Sigh.

Okay. Okay. Okay. You win only college roomate I enjoyed living with. Friendly ex-Girlfriend who used to be a conservative until the W. epic fail. Mom. You all win. I give up. I'll surrender and just do as you ask, o tenth or eleventh person that I love, respect, and admire who has giddily rushed to tell me that I simply must do this thing that I really, really don't want to do everytime this sort of thing happens. Rush over to High School Slambook meets Fainting Couch Corner over at Very Serious People Magazine, or The Daily Beast, Politico, or ABC News Online because, clearly, 'Joe Klein kicked Romney's ass', or 'David Brooks just crushed Mitt Romney', or 'Tom Friedman just laid wood to Romney, seriously'. Fine. I'll go.

But.

At this point, friends and family who have all come to me in glee that yet another Very Serious Person has gone and peed all over the legs of either Lord Flipflop Fraudbottom the III and/or his little Randian sidekick, you seem to have forgotten something. There is a reason that Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan are both where they are at the moment to be taken down a peg. People like Joe Klein. Ron Fournier. Mark Halperin. They all helped to put them up there on our national stage to lie their asses off, to elevate them to a place where they can do the maximum amount of damage if they win.



Here's the thing: 'The Village Giveth, and the Village Taketh Away'.

Ah. That puzzled look on your face tells me that alone won't cut it. Okay.

My enthusiam, or total lack thereof, for your well-meaning calls to rush to drink in the joy of the Great Very Serious Person Pile-On landsliding all over Romney (for now) is something that is always going to be greatly tempered by that one very big thing I'm too old and too painfully familiar with to either forgive, forget, or let go of.

Mitt is where he is, right now, at the finish line to the doorstep to the White House, failing mightily or not, because of the very people who have you so giddily running around at the moment positively beaming with joy.

These awful people have their totally undeserved reputations for seriousness, competence, and effectiveness in the first place, and have been able to thrive so greatly for so very long on a fetid ocean of rank stale air and vast empty promises, because the Inside the Beltway Court Jesters who are, for now, tearing their ticket down were both a part of the mythmaking process as well as the protectors of these myths once laid down and established as "truths".

They are as responsible for Willard And Pauley's Big Adventure as much as Empty Suit BatMan and Randian Boy Hostage Robin themselves are.



Enjoy it because it hurts Mitt Romney and that feels great, but never forget that it will be Obama getting the business tomorrow, or Social Security supporters who dare to point out that SS has nothing to do with our national debt, or that Scott Brown would be a US Senator for Life if the beltway elite had it's way because no matter how he votes or choses to govern 'they like the idea of him being in the Senate and being in the Senate from Massachusetts'.

Our lives are their favorite reality tv show. They get paid millions of dollars to handicap our nation's governance like it's a part of their favorite fantasy football league. They don't need Social Security, Medicare, or Medicaid. Foodstamps. Public Schools. Pensions. These are hypotheticals and abstractions. Like joining the Marines in wartime or having cancer without health insurance. Little people have these issues. These problems. And the fact that they don't need them is something they consider a feature and not a bug of their conventional wisdom pimping circle jerking status quo.

Too many people are walking around today who don't know a damned thing except whatever the latest lazy Key Club Conventional Wisdom meme or frame is about the ruling class of our very imperiled country. Beating the shit out of Romney is as much about preserving the order of things as the Romney Fail is undeniable as it is about gloriously adding to the Romney Fail because it is so undeniable.

These self-same Villagers who are now burying Romney because their instincts tell them that he is a loser, and if the Village hates anything more than a Democrat being President, it's anyone and anything that screws up their sacred horserace this far out from a national election.

