I cannot be reasonable about Willard ‘Mitt’ Romney. I do not understand why my fellow Massholes voted for him in the first place, and I can’t understand how his performance as governor didn’t disqualify him for any future public office. Every time Willard pops up in public, it’s bad for my blood pressure.
But just when I thought I’d reached Peak Romney Outrage, Wonkette linked to the following “essay contest”:
Free Willard
And when you get to the website (with its kitschy ‘improvement’, aka half-arsed plagiarism, of Obama’s ‘Yes We Can’ logo)… you are told that you need to make at least a $50 “donation” to enter the contest.
So, let me get this straight: Rather than pay a market research firm to pick his next campaign’s buzzwords, Willard wants his FreeStrongMurka “supporters” to pay *him* for the privilege of writing 250-word sound bites across the blank slate of Willard’s personality?
Paul
He’ll probably move up to Wolfeboro soon in prep for 2012, and you’ll be free of him.
Cat Lady
I didn’t vote for him like a lot of other people I know, who ended up voting for the Green candidate. Shannon O’Brien (the Dem candidate) was a Beacon Hill hack who was Finneran’s hand picked successor. Finneran, as we know now, was a conservative pretending to be a progressive, and a lying perjuring one at that.
Everyone knew Mitt wouldn’t get anything done with an overwhelming majority of Dems, and he had to play a liberal to get elected, so pretty much a vote for Romney was a vote for gridlock. Which it was.
Did we see what a pandering smarmy creep he was? I have to admit it even surprised me, who assumes every Republican is a smarmy lying creep.
MikeJ
Next, Romney will tell supporters they’ve won a lottery. All they need to do to get the money is send in the details of their bank accounts and unca Mitt will take care of everything.
Anton Sirius
Whenever I see/hear Romney speak I’m reminded of Interface, a rather awesome political potboiler co-written by Neal Stephenson in which a politician who has had a stroke becomes the ‘perfect’ presidential hopeful because the microchip in his brain used to correct the damage done by the stroke also allows him to ‘adapt’ his positions based on real-time polling data.
Manchurian Candidate? Pah! Romney’s the Stepford Candidate.
WereBear
What the…!
And I believe Romney, if not richer than God, at least fancies himself able to buy in God’s neighborhood…
DougJ
Very good title.
sophronia
My friend has an antipathy for Willard Mitt that crosses over into physical revulsion. And she lives in one of the most regressive of the Southern states, so she knows some revolting politicians.
I have to admit that I loved Tbogg’s takedowns of Willard’s many crazy-eyed sons. Almost made me sad that he lost the primary, until the Palin clan came along.
MikeJ
Romney does show a difference between Republicans and some Democrats. I say some because many Dems, at least until Obama came along, shared the belief with Republicans that the only purpose of organizing was to pry money out of supporters in alphabetical order.
Bret
Ha! The “Stay Informed!” dialog won’t even let me sign John up for updates. What a crappy website.
CapMidnight
But don’tcha jus’ wanna take down th’ Jesus, an’ hang th’ plastic Mitt Romney from your rear-view mirror?!
An Outhouse
I tried to watch the vid but my dog went ballistic and started barking very aggressively at the computer. I had to stop.
Ash
When in doubt, blame Worcester? I dunno, that’s what I did, especially when I had to dig my car out of the snow. It’s always Worcester’s fault.
AhabTRuler
Ahhhh, Wustuh. Lovely place, really.
gbear
Have the public school systems in MA tried this option yet? Could be a winner.
joe from Lowell
It’s very simple, Anne. The Democratic Party is so overwhelmingly dominant in this state that it is a foregone conclusion in every election that there will be a veto-proof majority in both house of the state legislature. The state legislature – really the House Speaker – basically runs things here. There is no chance of a governor being able to advance an affirmative agenda on his own.
The job of the governor, in the minds of many Massachusetts voters, is to serve as check on the Beacon Hill Democratic machine. People are willing to vote even for someone they don’t agree with, like Mittens, as long as he is seen as strong enough, and independent enough from the Beacon Hill Democrats, to effectively push back. There’s no chance such a governor would be able to govern as a Republican, because the legislature can smoosh anything remotely wingnutty.
That’s why all of those Republicans were elected between 1992 and 2006 – because the Democrats were either seen as too cozy with the state’s Democratic machine (Shannon O’Brien, Jim Roosevelt) or too weak (Scott Harshbarger) to serve as an effective speed bump.
Now, Deval Patrick came in, and he wasn’t a Beacon Hill Democrat, but rather, a DC Democrat from the Justice Department. He was seen as independent from the party machine, and he just had to prove he was tough enough – which he did by standing up to Kerry Healy’s nastygrams throughout the campaign.
Notorious P.A.T.
Great title, Anne. And a new tag is born: “I Can No Longer Rationally Discuss The Romney Campaign”.
joe from Lowell
Hey, when Barack Obama appoints Deval Patrick to his cabinet or to the Supreme Court, we’re going to get former Worcester mayor Tim Murray as governor, and then we’ll see a REAL urban policy.
woot mid-sized Massachusetts cities woot!
Brachiator
Hey, free market research is worth every penny paid for it.
Every night, I pray for a Palin/Romney ticket in 2012.
different church-lady
They voted for him because Shannon O’Brien ran a terrible campaign and came off as abrasive. End of story.
Joshua Norton
Being a former Bay Stater, I’ve seen Massachusetts wander off into the political woods a few times, going back to Volpe. But more often than not, New England Republicans have been more like today’s center-left Democrats.
Watching the California political scene unravel makes me long for the organized chaos of Beacon Hill.
