Sadly, No!

I’m sequestered in a tiny corner of the Exhibit Hall with my laptop cranking its coolants trying to patch into a live feed of Ann Coulter’s speech before the Yiffies for Freedom. The Anntichrist got bounced from the official schedule this year, but the YAF snuck her through in a laundry hamper so that no one would be denied the pleasure of hearing her call someone a rude name. (My prediction: since she used “raghead” in ’06 and busted out “faggot” in ’07, she’ll go ahead and call Barack Obama a nigger this year.) I can’t get in — it’s 500 people max, and I just now found out about it, so the hall is already filled with pimply Young Republicans — but Town Hall is thoughtfully providing me with a worm’s eye view of the disaster.

More on that later, though: for now, here’s an uninstructive encounter from awhile back:

He’s sitting next to me in the lobby of the Omni Shoreham, typing furiously into a Sony laptop. He has a striped shirt with a popped collar and an ‘80s haircut he cribbed from Shadoe Stevens. For a long time, he says nothing; even when some steak-and-brandy fatass rumbles through the joint and disconnects the cable to his computer, he just eyefucks him and mutters to himself. But after a while, we strike up a conversation, borne of the boredom of waiting. His name is Tony, and he’s a stockbroker.

Why is Tony so mad?

“That fuck-stick Romney dropped out. That just leaves us with McCain.”

You don’t have any affinity for the Senator, then?

“He’s a weak sister. He won’t have the guts to invade Iran.”

Iran must be ripe for invasion. It seems like we’ve been waiting forever. But what of Iraq?

“Iraq is over. Iraq is somebody else’s problem now.”

The problem of the Iraqis, I would guess.

“Whatever. It doesn’t matter. Iran is the issue. Iran has the Islamic bomb.”

A bomb that follows a religious ideology is a terrifying concept indeed; but what about Pakistan?

“Pakistan is our ally. But even if they weren’t, Iran is the destination.”

Not according to my travel agent. But what makes you say that?

“Iran is where the money is.”

What money?

“Look, Iraq has been good to us. Everybody knows that. Construction, defense, telecoms, it’s a whole new market.”

It’s a real success story.

“You’re telling me. But compared to Iran, it’s nothing.”

A trying five years for nothing. But what do you mean?

“It’s a bigger country. It’s a richer country. It’s a country with a market class and a rich and developed economy. It wasn’t living under Stalinism like Iraq. Once we get our hands on those markets, we’re finally going to see a payoff for all the effort we’ve put into the wars.”

We?

“Well, America.”

America put in the effort, but you’ll get the payoff.

“Not if that fucking McCain gets in.”

Well, we can only hope.

“That’s the problem with the conservative movement these days. Too much hope.”

Oh bejeezusmothermaryandjoseph. Jonah’s reader letters are getting stupider by the day:

The Democratic Party has been identity-driven for most of its existence. Ask a Democrat about his and he will tell you who it stands for—women, minorities, the poor—in old times, it was “the common man” or “the working man” or “the little guy.” Ask a Republican and he will usually tell you what the party stands for.

This doesn’t mean that Democrats don’t have ideas or Republicans don’t have constituencies, but notice this—when Democrats speak ideologically they have to link it to identities. So, tax increases or expansion of government programs are justified because such things help women, minorities, and the poor. Conversely, Republicans feel the need to justify any constituency service in ideological terms—eg. we’re not fighting for these tax breaks for investors to help the investors themselves, but because the cumulative effect of lower taxes will stimulate the economy to the benefit of all.

Not anything I can really add to this. Giving tax cuts tp the super-wealthy is now the highest form of altruism, because… ?????????????????? … Damned if I know!

Kill me.

Cameos:

• Wayne LaPierre’s speech about gun rights is remarkably well-received. The part the audience likes best is a short film in which people who have killed criminals talk about how guns saved their lives; in filmed re-creations of the crime scenes, all the bad guys are blacks. LaPierre’s narration: “Menacing figures coming towards you in the shadows…you are defenseless and completely alone.” It’s 1992 all over again!