There are some legendary constants that govern the universe of the Beltway Village:



1. No Matter or Issue is Truly Serious until the Very Serious People Agree to Agree it is,

2. (D) or (R) Governs the Level, Intesity, and Length of Outrage over any D.C. Scandal,

3. It is a Bigger Sin to Bluntly Call a Liar a Liar than to Actually be a Liar Telling Big Lies,

4. It is Never, Ever Inappropriate to Heap Suffering on the Poor for the Sins of the Rich,

5. Being Uncivil in Objection is far Worse than Passing a Culture War Extremism into Law,

6. If it's a Sunday Morning, GOP 2 to 1 is a Great Day for Non-Movement Conservatives,

7. No Hawk Epic Fail will Ever Have Any Bearing on a Hawks Opining About the Next War.

8. Career Conservative Government Lifers Shall All Have the Caches of Business Owners.

9. A Villager Does Not have to Disclose any Conflicts of Interest the Village is Cool With.

10. Failing the Village, especially by disappointing the Villagers, is unforgivable.

So, friends and loved ones, I shall go read your brutal takedown. I give up. You win. But as I do it's rather important, as a non-Movement Conservative who wishes to remain fully sane, that you never ever forget just who and what governs our discourse and makes it so much harder for a non-Movement Conservative to get elected and to govern once he or she is there. It's how a professional election losing George W. Bush 2.0 wannabe named Mitt Romney became 'the competent, electable Republican' and Cold-Eyed Granny Starver Paul Ryan ended up being thought of as 'The Most Serious Man in the World ' in the first place. It's why if Obama is up by 5 to 9, clearly ahead in the swing states, the race is tied.

But.



If Romney were up by 5 to 9, clearly ahead in the swing states, he'd be the second coming of Ronald Reagan.

These awful, awful people who come to you more in sorrow than in anger to detail the epic fail that is Mitt because, in reality, the real sin is that Mitt has really let them down.

Even as they bury Mitt Romney, it's for the crime of fucking up their horserace, for not living up to their own myth-making and expectations. They have been embarassed, and Mitt Romney has to pay for this. But the rules for Democrats and Republicans are still so, very very different and it is easy to forget that while the pitchforks and torches of united wankery march towards Team Romney gives you such great joy.

The same guys and gals kicking the living shit out of Romney today are also the same reason why so few people outside of the ranks of liberal political junkies seem to have ever heard a single word about the historic level of Republican Obstructionism that has crippled governance in the last four years. But so many folks sure as shit seem to know that "Obama said he'd change the culture of Washington DC, and he didn't, so, he failed big time on that and a huge part of the lack of progress is his fault".

Right. Because the Magic Obstruction Fairy or 'I Don't Know' and 'Not Me' from the Family Circus swore that their most important priority was ensuring that Barack Obama was a one term President.

Thanks, lovely people who helped mainstream the Arkansas Project, enabled the Clinton Impeachment, the mugging of Al Gore, the screwjobs in Florida 2000 and Ohio 2004, the epic failings of the Bush years, the mendacious faux "debate" over the Iraq War and it's fallout, the non-existent WMDs, the Swiftboat Liars not having to really pay to air their bullshit, the Rev. Wright Bill Ayers nonsense. Thanks for pissing on Romney when he's down. But you could do that shit for a thousand years and I won't ever forget that you also pissed in the recovery life boat every second after the GOP sank the economy and then damned Obama for the awful smell and lack of a magically appearing wall of luxury Port-O-Potties as he tried to bail the lifeboat out. You being a fickle lot who smells a loser like Romney isn't Lourdes for your history and what your history tells us about how and why you really do what you do as your business.

Thanks for McCain-ing and Dole-ing Mitt Romney late.

But, really, it's all just pouring sugar in the gastank of your own rent-a-car.

And that is why this doesn't change shit. You are saving your 'Seriousness' by piling on so nobody notices that you created Myth Romney in the first place with the Republican establishment.

If there is anything the Village hates more than the idea of a Democrat in the White House, it's a meme that a Republican Myth they helped to engineer ends up being a loser with time to spare before election day and they need to pile-on so people don't notice who handed the Unprincipled Myth his Viability Moxie in the first place.

Jesus, and Jennifer Rubin, wept.