Round and round he goes, and where he stops everybody but he knows.Willard, Willard, it isn't going to get any better. Yet even after his thorough drubbing during Super Tuesday, Mitt Romney shows how the privileged handle denial.
Seemingly irrationally buoyed by winning the North Dakota caucuses, he stated, "The one thing that is clear is this campaign is going on." Even this morning, his staff confirmed to the Boston Globe that he was still in, citing his whole 30-minute meeting tomorrow with Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) in Washington, D.C. (He doesn't mention that all the Republicans still in the race, including Ron Paul, are on the agenda.)
His Dakota triumph earned him 26 delegates. His total through yesterday was 265. Mike Huckabee has 169. That pesky John McCain has 559, closing in on half of the 1191 needed for nomination.
Big states with lots of delegates? McCain. The South? Huckabee. Romney won his home states of Massachusetts and Utah, and then Alaska, Colorado, Minnesota, Montana and North Dakota. McCain zoomed past and Huckabee is closing in.
Of course, Romney's failure stems from his not being able to convince Republicans and independents that he is the true conservative in the race. McCain and Huckabee have also used that phrase. All three of them sound like a parody of Pee Wee Herman — I know you're a false conservative, but what am I?
Instead, we have pulled into the expected station and everyone else felt the arrival. Issues of class and privilege keep Romney spinning to the bottom. Who dares give the rich VC the hook? Even his advisers and family who see him wearing his dunce cap have not gotten him to quit.
Face it; the clown has spent more than $35 million of his $200 million plus fortune on this race. Moreover, many of those around him are toadies or at least draw a paycheck as long as this campaign staggers forward.
Someone loyal to his party would get out quickly and cleanly, letting McCain try to prove himself to the very right wing and just maybe cobble a truce among a fractious and disparate bunch. Yet from here, it appears Romney is loyal to, in no particular order, his family, his church and himself.
He's never been much of a Republican. He used the party first to launch his career in Massachusetts as distinguished from all those other wishy-washy slightly liberal Democrats. As a slightly liberal nominal Republican, he won an election. Since then, he has used his party affiliation as a shield and its escutcheon. See, see, he likes to say, I was a red governor in a blue state. What a good boy am I.
Romney has stayed too long at the fair. He can keep buying ride tickets and snacks, but he's a sad figure now, one who doesn't know it's time to go home.
Tags: massmarrier, Massachusetts, returns, Romney, Republicans, McCain, Huckabee, Super Tuesday
1 comment:
Great blog Mike... and soo true.
By the way, I hear he spent $87 million of his own cash by the time it was all said and done. I don't know if that's right for sure, but Super Tuesday isn't cheap when you're down and (in your own head) not out.
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