protect the weakest and most vulnerable among us. Today, we recommit ourselves to reversing that decision, for in the quiet of conscience, people of both political parties know that more than a million abortions a year cannot be squared with the good heart of America." So which is it? Depends what day it is and which audience he's speaking to... of course.

Does Mitt Romney Really Exist?

 
-by Noah
 
There used to be a game show on TV called To Tell The Truth. On it a panel of celebrities, writers, and columnists would fire questions at three contestants, trying to determine which one of the three was really who he or she said they were. In the end, after some bit of minor drama, the real one would stand up. To Tell The Truth offered more truth than nearly all of what passes these days for news programming, but that was then and this is now.    

So, on Sunday morning’s Meet The Press, there they were: Mittens Romney and the ever-fawning, obsequious David Gregory bouncing his spongy-soft questions off of the candidate who is nothing more than a mannequin, ready and willing to be dressed up in not only whatever clothes he thinks might get him elected, but, even more dangerously, willing to be whatever the greedy puppet master bankers, industrialistas, and oil barons behind the remaining façade of our democracy want him to be. History is littered with the tragedies perpetrated by such men.
 
Romney’s in a bit of a tough place. Housing prices are going up and, even if he doesn’t give President Obama credit, he’s had to admit, to Laura Ingraham no less, that the economy is improving. Is he being left with nothing but a “me too” strategy in order to win?
 
Now, I'm wondering if Romney's oily slick major flip-flop on Obamacare on Sunday’s Meet The Press will even be his biggest flip between now and Election Day. Will he announce in one of the debates that he is and has always been Pro-Choice and for Marriage Equality? That he regrets hacking off that gay kids' hair back in Preppie School? That he wants to expand Medicare? Is this a new Rove-Tested election strategy? "I like Obamacare. It's just the right height"? How far will he go? Will Romney, one by one, adopt all of President Obama's positions and then put out an ad that says "Just like Obama, only WHITE"? Of course, Romney can never really be just like his rival. Say what you want about President Obama, at least there’s a there there, but, if Romney is one thing, he is white. That's at the core of the subliminal Republican message anyway. We all know that that's what's at the bottom of the mindless Repug hate for The President, or, as they incessantly call him, Mr. Other. Hell, the Republicans could even take their old 1964 Barry Goldwater bumper sticker "In Your Heart, You Know He's Right" and just put a line through the last word and put WHITE. Forward, Into The Past!
 
At this point, though, it’s hard to imagine anyone, regardless of their political beliefs, thinking that Mittens has any kind of grounding, foundation, center, or whatever you want to call it. In an ideal world, the American public would not be so incredibly dumbed down. Left, right, and center would all see that Mitt Romney, as a fully formed and integrated human being simply doesn’t exist. He’s a spineless, mindless jellyfish, randomly adrift in our sea, but ready and willing to sting us all. 

Romney Loses Alabama Working Women To... Rick Santorum!

Pundits on TV Tuesday night seemed disconcerted that Santorum won among working women in Alabama. Unless you want to be disconcerted that any working women vote in a Republican primary-- virtually no African Americans do-- why bother wondering about this? I mean, by "working women," we're not talking about Carly Fiorina, Meg Whitman or anyone from David Vitter's little black book. So if Republican women are voting their pocketbooks... clearly Mitt Romney with his Swiss bank account and Cayman Islands tax shelters and agenda for laying off as many people as possible isn't all that palatable. And "moderate" on women's issues? That's not how he was marketing himself in Alabama and Mississippi last week.


Romney's utter lack of authenticity went beyond his off-putting (to say the least) awkwardness with human beings. He doesn't just come across as an alien because of a fake southern accent or because of his attempts talk about how much he loves eatin' "cheesy grits." He comes across as someone with no moral compass when he flip-flops so deviously and so frequently on virtually everything, including, of course, women's health.