• Rachel Marsden, all-around conservative gadfly, is giving out free t-shirts to those who can answer questions about Ronald Reagan. The t-shirts, which Rachel had made herself, read, “C.I.A. CENTER FOR AQUATIC EXCELLENCE – WATERBOARDING TEAM”. The crowd just came apart when they saw this — biggest laugh of the convention so far. Torture is hilarious!

• One of Rachel’s questions: who was the worst Democratic president in history? “FDR”, a large number of people call out. (That man!) “Carter,” say a lot fewer than I would have expected. “Woodrow Wilson,” say the majority -– the Doughy Pantload must be pleased that his audience can properly identify a liberal fascist when called upon to do so. The ‘correct’ answer? “All of them!” Cue sad trumpet.

• The Hugo Chavez Democrats: Silencing the Right panel is by far the most deluded I’ve sat in on so far, as well-paid right-wing blowhards with bestselling books and radio shows with huge audiences stand in front of true believers who paid upward of $500 to listen to them speak and argue that liberals are not allowing them to be heard. It’s especially odd since, before she introduces each panelist, she talks about how their websites get millions of hits, or their show has the biggest audience in its area, or their book was a New York Times best-seller. The suffering! When will conservatives be able to catch a fucking break?

• Number of times Hugo Chavez is actually mentioned by the panelists: 0.

• Andrew Breitbart talks about the terrible pain of being a conservative in La-La Land. Liberals, he says, are “the angriest people the world has ever known,” while conservatives in Hollywood must exist in the closet like gays. He compares Charlton Heston to Rock Hudson, not in gayness, but in having to conceal his true nature lest he miss out on the choice roles. A number of hot young Hollywood actors (who, curiously, he does not bother to name) have sat in front of him and cried about how much they care for our boys in uniform; but they dare not reveal their secret trips to visit wounded soldiers, because “they don’t want anyone to know they support the troops.” We all know how much the public hates it when people support the troops.

• WorldNetDaily.com leading maniac Joseph Farah’s mustache is off the fucking chain. He looks like a doughier G. Gordon Liddy wearing a bad wig.

• Before giving his usual bullshit boilerplate about how our universities are overrun by life-hating, “freedom-killing” Reds who do their level best to keep conservatives off campus – a curious claim because there are hundreds of college conservatives in the room as he says those words – David Horowitz sits up front restlessly. He pouts, drums his fingers, gazes around the room, shuffles through his notes, and refuses to pay the slightest bit of attention to the other speakers. For him, life is just a long, barely tolerable bunch of waiting periods before he is allowed to speak again.

• I had a fascinating conversation with one of the CafePress.com reps, who thinks that their tracking of candidates’ t-shirt sales and other merchandise may prove to be predictive of the election. Also, it was fun to talk to him because like your humble lobbyist for the American Milk Solids Council, he has to basically pretend to be a crazy right-winger and hide his own light under a bushel in order to make the sale. We leave each other with a manly tear of regret in the corners of our eyes. Only the French Foreign Legion understands us.

• Ladies and gentlemen, your Blogger of the Year: Mr. Play-Doh and Bacon.

Above: Ace of Spades, CPAC Blogger of the Year

Atrios digs up a passage from one of Kevin Drum’s lesser moments in which Kevin wagged his finger at war opponents who suggested that the case against Saddam might be all smoke and mirrors. For my money, though, this is the most depressing part of Kevin’s post:

Unlike, say, during the Tonkin Gulf incident, this administration is under intense scrutiny. There’s enormous distrust of what they say, and they know it. They won’t get the free pass that LBJ did.

What’s more, they know that everything they say is easily verifiable once the war starts. No one ever pressed LBJ for proof of what happened in the Tonkin Gulf, but there will be dozens of countries and dozens more NGOs who will be looking very closely at what we find in Iraq after ground forces move in. It will hardly be possible to fake vast numbers of mobile weapons labs, swimming pools of anthrax, ballistic missiles, and the like, and if those things aren’t found in substantial and convincing quantities George Bush will be lucky to escape impeachment, let alone win reelection.

