Mitt — A Hiccup Without Footprints

“Mr. Romney is not the leader of the party; he left no footprints in the sand.  There is no such thing as Romneyism, no movement of which he’s the standard-bearer.  Nor is he a Washington figure with followers.  Party leaders already view him as a kind of accident, the best of a bad 2008 lot, a hiccup.”

Peggy Noonan, The Drawn-Out Crisis:  It’s the Obama Way,” WSJ

This is the same woman who predicted a Romney win on November 5, writing in part:

“Romney’s crowds are building—28,000 in Morrisville, Pa., last night; 30,000 in West Chester, Ohio, Friday It isn’t only a triumph of advance planning: People came, they got through security and waited for hours in the cold. … In some new way he’s caught his stride. He looks happy and grateful. His closing speech has been positive, future-looking, sweetly patriotic. His closing ads are sharp—the one about what’s going on at the rallies is moving.

“All the vibrations are right. … Looking at the crowds on TV, hearing them chant ‘Three more days’ and ‘Two more days’—it feels like a lot of Republicans have gone from anti-Obama to pro-Romney.

“There is no denying the Republicans have the passion now, the enthusiasm. The Democrats do not. Independents are breaking for Romney.

“I suspect both Romney and Obama have a sense of what’s coming, and it’s part of why Romney looks so peaceful and Obama so roiled.”

And Noonan looks so idiotic.

And the Racism Continues…

I wrote yesterday about the racism in George Will’s WaPo column.  Peggy Noonan uses her last column in the WSJ before the election to bash the Prez — it’s called “How Far Obama Has Fallen” — and she get in her racist shot as well:

“It is one thing to think you’re Lebron.  It’s another thing to keep missing the basket and losing games and still think you’re Lebron.”

If you’re writing about the President, why not compare him to another political leader?  Why compare him to a black athlete in a sport dominated by blacks? 

A Race Ending in Racism

As we approach the finish line, the racism gets more overt.  In his latest Washington Post column, George Will begins by calling President Obama, “Energetic in body but indolent in mind.”

You know, black people sure can run and jump, but they’re lazy and not all that smart.

He and Peggy Noonan in her WSJ column have been pushing this garbage about the President being in over his head, not up to the job.  In their sick hatred of Obama, they’ve sunk to the pathetic and pathological level of Rush and Sean.

And if white people are such geniuses, how do they explain Bush 43?  Given his obsession with working out and his well-documented lack of intellectual curiosity, we might describe the previous president as “Energetic in body but indolent in mind.”

Mitt the Pawn

From “Don’t Blame Mitt for the GOP’s Problems,” Michael Tomasky, The Daily Beast:

Yes, Mitt Romney had a week I wouldn’t wish on … well, Mitt Romney. Yes, his campaign is incompetent, as Peggy Noonan wrote Friday. Yes, there is something really off about the guy personally. But as conservatives like Noonan start in on Romney vilification, I feel the need to stand up and reiterate: Romney’s problems aren’t all Romney’s fault. They’re not even half his fault. They’re chiefly the fault of a movement and political party that has gone off the deep end. Almost every idiotic thing Romney has done, after all, can be traced to the need he feels to placate groups of people who are way out there in their own ideological solar system, with no purchase at all on how normal Americans feel and think about things. This is much the harder question for Noonan and others to confront, and they really ought to ponder it.

Since he started running, Romney has had to cater to four factions in the GOP, each of which contributes in its way to the party’s self-destructiveness: the rich and their apologists, who think Barack Obama has made life in America well-nigh impossible for those earning $1 million a year; the Tea Party populists, the middle-aged and older white people who feel intense resentment against Obama and his America; the foreign-policy neocons, who invented this fable about Obama apologizing for America and so on; and the rabble-rousers—Rush Limbaugh, Michelle Malkin, etc., whose megaphones announce all these anxieties and others.

These four groups have each been holding guns to Romney’s temple. He’s a weak man, yes. But in a way—in only this one particular way—I feel a little sorry for him. These groups permit no room to maneuver whatsoever. None. Not an inch. So when something happens that is in their wheelhouse, the expectation immediately arises that Romney will utter every syllable precisely as they want to hear it.