To compete with radical right extremists like Santorum and Gingrich and to try to please people like this (the non-Wall Street heart of the Republican Party base, as opposed to the ones with a full set of teeth in their faces), Romney has to contort himself into positions that normal Americans (so not the ones at that link) just cannot abide. And that includes women, even Republican working women in Alabama! He has even been on record in favor of eliminating all Title X family planning (which also pays for cancer screenings, etc), not just that funding which goes to Planned Parenthood. Women may have noticed that he came out in favor of the concerted Republican Party effort to get rid of Title X when it almost shut down the government, something women are particularly opposed to seeing happen. Tuesday night Rachel Maddow looked not just at Romney's general messaging dilemma, but specifically at his Planned Parenthood dilemma. The whole video is good but she gets to the point at the 4 minute mark:



He believes in Roe v Wade, he told voters over and over and over. He even donated his own personal money to Planned Parenthood and attended at least one of their fundraisers himself. Now he's trying to out-extreme people in his own party who have made lifelong careers out of bigotry, hatred and insanity. He comes across as crass and insincere and, as always... alien. "Astonishingly dishonest!" is how Maddow termed it.

Willard vs Mitt-- The Story Of 2 Men Trapped In One Body

This week sure started off badly for Mitt Romney-- not as badly as today started for the British Embassy in Tehran... but badly. Aside from the two ads-- the one up top and the one below-- released by Democrats about his character, or lack of character, Republicans started attacking him as well. It's as though the Union Leader endorsement of Gingrich this weekend opened the floodgates-- at least for anti-Romney Republicans desperate enough to wound the Republican who will eventually they'll be supporting (even if with reluctance and distaste) against Obama. Yesterday Gingrich was in air in South Carolina rubbing it in: “I don’t claim to be the perfect candidate, I just claim to be a lot more conservative than Mitt Romney and a lot more electable than anybody else." Could anyone who thinks Romney is unfit because of his character and flip flops possibly get behind... Newt Gingrich? Huntsman was even meaner to his co-religionist. "Anyone who is in the hip pocket of Wall Street because of all the donations they are picking up, like Mr. Romney, is in these days not going to be the change agent who is going to fix the too-big-to-fail banking system," he told an audience in New Hampshire.

The Erick Erickson diary at Red State just further inflamed the rightists among the GOP activist base who already distrust, or even hate, Romney: Why Mitt Romney Will Be A terrible Nominee. He ran this video:



Erickson: "[M]y interpretation of this hit is pretty straight forward. The DNC is gambling that Romney will be the nominee, but they also know there is a lot of angst with the GOP. By hitting Romney now they can potentially drag out the pain of the Republican Primary before doing what every Democrat and Beltway Pundit in America thinks-- settling for Romney, a guy they will have already defined as a flip-flopper."

And, as Greg Sargent pointed out at the Washington Post Democrats are pounding Romney on his "multiple choice Mitt" deportation flip flops.

As I suspected, Mitt Romney’s denunciation of Newt Gingrich’s sensible and humane suggestion that we shouldn’t deport long-time illegal residents of the United States is quickly emerging as a flashpoint in the campaign.

The Obama campaign quickly convened a conference call to hammer Mitt Romney over the issue, and linked it to other Romney positions that that the campaign hopes will alienate Latino voters. It’s a sign that the Obama campaign is aggressively moving to gain a head start in energizing Latinos, whose engagement in next year’s election remains uncertain.

“He is the most right wing presidential candidate on this issue in recent presidential history,” Obama spokesman Ben LaBolt said on the conference call. “He attacked Speaker Gingrich for saying we should have a humane immigration policy. He’s now opposed to comprehensive immigration reform. He’s opposed to the DREAM act. He wants to roll back the investments we made in Pell Grants that have [given] hundreds of thousands of Hispanic children the opportunity for a higher education. He wants to roll back the Affordable Care Act and their health care benefits.”

...“Gov. Romney is somebody who once claimed to support comprehensive immigration reform,” LaBolt said. “But now he’s a candidate that’s absolutely demagogued the issue of immigration in a politically craven way because he believes that it serves his political interests.”

Between this and yesterday’s false Romney ad attacking Obama on the economy-- and the massive Dem pushback to it-- it’s hard to avoid a sense that we’re approaching something like full general election engagement between the two campaigns, even though the GOP primary voting hasn’t even started.