To review history:

• No weapons of mass destruction were found.

• Bush got a free pass.

• He was not impeached.

• He was reelected.

In a sane country, this would not have happened. Presidents who lead their country into wars based on false pretenses should be held in total contempt by their citizens. In America, that simply didn’t happen until it was too late to vote Bush out of office. Why? What is wrong with us?

George W. Bush, when you get right down to it, is a fucker. That’s why I don’t like him. He’s a fucker who does fucked-up things. He’s a privileged little shit who doesn’t give a damp hell for the opinions of the people he was elected to govern. He buys into the toxic economic theories of unreconstructed capitalism, despite never having had to earn an honest living in his life, and he supports a worldview that cuts out anyone who hasn’t had his good fortune — the worldview of a murderous plutocracy stained with swaths of luck and cruelty where first is first and second is nobody. He’s stupid in the truest sense of the word: willfully ignorant and determined to surround himself with people who keep him that way, not only resistant to different ideas but actively hostile towards them. He is neurologically incapable of thinking ahead and he consigns the consequences of his actions to the status of dreams. And he forced his country into a pointless, unnecessary, unconscionably wasteful war that will poison every aspect of American life for generations.

Worst of all, though, the son of a bitch made me get up at two o’clock in the morning to go to his fucking speech at CPAC.

Now, I’m no stranger to sleeplessness. Ever since I started dating my girlfriend, Insomnia, I’ve been quite used to the experience of going hours, and even days, without shuteye. But people started lining up just after midnight to hear that limp-dicked fathead give his final CPAC speech as Asshole-In-Chief. It would have been easy enough to just throw back a final martini and hit the sheets, leave him to history and Captain Ed. Fuck him and his stupid self-flattering speechifying. But no: you don’t go to Rome and not see the Colosseum. You don’t come this far and then puss out. Besides, who knows what that bastard would do without me keeping an eye on him? They hired me to keep him honest, and while I’ll admit to not having done much of a job so far, being busy with my comic book collection and my heavy metal records, there’s no better time than right now to pick up the slack. I (information redacted to protect the aesthetic sensitivities of certain readers) and head back down to the catacombs of the Regency Ballroom, where human decency goes to die.

It’s a long, long wait. If I hadn’t (information redacted to preserve the well-known and much-beloved Sadly, No! house style), I’d probably be bored off of my spinal column. I’m surrounded by some of the most uptight, entitled white people in the world, and every time I try to strike up a conversation with someone, I have to lead off with my job as a lobbyist for the American Milk Solids Council, and then no one wants to talk to me anymore. Stuck-up Beltway shits! No concern for the working dairy conglomerate and its desire to ship low-cost, institutional-grade cheese powders to Southeast Asia without a lot of meddlesome bureaucratic interference. That’s compassionate conservatism for you. Also, by now, after approximately zero hours of sleep in the last fifty hours, my hair (which I have had neither the time nor the opportunity to have cut) is starting to look pretty raggedy. I decide that if anyone asks, I will claim that I am following the example of baseball teams in the playoffs: I will not cut my hair until the election, and if America does not have the good sense to elect a Republican, I will spend the subsequent four years growing white-guy dreadlocks.

Even at the late hour, security is sickening. Perhaps not surprisingly for a man whose support rating is hovering around 25%, the President is absolutely petrified at the prospect of buying the Big Ticket, even now when he’s surrounded by legions of the only people in the free world who think he’s still doing a bang-up job. But then again, Bush has always been a chickenshit: back in 2000, when Al Gore was running for the presidency, he acted as Grand Marshal of the Chicago St. Patrick’s Day parade. He was nervous – and why not? The streets were lined with drunks, criminals, psychos and disenfranchised Republicans. But he walked it all the way, gladhanding with ruffians like myself who were, after all, going to put him in the White House. When Bush acted as Grand Marshal of the same parade a few years later, having somehow achieved the office of the Presidency through nefarious means, he spent the whole route waving irritably from the back of an armored SUV.

