Frank Rich on the National Circus: Mr. ‘Inevitable’ Pummeled Again

[highplainsdem]

http://www.nymag.com/daily/intel/2012/02/frank-rich-mr-inevitable-pummeled-again.html

We are just where we have been. The Republican party does not have a candidate for president. The deck keeps being reshuffled, and different jokers keep popping up to the top. But the 75 percent of the party that does not want Mitt can't and won't coalesce over any of the alternatives. Nor will it warm up to the guy it keeps being told is the "inevitable" front-runner. The lack of GOP enthusiasm for its own field can be seen in its turnout — down again last night, as it was in Romney's Florida victory.

-snip-

Momentum hasn't worked for Romney or Gingrich, and probably won't work for Santorum, either. But the bigger story here is how devastating this loss was for Romney. Yes, these pseudo-primaries were "meaningless." Yes, Romney still has more money, more organization, and more delegates (of the few awarded thus far). But a Washington Post/ABC News poll released just before these contests found that by a margin of more than two to one, Americans say that the more they learn about Mitt, the less they like him, and last night added further proof. The standard interpretation of Mitt's triple defeat on cable news (regardless of network) is that "conservatives rejected Romney." But who exactly isn't rejecting Romney? He couldn't even fill up his headquarters when speaking last night in Denver. And then he gave a talk that reminded anyone who was watching how hollow and fake a candidate he is. He mixed stilted punch lines from his tired anti-Obama script with a bit of hilariously tone-deaf populist posturing — claiming that his father, a fabulously successful auto executive, began his career as some sort of nail-spitting blue-collar carpenter. Hard to know whether to laugh or to cry at these performances. Americans of all stripes seem to abhor Mitt the way nature abhors a vacuum.

But doesn't the GOP Establishment still like Mitt? And won't it keep propping him up?
They are certainly trying to. It was a revealing moment that on CNN last night — at the late hour of 11:20 ET — one of its "expert" talking heads, the former Bush administration flack Ari Fleischer, flatly reassured his credulous fellow panelists that his sources "on the ground" authoritatively told him that Romney would win Colorado. That was the desperate, out-of-touch voice of the GOP Establishment speaking — and again engaging both in denial and wishful thinking. Not long after Fleischer's pronouncement, Mitt lost to Santorum by 5 percent — despite a serious Romney campaign effort in the state and despite having won Colorado in a landslide over McCain four years ago. Fleischer's Dewey-Beats-Truman prediction was another example of the GOP Establishment being clueless about what's happening "on the ground" in its own party or in America. Similarly, another pillar of that Establishment, Peggy Noonan, dismissed Mitt last week as merely an inept stand-in for Jeb Bush — who isn't running — and yet still predicted, illogically, that Obama would lose in the fall. What you see with the GOP Establishment is a bunch of chickens that sense the sky is falling and are running around with their heads cut off.

-snip-

[Redstate Bluegirl]

1. Frank Rich is a very smart Man

Wouldn't you agree?

[BumRushDaShow]

2. "Ari Fleischer, flatly reassured"

This hack uses the Rove TheMath™ process to come up with Epic Fail after Epic Fail.

Of course he was also the same hack who recruited a fellow hack, Karen Handel, who was on a seek and destroy mission within SJK, resulting in another Epic Fail.

[Fumesucker]

3. Brokered RNC, Jeb Bush comes out like Godzilla strolling through Tokyo..

Enough Citizens United money to buy entire nations..

The Dubya administration never even fucking happened as far as the M$M goes, straight from Clinton to Obama with a deep dark memory hole in between.

[ewagner]

4. I can't see any other scenario...

Remember when Michael Moore questioned the current GOP field a month or so ago?

He asked why, with literally unlimited money supplies, wouldn't the GOP put up a credible candidate to appeal to the middle instead of the rabid 23-24% of the party's loonies. He hypothesized that maybe it was because Obama was good for business and they liked that much better than the tea-party alternatives,.

But what if that isn't true?

What other alternative is there?

that's the element that makes this scenario possible.

JMHO

[Fumesucker]

5. Jeb will be sold as the great white hope..

The smart Bush brother..

They need someone who hasn't been sullied by the primary hog calling contest..

The Dems who are high fiving each other right now should look ahead a bit, it might be tighter than it looks right now.

[ewagner]

6. A question that has been bothering me....

"Why did the Koch Brothers put tons of money on Herman Cain?"

Obvious answer: they wanted to slow down, or stop Romney and keep him from locking up the nomination. They never really did believe Cain had a serious shot at the nomination

Then, when Cain got out of the race, Cain endorsed Gingrich. Again, why?

Same reason as above....but they still don't think Gingrich can get the nomination and must certainly know he can't beat Obama.

So you have to assume there is a larger plan in the works....a plan that obviously doesn't include Romney.

We may be seeing a below-the-surface civil war going on in the Republican Party...the Kochs vs the Establishment..

what other reason is there for the clown-car approach to the primaries?