So who's the polar opposite of Mitt Romney? Obama? We wish! Go further back in the history of the universal human experience and you'll come up with... Jesus, the not-Romney, a much better not-Romney than Newt or Perry or the Hermanator-- an even better not-Romney than Bachmann. Rev. Howard Bess asks-- and answers-- a question all Christians, all Americans, should be asking themselves: would Jesus have joined the OccupyWallStreet Movement? You bet! It's worth hitting that link directly above and reading the whole thing, but I'll give away the ending:

Christians should thank the current Occupy Wall Street protesters for their message and their activism. They are doing our justice work for us. The current crop of national bank leaders are being shown to be just as corrupt as the Temple bankers were in Jesus’s day.

If Jesus were present among us today, he would be moving from Portland, to Los Angeles, to Kansas City, to Dallas, up to Chicago and on to Wall Street in New York City. He would join the protest in every city. He would be demanding an overhaul of our financial and banking system. He would be standing with the poor and their allies-- and against the rich and their protectors.

When Jesus pursued the corruption of his own day, the representatives of the religious and political status quo killed him. And Jesus said to his followers “take up your cross and follow me.”

Romney is still the darling of the 1% of course. He was born into that and understands and fully embraces their perspective. Creepy multi-billionaire, Blackstone CEO Stephen Schwarzman, for example, fresh off comparing raising taxes on the rich to the Nazis invading Poland, is raising big bucks for Romney. Romney's campaign is already just plain sleazy-- something that doesn't bother money-obsessed greed hogs and vampires like Schwarzman. Watch this: "The leading Republican candidate is failing the trust test."




UPDATE: Empty Suit

Washington Post columnist Richard Cohen got to the heart of what Romney is all about this morning:

Mitt Romney runs for president with the eye of a venture capitalist. He sees the profit in certain positions, discards those that are no longer profitable and moves on. He was pro-choice when it did him some good, instituted a health insurance plan that he now denounces and once supported amnesty for some illegal immigrants. Richard III offered his kingdom for a horse. Romney offers his principles for some votes in Iowa.

Amnesty for undocumented immigrants has become a GOP pariah and a matter of some passion among Iowa Republican caucus-goers-- about 0.05 percent of the national electorate. Reasonable men-- even unreasonable ones -- have been hurt by the issue. John McCain spent much of the 2008 campaign backing away from an amnesty plan he had supported, and it is conceivable that he chose Sarah Palin for his ticket just so people would talk about something else. No other explanation comes to mind.

...As a venture capitalist, Romney created jobs and he destroyed them. It was all the same to him. Only profit mattered-- the end, not the means. But a shrinking middle class is going to exacerbate ethnic and racial tensions, and America is no exception to the ugly verities of human nature. Gingrich acknowledged this, saying that America would never give 11 million people the boot. Romney, provided the chance to agree, just looked the other way, his eye as always on the bottom line. In the short term, there’s no profit in moderation.

What's A Little Flip... A Little Flop Between Friends And Freaks?

Elation is breaking out all over Willardland. Not only did his man Rove manage to destroy Cain's viability with the sex maniac/rapist leak, but he managed to make it look like it came from Niggerhead. And on top of that, 30 of Romney's most important "people" paid no taxes at all and can afford to contribute even more money to undermine American democracy and push forward a Romney presidency. Plus the media "missed" the whole Mitt'n'Tagg Ponzi scheme scandal. His glitter even managed to rub off on DWT, quoted this week in, of all the unlikely places, the Salt Lake Tribune-- as we exposed another story for the mainstream media to ignore: "-> The DownWithTyranny blog digs up the old advertisement where Romney endorses Rocky Anderson." Disappointingly, they made no mention of the fabulous art. Damn Mormons... I'll fix them tonight at 9.

There was one little unpleasantry for the Willardites yesterday though-- the Washington Post harping on that matter of him having no core values again. That just drives them crazy. Maybe they're afraid it's starting to catch on. One of my neighbors accused me of "doing a Mitt Romney" yesterday when I changed my mind about painting my street address on my recycling garbage receptacle.

Mitt Romney was firm and direct with the abortion rights advocates sitting in his office nine years ago, assuring the group that if elected Massachusetts governor, he would protect the state’s abortion laws.