Now if someone can just get Boston to tear down the butt-ugly “new” City Hall (I’ve heard rumors it may happen), I might even be able to enjoy the occasional stroll thru Government Center on my pilgrimages back to my roots.
asiangrrlMN
Wow. That takes some balls to tell your supporters to pay you for the privilege of coming up with your new slogan which you will use to…um, do whatever you do with it. He creeps me the fuck out.
Ken
joe from lowell’s remark at #17 prompts a thought. Obama’s already co-opted one Utah Republican who was a possible 2012 candidate. Why not do the same to Romney? The only trick would be finding a suitable post. Perhaps some oversight of the Chrysler and GM bankruptcies, given his father’s history at American Motors; or, if Chicago gets the Olympics, there might be some role there.
MikeJ
I do understand they got a lotta lotta lotta great desks and chairs.
Xenos
@joe from Lowell: Speaking from greater Springfield, we are too wiped out to manage a ‘Wot?’, much less a ‘Woot!’
At least we can pretend to be in a different state, which is easy since everybody east of the Quabbin forgot about us 40 years ago.
Deval has his summer mansion out in the Jerkshires, so we have that going for us.
joe from Lowell
Mitt Romney’s election was the fourth consecutive Republican victory in Massachusetts’ gubernatorial elections.
Xenos
@different church-lady: Massachusetts has not been kind or fair to female politicians. Don’t know why the electorate is so sexist, but it clearly is. O’Brien would have been a far better Governor than Mittens.
joe from Lowell
Xenos,
My father is from Springfield, and I spent plenty of time out there as a kid. It’s just heartbreaking what’s happened to that city – and to all of Western Mass, really. There just aren’t any jobs.
I saw Saving Private Ryan for the first time at a special showing in the Armory. We were surrounded by elderly WW2 vets. Amazing.
So…Central or Cathedral?
joe from Lowell
Hey, man, the Queen of Lowell is now a United States Representative.
Cat Lady
@joe from Lowell:
Your theory about putting a brake on Beacon Hill is exactly right. None of the Republicans elected have been wingnuts – they’ve all, including Romney, had to profess support for abortion rights and other mainstream Dem positions to have a chance at winning. O’Brien was a terrible candidate, yes, but everyone also knew she would be a figurehead for the corrupt Finneran crony crowd. I’m left of center and couldn’t bring myself to vote for her, knowing full well the Mittster would win, and be totally ineffective.
JGabriel
Anne Laurie @ Top:
Is that legal? Sounds like Mitt may have forgotten to check with his compliance lawyers.
.
Xenos
@joe from Lowell: I am up north in Happy Valley with the tweedies and the hippies. I am in Springfield at least weekly though, and I can’t figure out why it is not worth the trouble to turn the place around. Maybe once we have a real industrial policy we could see the return of a real economy out here.
If I had a lot of money I would be buying a lot of land. If we get a few feet of sea level rise the Ct. river valley would make a very logical place to relocate 5 to 10 million people. If that is the best hope for the region, that is pretty sad.
joe from Lowell
Cat lady vs. Church Lady?
I’ll, uh, I’ll be in my bunk.
Cat Lady
@joe from Lowell:
LOL. Now we need to get the commenter Church Lady to weigh in.
joe from Lowell
Oh, yeah.
Anton Sirius
@Ken:
Obama only co-opts the sane Republicans.
Plus, it’d have to be a position that Romney would think is important enough for him, but wouldn’t have any real power so Romney couldn’t actually screw anything up.
And, MachiavellianChicagoMachinePoliticalAnimal that he is, I honestly can’t see Obama having Biden bumped off just to have somewhere to stick Romney.
Trollhattan
Betty Cracker’s on it, with this sparkling entry:
http://www.rumproast.com/index.php/site/comments/fun_essay_contest/
MikeJ
While we’re discussing the dead returning to life politically, I would urge everyone to head over to US News’s’s’s’s Washington Whispers and tell them in their poll that yes, McCain should indeed run for president again.
http://www.usnews.com/blogs/washington-whispers
Anne Laurie
The really astonishing thing about Willard’s torturing-the-family-dog-in-front-of-his-traumatized-kids story? He thought it was a “heartwarming” story that illuminated his “regular guy” status. His political advisors were shitting themselves, and Mitt could not understand what the fuss was about. He also bragged — again, on the record — that he was willing to risk his “beloved” wife’s health by moving back to Massachusetts from Utah because “you don’t get to run for president as the governor of Utah.”
David Hunt
Terrible idea. Not only do I not want the bastard anywhere near any type of power, it would be a terrible idea to even offer it to him. He’d turn down the job offer, as publicly and insultingly as possible. Because Romney is all about pandering to potential voters and I can’t think of anything that would pander to the wingnut base better than that.
Obama knows this too, so he’s not going to offer a job to Romney even if he thought he’d do a good job there…because he’d never take it.
shelley matheis
And just go back to his concession speech during last year’s primary. Started off as the usual attempt at gracious yielding but quickly devolved into a nasty stew of bitterness and RW crazy talk.
Blue Raven
Then why did the state legislature race in my part of MA in the early 1980’s (southern Worcester County) have two women facing off for the seat instead of having it go to a man who could keep either of them in their place?
And I cannot imagine MA with a governor who’d be aware there’s a state beyond the boundaries of Framingham. Never saw it when I lived there. May Deval get a Federal slot post-haste.
Darkrose
@joe from Lowell:
Also in 1992, Weld was running again, IIRC–and against Long John Silber. I’d have voted for my cat before I’d vote for that asshole.
oh really
Um, apparently you haven’t been following the performances of most big time politicians in the mid- to late 20th and early 21st centuries. Failure is the new success.
Richard
To say nothing of the fact that a contest that requires a “donation” is simply an illegal lottery in almost every state!
prospero
Cute title. Don’t care about Wonkette or whomever. Misused “kitschy”.