Romney Throws in the Towel and other Afternoon Delights

Mitt Romney speaking at a businessmen's gathering in L.A. suggested that President Obama will be difficult to beat in 2012 because "he will pull out all the stops, although he's pulled out so many stops at this point that there may not be a whole lot more to pull out in terms of federal reserve, interest rates and stimulus and so forth." Romney went on to say that Obama was doing everything he could to get the economy back again and that , in his opinion the economy will come back. But Romney goes goofy from his realistic side, which got him in trouble last time around. This is the stuff Republicans, especially the super-rich ones, say about Obama that gets me going: "...the American people have established a perspective on the President which is going to be long lasting--that he has not understood the nature of America, in some respects, that the values I've described of love of liberty, of freedom, of opportunity, of small government--that those values he doesn't share."

This is a very rich hedge fund manager and Wall Street investment banker who can talk about a man who actually worked as a community organizer, instead of working in a Wall Street Law Firm, and who worked on healthcare reform because of his experience with his dying mother, and who acts like he really loves being out in small towns and with real working Americans and he says this man doesn't understand America. Maybe, Mitt, you and your rich friends should hang out in the towns with the 99ers and the people forced to squat in their homes. Maybe, Mitt, you should have been a missionary here at home instead of in Paris. It's true that the Obamas have never owned 15 homes like you, although they have done nicely. This stuff just drives me batshit. This is just a slicker way of repeating Newt's "Kenyan anti-colonial" mentality. But Romney is right, Obama will be hard to beat.

Meanwhile our Judge in the DADT case just ordered that Major Witt, the lesbian expelled from the Air Force, must be returned to service because her dismissal is not in the country's interest. This language is reminsicent of the Iowa Supreme Court ruling on same-sex marriage, which stated that the state had no overwhelming interest in the banning same-sex marriage. It must be infectious.

The Right's most important civil rights case is now being heard at the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights, which is almost exclusively peopled by Republicans. They are hearing the 2008 Voter Intimidation Case involving two New Black Panthers. A Bush DOJ holdover, who has coordinated his testimony with House Republicans, is testifying how Eric Holder has ended race neutral voting rights violations--reversed the Bush DOJ--and failed to properly investigate Black intimidation of white voters. Since this guy's first public pronouncements, the Right has been rabid to use this case to bring Obama down--I meant that literally. The Right really believes that there was massive voter fraud in the 2008 election that brought Obama victory. They claim this was orchestrated by ACORN and the New Black Panthers and this line has been constantly been fed by Glenn Beck and others. Will Branch in The Backlash details all the teabagger arguments why Barack Obama's election was not legimate and this case figures large in it. Of course, even the Bush DOJ felt this case was hooey.

Harry Reid has pulled out ahead by five in Nevada in a new poll and his son only trails by the same. I bet Harry wins but Rory loses. The Republican gubernatorial nominee isn't nuts.