Noonan Plays the Reagan Card, Beautifully

Peggy Noonan is considered one of the keepers of the Reagan flame, and that gives her great credibility with the GOP and conservatives.

Today, in the light of her harsh criticism of Mitt and his campaign, Fox News’ Chris Wallace questioned her conservative bona fides in an interview with Politico, telling them, “Some of the people you’ve mentioned, like Peggy Noonan, sometimes they’re New York City’s idea of conservatives.”

Asked to respond, Noonan emailed, “The column speaks for itself.  Can’t say more, on a conference call with the board of the Reagan Foundation.”

As Jon Stewart would say, “Boom!”

Peggy Noon Was Being Polite

Now she tells us how she really feels.  From “Romney Needs a New CEO,” Peggy Noonan, WJS:

But:  the Romney campaign has to get turned around.  This week I called it incompetent, but only because I was being polite.  I really meant “rolling calamity.”

It’s not going to get turned around, it’s not going to get a new CEO, it’s going to die a slow, painful, hideous death between now and November 6.  And the post-mortem won’t be pretty either.

Noonan to Mitt — You and Your Campaign Really Suck

From “Time for an Intervention,” Peggy Noonan, WSJ:

“It’s time to admit the Romney campaign is an incompetent one.  It’s not big, it’s not brave, it’s not thoughtfully tackling great issues.  It’s always been too small for the moment.  All the activists, party supporters and big donors should be pushing for change.  People want to focus on who at the top is least constructive and most responsible.  Fine, but Mitt Romney is no puppet:  He chooses who to listen to.  An intervention is in order.  ‘Mitt, this isn’t working.’

“Romney needs to get serious here.  Or, he can keep typing out his stray thought with Stuart Stevens, who’s sold himself as a kind of mad genius.  I get the mad part.

“If you’re gonna lose, lose honorably.  If you’re gonna win, do it with meaning.”  Italics in original.

Too late.  All the GOP’s horses and all the GOP’s men can’t put this Humpty Dumpty back together again.  He’s going to lose, but it won’t be honorably.

No Love for Mittens

Politico has a story* cataloging the slings and arrows conservatives like Charles Krauthammer, William Kristol, Rich Lowry, Peggy Noonan, and Rupert Murdoch have been flinging at the hapless Mittens.  It shows how loathed Mitt is by his own team.  He’s kind of the A-Rod of the GOP.  From the article:

“But in the past few weeks, the critiques have reached new levels of intensity, as columnists, commentators, operatives and donors fret that Romney is losing control of the 2012 debate amid a Democratic assault on his personal finances and stewardship of Bain Capital.

“Most of the criticism falls into one of several categories:  Romney’s not a reliable conservative.  He’s inarticulate about policy and light on vision.  He’s not tough enough for a presidential campaign.  The aides who surround Romney aren’t up to the job.”

I would add that all this was true when he ran last time, yet there was no serious Stop Mitt movement in the GOP.

I would also add that there may be years when Mitt paid no federal income taxes.  Whether we assume that from his silence or we find it out because he’s eventually pushed into disclosure, that is devastating.

* “Conservative elites club Mitt Romney,” Alexander Burns and Maggie Haberman

Crocodile Tears Over Our Lost “Freedom”

Peggy Noonan’s latest column — “Obama Has a Good Day (But liberty has a bad one)” — complains that “The ruling strikes me as very bad for the atmosphere of freedom in our country.”

You know, that wonderful freedom to choose not to have health insurance, crash your motorcycle into a truck, and stick your fellow Americans with hundreds of thousands of dollars in bills for your care.  I’m sure that’s what the Founding Fathers saw as the essence of freedom, a God-given right to be a burden and a free-loader.

The GOP’s betrayal of the individual mandate they loved for two decades is worthy of John Edwards.

If the individual mandate had become law under President Bush or a President McCain, we all know Noonan would have been cheer-leading in a column that read “The ruling strikes me as very good for the atmosphere of personal responsibility in our country.”