Magic Mic: Mother Jones set the famous Romney Wayback machine to May 2012

and set off a retroactive time bomb in the candidate's ever-shifting facade.

Magic Mic: Mother Jones set the famous Romney Wayback machine to May 2012

and set off a retroactive time bomb in the candidate's ever-shifting facade.

The most vexing and compelling question of the 2012 election cycle is not, "Are you better off than you were four years ago?" much to the frustration of the Romney campaign and the right-wing spin machine.

No. While mostly unspoken and unacknowledged, a much bigger question has been driving the American political machine for well more than a year. That question is, "At his core, just who is Mitt Romney, really?"

People of all political stripes want to know. It is the driving force that makes all his position changes and flip-flops and contradictions and walk-backs relevant and newsworthy. On the topic of who Mitt Romney is and what he believes there are more stories to keep straight than in a season's worth of To Tell The Truth contestant panels.

And it was reasonable to think, given his history, Romney was at least a pretty competent and intelligent person. But then, how to reconcile that with his stewardship over multi-million dollar organization know as Romney for President, Inc.? The last time a Michigander spent this much money on such a disastrous national endeavor the country coined a new synonym for failure: The Edsel.



Was young Mitt Romney really the man described by Ann at the Republican National Convention as an impoverished youth, eating off an ironing board and subsisting only by selling off his stock portfolio ? Or was young Mitt Romney really a privileged prep school grad and Ivy Leaguer who found himself tapped by the national magazine of the swank set, socialite journal Town and Country, as one of the most eligible bachelors of 1967?

In his heart is Romney really the man who promised in 1994 to be better on gay rights than Ted Kennedy? Or is he the man who in 2012 has pledged his allegiance to the darkest anti-gay forces in the country? Is he really the Romney who said in 2002, "I will preserve and protect a woman's right to choose"—or is he the Romney of 2012 who's definitely against a woman's right to choose and not really clear if that includes cases of rape, incest, and the life or health of the mother?

Is Romney the man who, as governor of Massachusetts, signed a law extending health care to everyone in his state? Or the man who promises to repeal the same for the country?

People both left and right were curious—is Romney really a moderate Republican pretending to be a radical, reactionary conservative, or was Romney a radical, reactionary conservative who pretended for a time to be a moderate Republican?

Oddly, none of these things felt quite right. It was difficult to imagine him as being authentically any of the things he was being packaged as. They didn't ring true.

It was precisely because Romney is a cipher that the Republican primaries were a drawn-out and torturous affair for the Republican Party, and a party for the Democrats.

Primary voters flocked from one "Not Romney" candidate to the next. Virtually very faction of the party never really trusted that Romney was really one of them. In the end, Mitt Romney did not win the Republican nomination. He merely failed to lose it.

Though never accused of being charismatic, there is something compelling about the campaign and not just as the latest trainwreck TV sensation. The public was patiently waiting for the real tell that would finally solve the mystery of who Mitt Romney really was, since his words are meaningless and constantly subject to change.

And on Sept. 17, like the fictional presidential candidate played by Martin Sheen (the bad one, from the Stephen King film The Dead Zone) Romney's presidential potential hit an ignoble brick wall, when Mother Jones provided a jarring glimpse into the candidate's true character.

Libertarian leaning Josh Barro at Bloomberg News played his once-a-cycle "It's over" card saying: Today, Mitt Romney Lost the Election.

(Continue reading below the fold.)