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I almost, almost, almost feel sorry for Mitt Romney, as empty in the spine department as any jellyfish politician in the last 100 years.
Here he is, winning the New Hampshire primary Tuesday. He then gives a truly horrible speech (see below), filled with empty platitudes and mind-numbing rhetorical flourishes (I particularly love his eagerness to repeal “Obamacare” which he championed as governor of Massachusetts).
In the tradition of the Republican party, it’s his turn to be the nominee. He lost once, he sucked it up, raised a ton of money, and now he’s poised to win.
But nobody likes him. There is zero passion for his candidacy for anyone outside his base. He has had numerous occasions to rise to the level of statesman and take intelligent, measured positions, and he keeps failing to do that.
And now, with every other challenger tripping up in their attempt to beat him, he gets Ron Paul. An old libertarian doctor who no one in the establishment media takes seriously (note to CNN and others: Pay attention to him! He’s the only viable threat to Romney now! Seriously, the way they treat Paul as an afterthought is disgusting and disrespectful. I’m no huge fan of Ron Paul, but geez, he’s earned the right to be taken seriously).
Ron Paul, an unafraid bulldog who has money, a fired up-base of young people who love him, and a message that is 180 degrees opposite of Mitt Romney, may be the last man standing in Romney’s way.
Ron Paul is about to tear into the Mittster over the next few weeks. He’s going to expose every fraudulent bone in Mitt’s body, and it’s going to be glorious to watch.
I am no Ron Paul fan; I think he’s nuts on 11 different levels. But he makes enough sense on foreign policy issues to make Mitt squirm for a while. And sadly, Ron Paul is the last, best hope for the Anyone but Mitt wing of the Republican Party.
Paul may be crazy, but he’s authentic, and when Mitt Romney looks in the mirror every night, he sees a man who’s not.
Couple other New Hampshire primary thoughts:
–Amazing how the name “George W. Bush” has not come up once in this campaign. It’s like the GOP presidential candidates have just forgotten 2000-08.
– Jon Huntsman needed to come in 2nd tonight to have a real shot. Oh well.
– Only during election season do I endure Chris Matthews. What a smug, arrogant jerk he is on MSNBC.
**So these are the kinds of things I think about sometimes. I was in a restaurant in NYC the other day, and in the bathroom there was one of those automatic turn-on/turn-off faucets in which to wash your hands. And as always, the automatic water didn’t stay on nearly long enough, so I had soapy hands until the water came back on five seconds after it shut off.
And I got to wondering: At these manufacturing plants where they make these automatic faucets, who decides how long they stay on for? Because you know it’s never the same. The ones at the airport give you water for like, three seconds, and other times you get a good 10-12 seconds (like at a museum or somewhere).
So I want to know if there’s like a committee at these companies that figures out exactly what the optimal “water time” is for users. Do they sit around going “OK, we’re going to give them seven seconds,” and someone else retorts “No no no, that’s too much, if we do six seconds we can save a ton of water!” and it goes back and forth like that for hours until they come up with a mutually agreed-upon length of time.
Because you know it’s not random. Somebody, somewhere, is deciding how much water you get at the faucet.
And dammit, I wanna know who.
I can’t be the only person who ever wondered this, can I?
**Boys and girls, don’t try this at home. An insane man decides to surf on the top of his car, while driving:
