The Island Hopping Campaign has been a wild success. Romunist advances have swept through the distant outposts of Guam, the US Virgin Islands and American Samoa which were left undefended. Only Puerto Rico produced some mild resistance from Rickist forces, crushed with the tried strategy of Divide and Scavenge. It may be a hard sell to blame malign and invidious Division for Mitt’s seventy-five point blowout. After all, how could one possibly get three-fourths of anything without smoothing over existing rifts and gently sweeping together the available bits? Such objections assume that Mitt Romney follows the Geneva Conventions. Nothing of the kind. Mitt went nuclear. Rick, that dope, never had a chance. He played it straight, going off to Puerto Rico for the old elbow-rubbing style of politics that is standard from Dicksville Notch down to Eureka, California. Taking on one of the main questions for our fellow Americans in the territory of Puerto Rico, the pasty but Catholic candidate said that any admission of that territory into the Union was contingent on English becoming the primary language of governance. It is unlikely that Team Santorum could be ignorant of the controversy and its potential for blowback. It is a century old. Only a seventh of Puerto Rico is fluent in English. For Crackologists, no es bueno, especially when Romney took the opportunity to declare that he was a-okay with Spanish being the chief language of the 51st State.

It’s all played for a bit of a larf. It is evidence of Santorum’s incompetence that he exposed himself to such an obvious counter-stroke. He forgot Rule #1 which is to tell the people what they want to hear. Actually DOING what you said? That is the concern of some staffer who has not even been hired yet. Could it be that it is Romney who misspeaks? No, he knows his game. The question of English being officially declared our Official Language has been soft-pedaled. Romney-style Republicans do not want to alienate the Latin Vote as it is called, not that they speak Latin. Rather we mean these folks spring from Catholic lands where they have a Latin mass which, Basic Crackology would say, makes this Santorum Country, something Romney could not allow. The difficulties of those who do not speak English would mostly be remedied by also employing Spanish. This the Latin Vote and most certainly the Puerto Rican Vote desire us to do. Those who resist, who claim that, as Churchill thought, English is a uniquely unifying institution most hospitable to Liberty or simply observe that English is already somewhat entrenched in the nation, these are plotters against your abuela; her dignity, if not her life. No matter that the French/Creole speakers in Louisiana and the native speakers in Samoa have likewise a long claim to their own tongue and a need for drivers licenses. Let us have our courts, our Legislatures, our documents and our functionaries all be bi-lingual! So Mitt implies with swift ascent rather than hard declarations. Let us have them also in Portuguese if there proves to be a Brazilian or Angolan voting bloc. Tagalog has a million American speakers as does Vietnamese. By inference Candidate Mitt promises to indulge all these lingual interest groups just days after his gustatory tour of the Old Confederacy where he heartily dined on grits and catfish while giving similar assurances on strengthening the border to the yokels who consider THAT a priority. Rick, like the unlucky Hiroshiman caught in an outhouse at Ground Zero, can only gape in amazement and cover his nudity.

This is the sort of back-handed play that makes the talking heads snigger and the gunslingers swoon. So what if Candidate Romney’s mouth has written a check that President Romney’s ass would have difficulty honoring? He shattered the target with a direct hit and gathered the bits under his own standard. The votes are counted, fools! Any collateral damage to the nation is hypothetical. Any damage to Romney’s prospects will be assuaged by the same quick ruthlessness applied to some other question. This is one smoooothe cold cat. We have barely seen the beginning of his treachery, the only upside being that there are several deserving objects who, like Santorum, apprehend not the inevitable blow and deserve it far more.

Mitt is wracking up an array of endorsements, allies and expendable myrmidons with his every step. In his row of pawns sit many improbable figures in defense of Ted Kennedy’s favorite Republican. From the world of books and barks comes Ann Coulter, no less. As fervently as she ever denounced Bill Clinton so has she now embraced Mitt Romney. From her position as the unthinking man’s Rush Limbaugh she sells her avowed principles of thirty years. For what? We do not know. She does not know but talks like she has a chit against Romney’s patronage meaning she is slut, rather than whore, as all whores know to get their compensation up front. This is a risky venture for Coulter. She makes her millions selling books, teasing fifteen dollars out of the pockets of working, inquisitive Right-leaning consumers who relish her duck-attack style applied to their perceived enemies, of which Romney is almost foremost. She must have early on decided that Romney’s inevitability was no PR gambit, or that she could make it real. But there are no contracts among mafiosi, or at least none to which you would want to be a party. Will Coulter be Secretary of State or head HUD in a Romney Administration? Will she get the exclusive right to his biography? No Ann. No. Posting or rewarding a creature like you would cement Willard’s image as a Rightwinger, as you hope him to be. Mitt is as far to the Right today as he is ever going to get which is far further to the Right than he really is. Rewarding your snivelry will cost, rather than pay. It could be that your destruction would grease his wheels the tiniest bit and when you stand, exposed like Santorum, Mitt will poke his tongue hard into his cheek, as you do, Ann, to let us all know he zinged you good.