Then, as the meeting drew to a close, the businessman offered an intriguing suggestion-- that he would rise to national prominence in the Republican Party as a victor in a liberal state and could use his influence to soften the GOP’s hard-line opposition to abortion.

He would be a “good voice in the party” for their cause, and his moderation on the issue would be “widely written about,” he said, according to detailed notes taken by an officer of the group, NARAL Pro-Choice Massachusetts.

“You need someone like me in Washington,” several participants recalled Romney saying that day in September 2002, an apparent reference to his future ambitions.

Romney made similar assurances to activists for gay rights and the environment, according to people familiar with the discussions, both as a candidate for governor and then in the early days of his term.

The encounters with liberal advocates offer some revealing insights into the ever-evolving ideology of Romney, who as a presidential candidate now espouses the hard-line opposition to abortion that he seemed to disparage less than a decade ago.

Some details of his interactions with liberal activists were first reported in the Los Angeles Times in 2007, when Romney was introducing himself on the national stage.

This time, Romney, focusing more on his economic expertise than his gubernatorial record, is widely viewed as the GOP’s front-runner. His past positions remain fodder for critics as polls show that he has yet to win over many conservative primary voters-- and as rivals in both parties try to brand him a flip-flopper.

Now, as they watch Romney’s ascent from his old stomping grounds in Boston, many of the liberals he encountered wonder whether his transformation has been sincere or a matter of sheer politics. Not only did he espouse more liberal views at the time, but Romney presented himself as a change agent who could soften the GOP’s rough ideological edges.

Melissa Kogut, the NARAL group’s executive director in 2002, recalled Wednesday that as she and other participants in the meeting began to pack their belongings to leave after the 45-minute session, Romney became “emphatic that the Republican Party was not doing themselves a service by being so vehemently anti-choice.”

The abortion rights supporters came away from the meeting pleasantly surprised. Romney declined to label himself “pro-choice” but said he eschewed all labels, including “pro-life.” He told the group that he would “protect and preserve a woman’s right to choose under Massachusetts law” and that he thought any move to overturn the landmark Roe v. Wade decision would be a “serious mistake for our country.”

“We felt good about the interview. He seemed genuine,” said Nicole Roos, the NARAL official who took the notes and shared them with a reporter.

Romney aides declined to comment Wednesday. Aide Eric Fehrnstrom referred the Washington Post to quotes he provided the Los Angeles Times four years ago in which he said that Romney had been true to his words and that activists’ recollections were colored by their political agendas.

“People’s memories change with time, and change depending on which way the political winds are blowing,” Fehrnstrom said then.

In this year’s campaign, conservatives have tried to make some of Romney’s past ties to liberals a liability. They note that Gina McCarthy, a top Obama official responsible for greenhouse-gas-reduction policy, worked as a senior aide in the Romney administration. McCarthy, in her role at Obama’s Environmental Protection Agency, has angered many Republicans and business groups.

Counting On Romney

George Will is normally the most dependable of shills for the Republican Party establishment. And if Romney's consistent pattern of flip-flops and his utter contempt and disdain for principles is driving Will off the rails... well, it helps to explain why the inevitable GOP nominee against Obama can't get the backing of more than a quarter of Republican voters no matter what he-- or, more important, any of the other lunatics-- does. Last week's column, Mitt Romney, the pretzel candidate may have been more painful for Will to write than for Mitt to read. "A straddle," he scolded Romney, "is not a political philosophy; it is what you do when you do not have one."

Republicans may have found their Michael Dukakis, a technocratic Massachusetts governor who takes his bearings from “data” (although there is precious little to support Romney’s idea that in-state college tuition for children of illegal immigrants is a powerful magnet for such immigrants) and who believes elections should be about (in Dukakis’s words) “competence,” not “ideology.” But what would President Romney competently do when not pondering ethanol subsidies that he forthrightly says should stop sometime before “forever”? Has conservatism come so far, surmounting so many obstacles, to settle, at a moment of economic crisis, for this?

