In the 2008 election my bedrock, must satisfy requirement was fulfilled; not John Edwards. In like fashion it seems low expectations have paid off, my one absolute necessity, that Mitt Romney NOT stroll to the nomination like a frat boy into the Student Body Presidency has also been fulfilled, or will be so if a Super Tuesday triumph can be denied him. Triumph or even Victory have proven to be terms as slippery to the Romney camp as is was to Bill Clinton. Iowa was a crowning, crushing Triumph! until it was a narrow defeat… a tie, really, if you look at the stats. New Hampshire was a solid win but the trumpets blew briefly. Somehow Romney’s resident gunslingers had talked around the fact that Primary wins where you are expected to win, had better be crushing or they are losses just as narrow losses where you are expected to lose also have a point-spread. Team Romney never thought they would have to engage in such PR gymnastics. As modest an achievement as it may prove to be, still it has been worth it to muss up the princeling’s hair while we may do so.

It is not quite time for fatalism. Even casual observers have had Romney’s inevitability driven into their psyches by the blathering jack-o-lanterns. Nearly all of Mitt’s street-level support seems to be based on this assumption masquerading as a truism; He can win! Electoral Determinism is the frontrunner’s friend though it seems to be no one else’s. On the theory, possibly mistaken, that no one can predict the future, I resolve to take the tiniest bit of electoral action, subsuming my judgement, my apprehension and my gag reflex beneath a mantle of desperate tactical calculation as cold as a bone chisel. I propose to vote for Newt Gingrich in the upcoming Georgia Primary.

I have spared not the rod on Gingrich; frankly declaring him the ONE man lower than Romney. That opinion did not admit the possibility of a rapid and steep Romney dive or a torrent of chaos taylor-made for Newt. Each has behaved like a stone; one sinking and one standing. As Romney quietly has free-lance fixers doling him nailed-down delegates they have managed to pry up, Newt survives a tsunami like a garden gnome. He is not dislodged from his “message” dubious as that may be. He crouches in his flower bed. When the waters recede, as they do, Newt is still there, spitting out brine through a smile. While Newt’s principles are sophisticated and fungible, he does have some. Adherence to the Constitution would seem, to me, to make most of his reflexively grand “solutions” DOA but these days we have to take what we can get. On relative terms, Newt is solidly Constitutionalist, meaning he selectively applies an elastic view of the Commerce Clause that makes the balance of that document void. But he’s still better than Romney. Arguably he is superior to Santorum. I will leave out Dr. Paul, again for tactical, practical reasons. Ron Paul, as perhaps few casual observers are aware, has entered into an alliance with the Michigan Mormon, on the model of the McHuck Detente’ of ’08 which managed to catch Romney’s crotch in the car door. Dr. Paul, allegedly a hard-truthing non-politician has accepted the offer of a chance to wrassle Chris Christie over Romney’s largesse. Whatever virtues yesterday’s Libertarian may have, he strengthens Romney and so marks himself out as a hostile.

Mitt Romney is the target of the day. Many citizens on the Right, mildly or severely, have come to take more interest in politics but in large measure this interest is neither broad nor deep. Men and women of good will but unexplored principles have adhered to the Governor, it seems on little more than name recognition and hair appreciation. They have a single-minded mission…. Beat Obama! That is music to the gunslingers’ ears and may be sound in electoral theory but there is more to it than that, or should be. Again and again and again we come to the fatal nub. It is Romneycare. Good-hearted supporters of Mitt Romney, I beg you to consider the following solipsism; If you favor Romney, you favor Romneycare. If you favor Romneycare, you favor Obamacare. If you favor Obamacare you favor Obama. Can anyone with substance dispute this? Through skillful diversion and some dern good luck, Mitt has avoided, mostly, getting between Rick Santorum and the Contraceptive Posse even though, as far as I know, a devout Mormon will have identical opinions to the Catholics. In this Romneycare also preceded and predicted Obamacare, troubling charity hospitals in Massachusetts. Governor Romney did not dispose himself any better than President Obama on the issue, the difference being Romney was in open hypocrisy. Are these the distinctions that make a vote for Romney an imperative while a vote AGAINST Obama is likewise? Healthcare is the severest and clearest point of consanguinity but it is not the only one. The opinion is widespread on both sides and in No Man’s Land that there is passing mild differences between these two gentlemen. I submit that it is far superior to have a Barack Obama in office doing what he will do under his own flag than to have 90% of what Obama would do, done by a Republican ratified by a national vote. If you believe, or I would say SEE, that the centrist, bipartisan consensus is for an unsustainable level of socialism in our mixed economic system then you have to see that even if Mitt has better luck and skill with the Ship of State, still it will sink. Indeed it is already taking on water. Can the Turnaround Artist turn around a sinking ship? Not when his slogan will be No Change You Can Believe In. I make a repeated case that currency collapse, an inevitability far more certain than a Romney win, is better taken now than later; that fudge is an unhealthy diet, brief fasting is far preferable. Given that, whatever effect Mr Romney could have will be only a prolonging during which more money is borrowed, more printed and the current hole gets deeper.

All citizens should concern themselves far more with the principles than the man. This habit would have strangled the Romney Machine in its crib, but better late than never. Newt comes out on top under this regime but not by much. Yes he has also been in favor of the most rancid bits of Romneycare as for government expansion and utopianism, but lately he has climbed down from much of that, something Romney has no intention of doing, ever. Santorum also has a dubious record here. He has no great claim to fiscal restraint though it is marginally better than Newt’s (on TARP, stim, bailouts). I favor Newt over Santorum for purely instrumental reasons. Newt is the weapon of the day. If he, like Mitt, cannot carry his homestate outright, unlike Mitt he will retire. I don’t want anyone retiring. Not now. Except Romney. We must keep Newt on life-support, cruel as that may prove in the end. He must be cultivated and fed like a carnivorous plant with a taste for Willard’s blood. Georgia awards delegates proportionally so a BIG win will translate into a BIG boost, giving Newt the fervor of a reprieved man. Money will come his way, money that otherwise might go to Romney but instead Romney, finally, may be forced to answer.

The aim is a “brokered convention” as they call it, meaning the delegates will actually decide something when they show up. Instead of a rally rubber-stamping Romney’s victory it will be a rabid fandango of lunatics in star-spangled hats trading bile and liquor for juice; backstabbing while spit-swapping and selling that which they do not own for that which they cannot have. In other words, all the dreadful antics the Primary system was meant to eliminate. The elimination must now be eliminated or we throw up through sheer inertia the man who could not win and in any event, should not win. That is not to say Romney could not be victorious. Anything could happen. Newt might rise to the nomination as could any player. That party might feel the need to salt themselves with a troublesome VP like Allen West or Paul Ryan. Or even those fellows, who declined to run due to their inexperience, might find support for themselves or certainly, a way to leverage their views onto some other bandwagon. At this point we are only just beginning to nibble at our harness. Rome wasn’t burned in a day. Refuting Romney’s cakewalk is the first step. The next we cannot know until that is soundly done. For that purpose, in Georgia, vote Newt.

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