Another of Willard’s wingmen is that all too familiar frat pledge, the over-proofed loaf of self-regard we know as Karl Rove. The Boy Genius, W called him though his claim to either mantle is dubious. This statistician with imperious habits has a belt full of scalps, mostly Republican. Recall his long tenure shepherding Bush and a few other well-heeled Republicans through the thickets of grumpy Constitutionalists that hinder, occasionally, a candidate from running as Santa Claus in striped pants. He invented the now archaic Compassionate Conservatism; a rhetorical stipulation that gave in to the premise that there is something incompassionate in ordinary conservatism. Did he do this for purely tactical reasons or does he really believe that the Entitlement State can be broken of its habit of devouring the populace and harnessed to a Republican bandwagon? It seems the latter as he is as ignorant of the full costs of his projects as Obama is of his. Rove extends his ignorance as a shield about Romneycare, aping Mitt in his dismissals, his revisionism and his head-shaking bewilderment that anyone could object to criminal enforcement of mandated medicine or really believe the astronomical costs already accruing. Like Ann, he works on speculation. While a free-lancer now, he is certain that Team Romney will be free with the juice when possible. Karl Rove BACK as Chief of Staff? Well Karl, you are an able fellow and you certainly can spin a poll but we don’t really want Bushies running around in our set shots. Besides, you do more good for the cause out there in the trenches! But what that cause might be, other than electing the fellow signing the checks, is completely mysterious.

Rove is the gunslinger’s gunslinger. If he slept on his Left side one night he could wake up as James Carville. But there is another Romney supporter who has always claimed to be uncompromising, an absolutist and above all, an Incorruptible Man. He is the most crucial of all Romney’s Republican Guard though he is not even thoroughly a Republican. The specimen now on the slab is Ron Paul. No wonder honest, decent people flee in shrieking horror from politics given they contain a perversion like Paul. The gentleman does eschew the labels of Left and Right but he claims to be an anti-Statist. He claims to be an anti-Socialist. He claims to be against debt, against war, against earmarks and foreign entanglements and aid and the Drug War and all those things his young fans are genuinely against. And yet he is not against Romney. Oh no. It will stun the man of common honesty that such a baroque fraud would be engaged in or even COULD be engaged in on the public stage but there is no doubt from the analysts, the opinionators and most especially among the other candidates; Ron Paul is Romney’s personal attack dog, bird dog and lap dog. In debates Paul never touches his master nor the master his cur. The hapless doofs who think they showed up to a frank free-for-all find that as individuals they face a tag-team. From above and the Left, they face Romney, The Willard of Oz who denounces their bean counting as cruelty. From below and the Right, Paul denounces them as insufficiently “conservative” whether for spending or war-making. Yet somehow neither ever finds the other an inviting target. The secret accord is even more pronounced in the State-to-State campaigns. Paul’s ads hit all, except Romney, the candidate MOST repugnant to principled Libertarianism. The Virginia primary was exemplary. Through late, ex poste facto and opportunistic backroom dealing all the other candidates were wiped from the Virginia ballot excepting Mitt Romney and Ron Paul. Ordinarily something like this would have the Paul crowd in an uproar and often they uproar without such provocation. Other competitors for the Not-Romney crowd have been squeezed out of contention, in part through their own poor performances but also they have been caught in a pincer maneuver with Romney as anvil and Paul as the trip-hammer. Does Romney make explicit promises to Paul either for himself or consideration for his son, Rand? We go only from their otherwise inexplicable behavior and our knowledge that Mitt was the victim of a similar alliance between McCain and Huckabee, something he would not want to happen twice. With the two natural antagonists tidal-locked in a tiny orbit, the whole sham is exposed. As much as anyone else, Paul is in business for himself and has decided that Mitt is his best chance to get his bread buttered.

So what is there to do? Not much but not nothing, either. The wave of destruction has passed through Georgia but other States do await. I suggest a zombie apocalypse or as near to that as we can manage. Ignore the synchronous cries of the Done Dealers. Let every poll of every sort in every State be flooded. Vote for anyone but Romney, even Paul as a last resort. Bachmannites, Perrians, Sons of Cain and I think even the Good Pawlentians could STILL vote for their guy, gal or hermaphrodite. Nearly all the biggies secured their place on the primary ballots through the party rules. They are still there. Even Huntsmen could finally do some honorable service. If you can’t bear Santorum’s Sanctimony, Newt’s Newroses or Paul’s Paucity, vote for your favorite Martian. Whoever it is. If you can’t do that you better STILL get your ass up and head down there. Write in, if possible. If there are no write ins allowed pitch an ever-lovin’ fit about it. The goal? Well, we may not be able to stop Romney at this point but we sure can stop that Brigham Young half-wit from running up the score. Maybe we will even get some news coverage. Mitt will not like it which means all good people should love it.

And then Mitt, we’ll see you at the convention where all there is are boots on the ground. Air power will be useless.

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