Well, if history is any clue to the future, take a look at the video up top of Romney endorsing Salt Lake City Mayor Rocky Anderson for a second term. Republicans might be forced to at least understand if Romney were endorsing ultra-conservative Blue Dog Jim Matheson. He's a fellow Mormon and he's actually been more consistently behind basic conservative principles than Romney has. But Rocky is not Jim Matheson. He's not "liberal for Utah," he's LIBERAL. When Romney and Rocky worked together, Rocky was one of the most progressive mayors in America. According to Wikipedia "As Mayor, Anderson rose to nationwide prominence as a champion of several national and international causes, including climate protection, immigration reform, restorative criminal justice, GLBT rights, and an end to the "war on drugs." Before and after the invasion by the U.S. of Iraq in 2003, Anderson was a leading opponent of the invasion and occupation of Iraq and related human rights abuses. Anderson was the only mayor of a major U.S. city who advocated for the impeachment of President George W. Bush, which he did in many venues throughout the United States."

Now watch that fulsome Romney endorsement again.

This year Rocky left the Democratic Party, but not to join Romney in the GOP. He sent the dreadful DCCC a letter telling them to take him off their mailing list.

Anderson said in an interview that he thinks people are fed up with the Democratic and Republican parties, Congress and the Obama administration to the point of being ready to do something about it.

"I think the answer is a new political party that actually will advocate for and promote the interests of the public rather than the narrow interests of the wealthy who bought and paid for not only Congress but the White House," he said.

...Anderson wrote that he wants no part of the Democratic Party until it "shows some spine and draws a line in the sand-- that an end to the tax breaks for the wealthy needs to be part of any debt/budget bill." ... "The Constitution has been eviscerated while Democrats have stood by with nary a whimper," he wrote. "It is a gutless, unprincipled party, bought and paid for by the same interests that buy and pay for the Republican Party."

That sounds like he's attacking Romney's base. But I do wonder what Republicans like George Will will think if they ever look into the on-going political alliance between Mitt Romney and Rocky Anderson. Or will they just chalk it up to anything expected Romney flip-flop?

All You Need To Know About Multiple Choice Mitt... 101 And 102

With Republican primary voters fleeing from Rick Perry's candidacy in droves-- not because of Niggerhead, of course, but because he granted equality for Texas Hispanic high school graduates wanting to go to college-- Mitt Romney now seems unstoppable in terms of his part's nomination. And he's looking more and more like he could beat Obama in a general election match-up. So the response from one of the big Tea Party groups-- this one another Republican front group financed by the Koch brothers called The Campaign to Defeat Barack Obama-- is to go on the attack... against Romney. I found this in my inbox this morning:

The Campaign to Defeat Barack Obama is announcing today the launch of a campaign to prevent Mitt Romney from becoming the Republican nominee for president.

The campaign will include "Stop Mitt Romney" TV and radio ad campaigns in early primary states, as well as direct mail programs, online advertising, and more.

...Working together we can ensure the GOP nominee for president is a constitutional conservative who can call out the failures of Barack Obama and his administration's embrace of quasi-socialistic policies.

Let's start by educating Republican primary voters on Mitt Romney's real record. Please share this video with all of your friends. We will also need your support to fund our radio and TV ad campaigns in early primary & caucus states such as Iowa, New Hampshire, South Carolina, Arizona and Nevada.

The video above is their first production. Everyone should watch it. Really is Mitt Romney 101. Mitt Romney 102, on the other hand, was covered very well this week by Michael Keegan, president of People for the American Way in an OpEd he did for HuffPo, Mitt Romney, the Quiet Extremist.

Today's Republican presidential candidates, even the supposed moderates, live in fear of crossing a small base that has developed an alternate view of reality and a dangerously skewed notion of liberty. Chief among these is Mitt Romney, who started his career as an East Coast moderate but now knows that extremists are the only thing that can keep him from the GOP nomination. The former moderate is now, paradoxically, the most beholden to the extremist fringe.

Romney is still trying to have it both ways-- to retain what little is left of his "moderate" persona while cheerfully appeasing the most extreme elements of the corporate and religious Right. He is banking on being able to get through the primary with both of his personas intact. Unfortunately for him, it's not working.

In fact, Romney's eagerness to appease has placed him solidly in the far-right-- and increasingly unpopular--Tea Party camp of the GOP.