Finally, at around 7:20 AM – after five hours of being patted down by earpieced hulks, surfing YouPorn, and trying to get a card game up with some of the sad sacks from the ACLU who have been forced to work this gig – Mr. President Man finally took the stage. In person, he looks a little haggard and tired: no legacy to speak of, no friends overseas (whither Pooty-Poot? a nation turns its starving eyes to you), and another fucking boatload of corpses to go and frown at later today. He won’t last as long as his old man once he’s out of office: with no one to stand in the way of, with no one to infuriate, with no press hanging over his shoulder for him to mutter “fuck off” at, he’ll wither away and disappear, just another burnout boomer with prostate cancer and no hobbies. The chant begins before he even hits the walkway: “FOUR MORE YEARS! FOUR MORE YEARS! FOUR MORE YEARS!” I look around for a copy of the Constitution, but no one seems to have brought one.

He starts out a little bleary – I can dig it, man – but on an oddly touching human moment, talking about his daughter’s upcoming marriage. But just in case we might get the mistaken impression that he has a functioning human brain that works in a normal fashion, he goes on to say that “Dick Cheney is the greatest vice-president in the history of the United States”. Then again, maybe he’s got some chip implanted in his incisor that makes him say that whenever Cheney’s name gets mentioned, like when someone asked Frank Sinatra about Raymond Shaw. His administration “didn’t seek the approval of editorialists” before deciding what to do – take that, Matt Taibbi! – and “we darned sure didn’t seen permission from groups like Code Pink and MoveOn before taking action”. Take that, mothers of dead soldiers! But what’s with this ‘darned’ shit? Even Cheney said ‘damn’. Act like he’s afraid to say the motherfuckin’ F-word.

“Since I took office,” says the former cocaine addict, “the overall use of drugs by young people has dropped off by 24%.” Hey, he brought it up, not me. This gets a lot more applause than his next bit, where he spiels about fiscal discipline and everyone wonders who the fuck he thinks he’s talking to. Next, though, is the hottest little button of all, when he says that “human life is precious, and deserves to be protected”, as long as we aren’t talking about the life of towelheads or criminals or people who are dumb enough to live in a place that flood occasionally. The war spiel comes next, because even this dumb bastard knows that no one’s going to offer up any catcalls about the jackass war. “Afghanistan will never again be a safe haven for terrorists who wish to do us harm,” he claims, using a strange interpretation of “never again” which apparently means “at some point in the future”, since the last I heard the heirs to the Taliban were pretty much running roughshod over the joint. He offers up a little bit that’s calculated to make my blood pressure shoot up to Throbsville: he intends to sign an executive order that will force the President to explain wasteful and unaccountable spending. How fortunate that this doesn’t apply to him, and the vast financial sinkhole that Iraq has become. No fear, though: “When the history of this period is written,” says Mr. I Can Has Legacy?, “it will show that we were right.”

As of today, says the worst president in American history, “25 million Iraqis are free”. A million more are beyond freedom, knowing what the dead know. At the final moment, he does what we all knew he would do: he gives John McCain the most tepid, most damaging endorsement imaginable, saying only that he hopes the crowd will support the Republican nominee for President. I’m tired and sick and burned, and I need to eat and I need to get away from all the choking self-satisfaction in the room. The whole place rises as one, roaring and chanting, calling for a repeal to the Constitution so this luckless bastard, so desperate to get the hell out of a job he never wanted to begin with and only took out of spite; and Bush stands there, holding a dripping knife – the only tool he’s ever used – just another misbegotten Mark Antony, waiting for the cheers of the crowd to die…

Above: No whey!

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I have learned so much at CPAC already, I feel as if I am a new person. Like my namesake in Full Metal Jacket, I am born again hard. I know now that there is no excuse, ever, for not cutting taxes. I know that the easiest way to depress a Republican is to take his Mitt away, but I also know that a lot of liberals are soiling themselves with glee at this allegedly fatal divisiveness in the Big Tent, just as if every last stinking one of these banditos isn’t going to line up and press (R) come Election Day.

I know that Mark Noonan is very short and wears loud mist-green shirts. I know that eleven bucks is too much for a martini, even if it is a very good martini. I know that there is nothing funny about taking drugs, and that I must start listening to Green Day so I can stop listening to Green Day. I know that Kathryn Jean Lopez is inconsolable, and now that I think of it, I know that “Kathryn Jean Lopez is Inconsolable” is a pretty good title for a moody short story. (Or perhaps even a Moody short story.)

I know that Mitt Romney doesn’t like to lose, which is pretty funny considering that he’s a big fat loser. I know that David Horowitz is all over me like a cheap suit, and that a cheap suit is all over him like David Horowitz. I know that you can’t go swimming in a baseball pool. I know that according to WorldNet Daily head nincompoop in charge Joseph Farah, one of the biggest problems facing America today is witches. (No, really.) I have learned that 14-year-old pundit Kyle Williams is probably going to be savagely beaten many times when he reaches the age of majority.

I have learned that if you want to write a serious and important book, it should begin with the word ‘Yo’. (Let us no one forget that the original title of Jean-Paul Sartre’s masterwork was Yo! Being and Nothingness, Or What?.) I have learned that the words “American Milk Solids Council” are a magic key into the mind of man: every time I am speaking to someone and I utter those words, a little light goes out in their eyes and I can ask them anything I want. And I have learned that Iranians are super-scary and can shoot atomic bombs out of their eyeballs.

But mostly I have learned that a picture is worth a thousand words (or, adjusted against current exchange rates, 690 Euro-words or 1,008 Canadian words or “wordies”.) Let’s take a look, shall we?

Dick Cheney: When I lower my hand, one of you will die.

Read the rest of this entry »

Remember, Newsweek is liberal! Writing about a new friendship between President Clinton and Richard Mellon Scaife, Newsweek lets this Christopher Ruddy quote go by unchallenged:

He said they [Scaife and Ruddy] never suggested Clinton was involved in [Vince] Foster’s death

Such as when Scaife said:

Richard Mellon Scaife, the right-wing billionaire who bankrolls the anti-Clinton efforts, will say in 1995, “The death of Vincent Foster: I think it’s the Rosetta Stone to the whole Clinton administration.”

Here’s our pal Ruddy not suggesting other things in a 1996 radio interview:
Read the rest of this entry »

The John McCain speech viewed from a TV monitor near Blogger’s Row. I fought like hell to get in here: no soldier in a war ever suffered more to gain less. (Hey, if conservatives can compare no-smoking laws to the Holocaust, then I own this.) His introduction (by an Oklahoma congressman whose name I didn’t catch) keeps focusing on the theme of bravery, which, ever since those golden years of oh so many hours ago before Mitt Romney dropped out, has been the primary qualification for being president. So often does he drop the c-word that you’d think terrorists where constantly breaking into the Oval Office and challenging the leader of the free world to a rassling match.

Of course, McCain has a c-word of his own: “conservative”. John’s not the brightest bulb on the Christmas tree, but he’s surely smart enough to realize that he’s among a group who wants a candidate slightly to the right of Father Coughlin. He establishes his conservative creds right away by talking about how the most important freedom of all is the freedom to be born without some vaccum-cleaner-wielding liberal getting all up in your fetusitude. He goes on to say the word “conservative” about eleventy seven billion more times, but honestly, he goes over like a lead balloon encased in a lead safe that has been thrown out of a lead airplane while someone plays Led Zepplein III. There are exactly three times when he gets anything even remotely resembling raucous applause: (1) when he discusses lowering taxes; (2) when he disses Barack Obama; and (3) when he mentions Mitt Romney. He also apologizes constantly, saying that he knows he hasn’t always been perfect and he counts on the cons in attendance to set him straight. He might as well puke on their shoes. To this crowd, any admission of error is an admission of weakness, and every mistake is made by someone else. Blogger’s Row, the saddest concatenation of social misfits this side of Tobacco Road, is in mourning, like the cool kid on the block said he didn’t want to be their best friend even though they let him use their Hot Wheel track. I decide to cheer them up.

“Hi, Pam? Leonard Pierce, American Milk Solids Council.” I cannot possibly describe how much pleasure it brings me to say these words. “Can I get a picture?”

“Oh, sure!” squeaks the doyenne of Long Island anti-jihadism. “Do I look pretty?”

I assure her that she does, which is no more of a lie than my claim that I am a lobbyist for a group that seeks the easing of restrictions on the export of baby formula. In fact, Pam notices that my flash didn’t go off and eagerly suggests that I take another. (Earlier, she was chomping on a sucker – no, not Dan Riehl – and I considered a candid “LONG-TOOTHED LONG LISLAND LOLITA” shot, but I am and always shall be a gentleman.) “So,” she asks, blissfully unaware that she is in the presence of a man who is at least one-half terrorist, “What do you think of McCain?”

I utter a few platitudes, and then begin a sentence with “Democrats are…”

“Stupid!”, says Pam. Hilarity ensues. See, everywhere I go I am an agent of good times and fun.

But the overall consensus is that McCain is a dud. It’s too soon, he’s too dull, the Democrats are too competitive, the campaign season is too long. Even a ticket with The Great Mormon Hope is likely to be doomed unless his name is at the top. No one on Blogger’s Row seems to think that, in the words of Ice Cube, today was a good day. I move along to a lecture featuring the Virgin Ben Shapiro about the next generation of Republican leadership, and despite an overall attempt at forthrightness and penetrating insight (not to mix a metaphor that would get Ben all hot and bothered), everyone better hope that the next generation gets it right, because this one fucked around and let John McCain end up at the top of the ticket.

For now, I’m off to the hotel bar again, to pollute myself the American Way and wait for my mashed-potato-circuit dinner. Now that I know my tolerance for painkillers, we can move on to testing my tolerance for eating while conservatives lecture me. Tomorrow should be interesting, as the outgoing president – who openly despises John McCain – will be making his appearance at CPAC. Will we see a ringing endorsement of the sort McCain gave bush after swallowing a load of his demon seed back in 2000? Or will Bush, who put the “petty” in “petit bourgeois”, twist the knife one more time? See you tomorrow morning, gutter scum…

We’d probably comment on this piece from November 2007. Michael Gerson writes many positive things about one Pat Robertson:

The Kingmaker’s New Subject
Pat Robertson’s support for Giuliani surprised many. It should not have. […]

The kingmaker has been Pat Robertson, founder of the Christian Broadcasting Network. Robertson has a history of odd and disturbing public statements on issues from the causes of hurricanes to the assassination of foreign leaders. But as the son of a senator, he has generally taken a pragmatic approach to politics, with the goal of being a player rather than a prophet. After his own bid for the White House, Robertson founded the Christian Coalition to give the religious-right grass-roots clout within the Republican Party. […]

Robertson’s public endorsement of Giuliani last week surprised many. It should not have. His predisposition has always been to influence Republican politics from the inside. He has doubtlessly received assurances from Giuliani on the appointment of conservative judges and is calculating he can maintain influence within a Giuliani administration.

Gerson delivers the punchline but a few paragraphs later:

Leaders such as Robertson mainly exercise broad influence in the imagination of liberals.

Yet clearly not in the mind of conservative pundits — or in the Republican primaries where, according to Gerson, Robertson managed to get assurances from a then-leading contender that he would make judicial appointments that Robertson would approve of. It’s all in your heads, liberals! [Edited a bit for clarity.]

I think David Horowitz is ratting me out. The little zero stood reading my e-mails over my shoulder (quite a feat, given that I’ve got a foot and a half on him) for about ten minutes before I noticed him, and in the hour or so since, I’ve been getting bad looks from my fellow conventioneers. I’ve retreated to the hotel bar — frustratingly empty: as my alkie dad might have told me if he’d ever dried out, never trust a group that doesn’t drink before 5PM — and I can hear the roar of the crazed from the lobby as Ron Paul comes blustering in for his 3PM speech. Pamela Atlas Geller Oshry Wojohowicz Smith Kline Welcome’s Long Island wheeze echoes from nearby, but I can’t put a face to the name, and thank the Christ her people murdered that I can’t. (Judging from the cocktail conversation, there’s an equal number of Israel-defenders and Jew-haters in attendance today.) Celebrity sightings: Ben Stein, Mary Katherine Ham, and a number of flyover senators. I order a martini, as dry as Ace of Spades’ sense of humor isn’t, and the bar PA starts playing “Stand By Your Man”. Which reminds me of:

Noon. Mitt Romney’s funeral pyre. Desk-drawer Ann Coulter manqué Laura Ingraham is introducing him, and her speech is a fiery enfilade against the RINOs who seem to think that the faceless Mormon nonentity isn’t the second coming of Ronald Reagan, who I am beginning to think of as the fourth member of the Holy Trinity. She refers to the fact that “the three remaining Republican candidates for president” are all in attendance; that must cheese off Ron Paul something fierce, and a cheesed-off Ron Paul is a joy forever. Laura keeps saying “Should we calm down?” Yes, Laura, you should. You in particular should calm way the fuck down. Of course, she’s giving a more inspiring speech than he ever has. When she finally brings him on, he says of the conservative wing of the G.O.P. that they are “beautiful and talented”, and if Mitt’s not fucking her, I’ll eat a quarter.

The crowd is absolutely explosive for Mitt; if the rumors are true that he’s about to chicken-walk out of the race, there’s gonna be a lot of tears. (Although, of course, there were the callow little shits of the YAF I ran across in the Exhibit Hall who were already swapping out their Romney buttons and stickers.) The true believers saw in him what they saw in Reagan, a mildly pleasant cipher of a man upon whom they could impress their most extreme beliefs: a man doing bad things and allowing you to feel good about them. His speech, delivered in that clipped I-can-only-read-five-words-at-a-time way he has, is hitting on all the cheer buttons: security, lower taxes, the “attack on faith” (not the Muslim faith, though, surely), and those goddamn Sixties which ruined everything forever. He gets out an extremely weird cheap shot: we have to block the “increasingly voracious appetite of the unions”. Given the abysmal state of labor these days, this tangent reminds me of kicking an invalid in the teeth because they ask for seconds at gruel time, but it gets a standing ovation from the faithful. Another big applause line for the punters comes when Romney invokes the hideous shadow of a nonexistent threat: “Simply put, we must not allow America to be held hostage by the likes of Hugo Chavez.” Somewhere in a metallic cave below the streets of Caracas, Chaves shakes his armored fist and screams: “¡Maldígale, Romney! ¡Usted me ha frustrado otra vez!”

Now comes doomsday: “Because I love this country, I entered this race, and because I love this country, I am leaving it.” Unfortunately, he means the race, not the country; I was hoping he was going to move to Paris and take a run for mayor against that dirty Red queer they have now. So it’s all over for the Mittster, and maybe it’s just the drugs wearing off, but I feel strangely disappointed and annoyed. Sure, he got out some cheap shots at those forces of “radical Islam”, and yeah, I got to be part of electoral history for the first time since I helped run fellow Mormon Ev Mecham out of office, but there was no bad craziness to this, no frisson of madness, and aside from a bewildering attempt to claim credit for Barack Obama’s success, no unexpected moment when a cuckoo popped out of someone’s forehead. For this, I missed Mark Steyn and Crazy Pammy?

You owe me, Romney; you owe me a debt of lunacy. Crawl on back to Massachusetts. Maybe Ron Paul can pick up your tab…