Ouch! Fine. You win Maureen. Who can compete with that, right? I mean she wins the best title for a month if not the campaign. This is how far Romney's snake oil sale of Moderate Mitt has fallen. Yet she didn't mean it this way. It's only after the Mourdock debacle that this seems so appropriate. Si I'm infusing her title with a meaning she didn't have when she wrote it.
We've heard a lot of talk that Romney has closed the gender gap or that maybe the person with the gender gap problem is the President.
There was an NBC poll out on Sunday that seemed to confirm this to the extent that it showed Romney with a 14 point lead among men and Obama only leading women by 8. Still, this was a legacy of the Denver debate and even during this period not all polls demonstrated this. Yesterday's poll by IBD/TIPP actually showed the President with his largest margin with women yet.
We're only beginning to see the impact of Monday's debate. However you want to look at it, the Romney bounce ended October 11, and since then the President has been coming back. The Romney momentum theory always put a curiously disproportionate impact on just that one debate. It's as if the way Romney was hammered for the previous 5 months was immaterial as was the fact that Obama-and Biden-actually came back from Denver to win the last 3 debates.
Now there's the Mourdock Moment. You have to remember that it was Akin more than anything that precipitated the fall of Republicans in the Senate. That was what started the demise of Scott Brown's campaign: most polls now show him trailing by 5 or 6 points. It was here where Elizabeth Warren began to achieve success by tying him into the larger Republican party. It was brilliant: whatever you think of Brown personally, a vote for him is a vote for Mitch McConnell for Majority Leader-the same McConnell who said the number one priority was not jobs, or in any way fixing the economy or helping the country but simply defeating President Obama so he can have a promotion.
How does Romney distance himself from this? His gambit so far has not been so "stellar." When you're Mitt Romney you know your answer to any question about what you plan to do is "both."
It's like that Saturday Night Live skit back in April: I'm Mitt Romney and I'm running on everything!
Ted Kennedy put it best back in 1994: I am prochoice, my opponent is multiple choice. Give him a few weeks and he may vote for me: after all these are things I believe in.
Mitt is telling us that, no, he didn't like what Mourdock said. But, hey, we can all disagree, and I still endorse him and he can still use my endorsement in the ads. Meanwhile, John McCain has rescinded his endorsement of Mourdock unless he apologizes. This piece by Dowd, though is just brutal. My Mitt fantasy?!!
Ok. The funny part is that her title is unintentional She didn't write it about the Mourdock mess, she wrote it after Monday's debate. It was worry that maybe Mitt will get away with his phoniness. Actually, this is kind of old news now. Since then we've seen an explosion of the myth of an ongoing Romney surge.
But there is a sense in which Romney has largely attempted to rape the electorates intellectual integrity. That he has sought to prey on ignorance where ever he can find it.
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/10/24/opinion/dowd-my-mitt-fantasy.html?src=me&ref=general
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