Romney still running right

Mitt Romney will tell you whatever he thinks you want to hear. Even for a Republican, he's a well-practiced liar. The Boston Globe notices:

In at least one case, however, Romney seemed to venture too far, saying that liberals want to "grow government and raise taxes to put more people on Medicaid." Dependency, he said, "is death to initiative, to risk-taking, and opportunity."
The Massachusetts health reform law, which Romney took credit for helping to create and signed into law in 2006, depends on expanding the Medicaid program to extend health insurance to more people.

Paul Begala notices:

Who is he kidding? Again and again he spat out the word "liberal." I was waiting for him to attack the pro-choice, pro-gay-rights, pro-universal health care liberal governor of Massachusetts — Mitt Romney.

Massachusetts was just a stepping stone. The truth about Mitt is that you can never tell by watching what Mitt believes in - other than himself. He's running again in 2012, though, and he has forsaken the mushy middle just like McCain.

It's not that I think Mitt has no core convictions. I just think he feels no obligation to show them if that would hinder closing the deal.

3% solution

Getting an initiative petition onto the Massachusetts ballot takes 3% of the voters. So, we'll get to consider again repeal of the state income tax, which we voters defeated in 2002.

It's ironic that the same people who yell at the Legislature for ignoring the expressed will of the people, say, on the surtax, are so keen to do it themselves on taxation as a whole.

Last, anti-tax advocates who want to live in a state like Alabama go visit and see if they really like the consequences in poverty, subsistence economics, low education levels, pollution, and lack of public institutions before they bring it home to successful, wealthy, well-educated Massachusetts.

What these "libertarians" are really trying to do is solve a problem for about 3% of the population, the people already at the top of the heap, who think they should be paying less than their share because they can.

Regular guyism

Can you imagine your words transcribed into a headline in a major metropolitan newspaper?

"I heard Rudy was here today," Mitt Romney told Stephanie Burrows, 18, who works behind the counter, as she recalled later. As he left with his ice cream, he said with a grin, "But everyone knows I'm the regular."

Read the rest of it. It's all baloney.

News flash: None of the people running for President are regular guys. The Democrats aren't (and if you think Dennis Kucinich is, you're not a regular guy, either), and the Republicans sure aren't.

But the media insists on force-feeding us this sort of obvious bullshit about favored candidates or candidates with favored PR people or candidates whose regular-guyism happens to fit into the conventional wisdom.

Mitt Romney is about as close to being a regular guy as Paris Hilton. Yet for some reason the media keeps looking for the regular guy in the elite, wealthy Republicans just when they need it. Duhbya is one breathtaking example. Regular guys bear the consequences of their choices; he never has.

You may recall that the agreed media narrative killed Al Gore's much more legitimate image-making about his regular upbringing in 2000. The media selectively attack any attempt by a Democrat to show the common touch.

Still, it's all image-making, and the media get co-opted into it mostly by one side. Oh, I'm sure the Boston Globe will print some hagiographic look back at JFK again soon, but he's really the only Democrat who still gets that kind of treatment.