Agent 'Mongo' Romney

Politico headlines it, "Rick Santorum roars back," and Bill Kristol is characteristically agog with vast strategic visions for neocon Rick and the latter's adviser John Brabender tells "NBC’s John Harwood that Missouri proved Romney can be beaten in a one-on-one fight" and the Washington Post declares that "Santorum proved three things:"

1) That Romney can lose
2) That he can beat Romney head-to-head under the right set of circumstances
3) That this race isn’t yet over

Horse manure. Rick Santorum merely failed to heed Gene Wilder's advice to Cleavon Little: "No, don't do that, don't do that, if you shoot him, you'll just make him mad."

Or think of Mitt Romney as the FBI's organized crime unit, or as some defense agency with a fleet of drone predators. Both detect emerging threats and rising stars -- second-tier hooligans out to make a name for themselves, to become a "Somebody"; they see their bad selves as tomorrow's newest and hippest crime boss, or as Osama's replacement; they commit the fatal error of making a splash, of being noticed. Radar sceeens light up with that singular blip and Agent Mongo moves in. Kaboom. The carpet bombing commences. Another decapitation.

Or, if you prefer, think of Romney himself as the crime boss. Because last night he spoke the scariest, Corleonelike words in the English language; he congratulated the religious right's caporegime, and "wish[ed] him the very best."

Comments

[Peter G]

Romney! You wouldn't like him when he's mad. Come to think of it you wouldn't like him at any other time either. And that is his problem isn't it?

[mdblanche]

Romney is running a scorched earth campaign against his own party. He can give you all sorts of reasons not to vote for the other guy, but he never tells you why you should vote for him. And so primary voters stay home feeling no one is worth voting for while Santorum wins with the not Romney or Gingrich vote. Mitt wins the nomination by destroying any alternatives and will lose in November due to giving nobody any reason to like him and all the people he rolled over reason to hate him.

[AnneJ]

The takeaway that I get from watching these primary contests is that I see a republican party breaking apart. Even the "Anybody-but-Romney group is broken up into sub-groups of respective Newt Gingrich, Rick Santorum, and Ron Paul factions all of them very different from each other. How much credit or blame for this break-up I don't know, because as soon as voters decide against him, what they are left with doesn't look any more appealing.

[majii]

Romney seems to be fairly confidant that he is the heir apparent. I say this based on his failure to never miss an opportunity to attack PBO in every speech while ignoring the fact that his opponents are out to take him down, down, down. Evidently, he doesn't realize that he has to eliminate them before he faces PBO. It seems as if he thinks that attacking the president is the key to winning the party's nomination. Seems like a misguided strategy to me.