Romney wears his pro-corporate politics with the pride of a Koch brother. He told an audience in Iowa recently that "corporations are people"-- a bold statement, even for a multi-millionaire who made his fortune partly on the profits from outsourcing American jobs. And he hasn't backed down from his claim-- in fact, he keeps repeating it.

Romney may think that corporations are people, but he seems to think that they deserve more care and concern from the government than working, tax-paying, family-feeding citizens. His economic plan calls for the vast deregulation of financial markets, whose lack of constraints in the Bush era led to the catastrophic economic collapse from which we're still digging our way out. In contrast with his policies as governor of Massachusetts, where he helped close a budget gap by eliminating $110 million in corporate tax loopholes, Romney has now signed a pledge rejecting all efforts to raise revenues by making the wealthiest pay their fair share in income tax or closing loopholes that help companies ship jobs overseas. Instead, he has called for reducing corporate income tax, which is already so low and riddled with loopholes that some mammoth companies didn't pay any last year. When a debate moderator asked the GOP candidates if they would accept a budget compromise that included $10 in spending cuts for every $1 in revenue increases, Romney joined all the others in saying he would reject it.

It's perhaps not unexpected that Romney has joined the Tea Party herd on fiscal policy-- after all, he's a wealthy man himself and stands to lose a little if Bush's tax breaks for the wealthy and other hand-outs to the most fortunate are rescinded. But he has also, in more of a stretch, wholeheartedly embraced the social extremism of the Religious Right.

Romney's still distrusted by many on the Religious Right-- he was for abortion rights before he was against them, once promised to establish "full equality for American gay and lesbian citizens" and distributed pink fliers at a gay pride parade, and, of course is a Mormon. But that hasn't kept him from kowtowing to the Religious Right leaders who still hold enormous sway in the Republican party.

In the most recent illustration yet of Romney's quiet acceptance of the Radical Right, he is scheduled to speak at next week's far-right Values Voter Summit, a Washington get-together sponsored by designated hate groups the American Family Association and the Family Research Council. At the event, Romney will take the stage immediately after AFA spokesman Bryan Fischer, a man whose record of outspoken bigotry is so shocking he would be an anathema to any reasonable political movement. Fischer wants to deport American Muslims, says gays are responsible for the Holocaust and claims Native Americans are "morally disqualified" from controlling land. He also claims that non-Christian religions don't have First Amendment rights - among the faiths he has singled out as exceptions to the free exercise clause is Romney's own Mormonism. I have called on Romney to distance himself from Fischer's bigotry before handing him the microphone on Saturday... but don't hold your breath.

Participants at the Values Voter Summit rarely check their less savory values at the door. At last year's event, which Romney also attended, FRC president Tony Perkins managed to simultaneously insult both gay troops and several allied nations by insisting that nations that allow gay people to serve openly in the military "participate in parades, they don't fight wars to keep the nation and the world free." Neither Romney nor any of the other GOP luminaries present spoke up in response.

At the Values Voter Summit, as in the GOP debates, Mitt Romney will doubtless attempt to slide under the radar, never openly condoning extremism, but never contradicting it either. As he emerges as the GOP frontrunner, it needs to be asked: is Mitt Romney more moderate than his fellow candidates, or is he just better at strategically keeping his extremism quiet?

How Many Mitt Romneys Can Dance On The Head Of A Pin?

A few days ago Rick Perry was so addled on pain killers during the Republican debate that he actually let slimy little shit Mitt Romney turn the flip flop tables on him. Mitt Romney! The varmint hunter who has publicly switched his positions-- dependent on audiences-- on topics from abortion, Fannie Mae, the auto industry bailout, the struggle for equality for the LGBT community, Social Security and health care reform to immigration and climate change. I'm sure I'm leaving out some big ones. And all Perry could come back with the next day was: "Americans don't need more slick promises. We need a principled leader who will stand on his conservative values." You're going to have to do better than that, girl! Perhaps Democrats, who would rather Obama go up against a befuddled and extremist fringe secessionist like Perry than a slick and unprincipled used car salesman like Willard, can give him a hand: