In an unkinder and less gentle age we might entertain ourselves with a good old fashioned octopus fight or a wrasslin’ match between siamese twins. Not between two pairs of twins mind you, but two conjoined bodies grabbing and spiraling around one another trying to get on top when, really, there is no top. If this wholesome spectacle isn’t a violation of federal civil rights codes it probably runs afoul of your local blue laws so instead let us examine closely the grunting, morbid struggle between Romney and Obama.

Mitt and Barack are, of course, joined at the healthcare. Once this was a happier state of affairs for the son of Michigan Mormons than it was for the grandson of Hawaiian commies. Romneycare had been in place a couple years at the time of the late primaries and, as you may recall, Romney was proud as whatever prideful animal or plant they have in Massachusetts. The existence of Romneycare was just about the sum of Romney’s claim to the Republican nomination towards which he seemed to hurtle unhindered for a few dreadful weeks. The healthcare crisis was a major issue. The costs were raging; no one disputed that. And the costs were overwhelmingly paid through government spending and just about ALL of them were paid by some third party insurer. Mitt’s solution was a universal health care plan administered by the Mass gub that contained nearly every major element of what has come to be known, somewhat controversially, as Obamacare. Mitt just loved seeing the bloody, furry scalp of Obamacare cresting as it was born beneath the horrified gaze of Mrs. Clinton and Howard Dean. Both the fascistically rigorous Hillarycare and the straight-up socialized medicine proposed by the Demented Doctor of Vermont seemed to take it on the chin mightily. The idea of the bold, fresh and articulate starlet from the other team implicitly taking up Romney’s principles on this matter was a validation of his actions. THIS is what the public wants! the gunslingers certainly purred in his ear. This is some of that there bipartisanship, see, both parts like it. That’s all we need to know.

But even then that was not all that the rest of us needed to know. Even at its second birthday Romneycare was proving to be a difficult child. It pulled waivers out like a terrier who has found a box of Kleenex. The costs which were promised to go down and down went instead up and up. Nearly any complaint one could broach about Obamacare was seen first in Massachusetts well before the primaries were through. But that was never a part of any media attention at the time, was it? It wouldn’t be quite fair to say that Romney benefited merely from the liberally applied media Teflon on Senator Obama mostly because he was already enjoying a bit of the Teflon treatment himself. Yes, Mitt was a Republican but his horns had been ground down almost flush by his actions on this thorny issue. No one in the business of creating public opinion was interested in puncturing his balloon even before it was hijacked by the formless and idealess proto-Obama. But once it was plainly understood that Obamacare would be a near clone of Romneycare these two feckless geeks were made brothers of something thicker than blood.

Even failing to win the nomination did not halt the self-obamification of Romney. Though few were paying much attention Romney was still speaking out on the matter. As Obamacare gelled Romney claimed at least tangential parenthood. As Kennedy observed, success has ten thousand fathers but failure is an orphan. Except this baby was still gestating. It might have given a less confident man pause to see, as Romney did, his own Mini-Me, Scott Brown state that while he had supported Romneycare with no regrets he could not support Obamacare. Not only that but this public position seemed to be the major policy element in his upset victory in the Massachusetts special election that now seems centuries ago.

That baby too, got birthed. And indeed it was and is a scaled-up if not upscale repetition of Romneycare. But this has proven to be one butt-ugly kid. What else are we to make of the attempts to un-name the Affordable Care Act of the handle Obamacare? It is unlikely in the extreme that Obama’s stable of now seasoned gunslingers think even they can disremember Obama’s hand in the Great Cramdown from the nation at large but what they do think they can accomplish is just enough blurring of the events to diffuse that knowledge. The sucker Romney is tailor made and it seems that finally, even he knows it.

What else can explain the nattering of that second Romney clone that works as his mouthpiece while turning up as a talking head on the cableverse? I won’t sully Google with finding this punks name of the week but if you see him, you will know him as one of Romney’s Boys from Brazil. When you hear him aping Romney’s latest sqirmy denials of paternity, you will know he is repeating the Romneyism he has tattooed inside his eyelids. The genius argument? Oh, all that stuff was good in Massachusetts, it was good at the State level but it’s not good for the nation. Heck, it probably is even unConstitutional!

If your toddler came up with an excuse like that you would paddle him until the county took him away. But no one is interested in stopping Romney’s flailings at this point, not even Obama because he has caused said flailing. This is probably the most deft political maneuver yet attributable to Team Obama. It was about six months ago as the waivers to Obamacare broke into the four digit range that Barack began mentioning Romney as something of an inspiration for his own plan. At first it was subtle. The youtubes are out there; check them and you will see a slow escalation in the frequency and clarity of Obama’s invocation of the Massachusetts Mormon. Indeed, it seems plain to me (you may decide for yourself) that no other splash of rhetoric gives the President the merest pleasure to deliver, excepting only this. Romney had sought to out Obama Obama. If Obama was in the habit of strategically voting Present, Romney would steal a base by pleading Absent! Not so fast, says Barack. Not. So. Fast. With a well-timed word or two from the stage Obama snatches the tether of the escaping helium balloon that is Romney and wraps him in a warm brotherly bearhug. For this once the President and I can share a laugh.

Now, as we get close enough to the next election that even decent people can be concerned with it, we have a New and Improved Mitt. He got jolted out of his lifelong nappy time by the appearance of the red-headed stepchild from hell, Donald Trump and though he looks bleary-eyed and possibly encumbered with a heavy diaper, Mitt is at the podium! It seems he has engaged the same hand-gesture expert favored by the Democrats but instructed him, hey, we want to take it up three notches. Obama is his biatch! Obama is this and that. Obama is so and so and more to the point, NOT this and such. His every burp is focus-grouped. Every blink is scheduled. In this, truly, he has beaten out the Teleprompter Pilot who at least approximates human expression, if not quite human emotion. Romney conducts himself like a supervillain in a poorly dubbed monster movie. It’s all in the delivery… blah blah blah… Surrender, People of Earth! But it has all been choreographed to a tee and somehow, this global warming, commie doctoring, big spendifying, auto bailing, bank bribing debutante mimbo has become a plausible front runner for the party that claims to want to at least clamp our hemorrhaging national arteries. Clearly, Obama is willing to say anything. His late regurgitation of tested talking points on the budget which contradict his every action are the evidence. But again Romney pulls out a narrow victory on this race to the bottom. He is willing to SAY and to DO anything. Anything at all. Truly this is a man of no principle except self-dedication. Romney’s status as legend in his own mind may be the only competition Obama has in this department (except again for Trump).

But there is one element here that puts Romney into a class by himself, not just among our current cast of blockheads, but in real historical terms. This makes him the Attila the Hun of smarm and self-regard, fortunately, for we may well rue the day when he figures this one out. There is one playingfield Trump now has all to himself that Romney could command for the grasping, that is the possibly contrived scandal surrounding Obama’s birth certificate or lack thereof. This newly minted champion of the Constitution has almost nothing to say on this most basic question of qualification and probably he refrains for the same reasons the Clinton Machine and McCain did during the primaries; that such rude questioning is suspect, perhaps even (gasp!) racist! and therefore harmful to his electoral prospects. But as always there is also a compelling personal reason. Mitt was born in Mexico. Sure, it was to two American parents but don’t forget these were also Mormons. Is a Mormon more American than a Kenyan? Maybe. Probably. But that is a can of worms and ol’ Mitt… no can opener, he.

And he’s STILL radioactive!

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