Hmmm - are my predictions on Romney already starting to show themselves even before results from Michigan are in? Apparently today he expressed frustration at the right wing base, indicating that the reason he's in such a dogfight in Michigan is because, unlike his opponents, he's not willing to say outrageous, absurd, reactionary things in order to attract extreme voters [like suggesting that the notion of separating church and state is emetic] - which is basically akin to calling the GOP base 'outrageous'. So, is this him losing his cool, running out of patience and letting slip something he's sure to regret? Or is this him doing what I predicted, separating himself from the uber right, possibly in preparation for an independent run? The key, as I said before, is that unlike his competition who win just by being on the national stage, for Romney anything short of the presidency amounts to a waste of his time - being constantly forced to appease the uber right makes winning the presidency less, not more likely - ergo, lose Michigan and the logic of things starts to become obvious.
Apparently David Brooks has a piece in the Times today about this reality - I'm out of free Times articles for this month so can't read it - but apparently he's urging Romney to confront the base and stop trying to court their favor - argue the case for moderation I guess - I have trouble seeing that as a winning strategy - but Brook's seems to be hunting with the same dog I am - the left wing base [and their media enablers of course] gave us Obama [whom Brooks originally cheered but has since soured on] - and now the right wing base looks set to give us Obama again - continuing dysfunction and deadlock will be the result - the interests of the majority middle are being abandoned in order to serve the minority interests of the extremes of both parties - what's worse, those minority interests represent no intrinsic value for the country as a whole: they're either too impractical or otherwise unsound to deserve implementation; or they're merely rhetorical props, existing only for the purposes of driving a partisan ideology towards some idealized end regardless of any countervailing objective truths. It's really no way to run a country, let alone an empire.
Maybe Brooks is thinking a third party presidential run is something the country needs in order to begin the process of reining in the outsized power of the grassroots of both parties - certainly, if Romney were to repudiate the GOP base, split off as a third party candidate and then win - well, gotta believe that'd send a shock wave of common sense down the spines of ideologues everywhere - would also give the president a lot of power, since the only way you're gonna get anything done is by marshalling a functioning plurality amongst moderates in both houses - and if deadlock remained, by electing an independent to the presidency the people would in effect be granting him 'war powers' like authority to supersede it, no? What are we to say if the system self corrects by becoming more autocratic? On the surface, one's inclined to think an independent executive would act to mitigate partisanship - it seems it would be much easier for moderates to meet in a middle and agree on something if neither party had to swallow the bitter pill of having to cross a well defined ideological line at the executive level.
