If only votes were weighted by net worth...

Okay, this may be a pointless exercise. But Stuart Stevens, chief strategist for the Romney campaign, has just published such a transcendentally stupid, transparently sophistic, willfully delusive campaign post-mortem that I found myself mouthing rebuttals after nearly every sentence. So I thought I'd bottle my indignation. In italics, below, interspersed with Stevens' text.

Over the years, one of the more troubling characteristics of the Democratic Party and the left in general has been a shortage of loyalty and an abundance of self-loathing. It would be a shame if we Republicans took a narrow presidential loss as a signal that those are traits we should emulate.

The GOP conjures up a candidate

Rebutting the notion that Mitt Romney is winning the GOP nomination because his rivals failed to put together professional campaign organizations, Conor Friedersdorf argues that Romney faced no viable competition, but rather a crew with "glaring substantive flaws."  Well, sure. But why did Romney face no viable competition?  The current state of the GOP allowed no "better" candidate to emerge.

If Mitt Romney didn't exist -- and in his current incarnation, he didn't, until circa 2005 -- GOP voters would have had to invent him.  In fact, they did invent him. Forget the Etch-A-Sketch: he is the Ouija board of the GOP base.  Whatever position they collectively demand, he adopts.

If Republican voters are reluctant to back Romney , it's because he caters simultaneously to contradictory desires.  Collectively, the party wants to seem moderate enough to win without compromising far-right fantasy positions.  Romney can perhaps win because people don't see him as an extremist: he had a moderate record as governor, preceded by a long successful career in a field that demands pragmatism and a respect for data, which he credibly claims to possess.  And yet he is sworn to advance every jot and tittle of an extremist agenda: deficit reduction without tax increases or defense cuts, foreign policy without negotiation, dismantling of Obamneycare, broader defenestration of the federal government , defunding of Planned Parenthood, reversal of Rove v. Wade, ruthless hounding of undocumented aliens out the door.

Perry lands an off-stage blow on Obamneycare

After each of the last two GOP debates (1, 2), I noted that no Romney rival managed to spell out the structural similarities between Romneycare and the Affordable Care Act.  Now Perry has an ad that kin of does the job -- or rather, delivers a functional equivalent that appeals to Republican primary voters' emotions:



Mind you, the ad does not really spell out -- except for a brief allusion to exchanges -- how the ACA mirrors Romneycare. What it drives home is that Romney regarded them as similar and hoped that his program might be replicated nationally -- and also, of course that he's now lying about that.