If I were a G.O.P. professional political operative, I would be chugging the Jack Daniels’ bottle in perfect John Belushi ‘Animal House’ Bluto frat form. Political science textbooks will be written with ‘Romney’ becoming synonymous with ‘bumbling campaign skills’ in the same way as ‘Quisling’ became interchangeable with ‘traitor’ in Oslo.

Gordon Gekko meets Thurston Howell III in magic underwear. No coy Ann Romney “Top 1% Stay-at-home-Mom” “humanizing” campaign appearance with a “ladies’ night” backdrop is likely to smooth the barbed edges of the latest “Mitt-on-tape.” To use a word from the Quarter Billion Dollar Man’s main squeeze, Mitt “unzipped” consistently turns out to be embarrassing to the Man From Bain. Mitt keeps his tax returns zipped.

In the wake of a report by Politico describing a fractured and strife-ridden Romney campaign, Romney/Ryan 2012 hardly needs more bad press. Certainly not whopper gaffes disparaging nearly half of Americans.

From a chart published by the Tax Foundation, virtually all the states with the highest percentage of alleged zero tax payers are Deep South Red states. Ditto for per-capita Federal spending per tax dollar collected. Smooth move, Mitt.

Makers, takers. A fifty-grand-per-plate fundraiser of millionaires at one of the homes of a Wall Street venture capital magnate in Boca Raton. “Middle class” annual incomes between $200-250k? Mitt Romney is “relating” to the average American as well as Thurston Howell III buddied up with Gilligan.

It’s 2012. The old strategy of tailoring one’s message to the audience and changing by the campaign stop doesn’t work well when even full-motion video can be done with a cell phone. It’s elementary school class presidential politics to chase every vote, not write off nearly half of them. Someone will hear and remember what you say, even in a Secure Compartmented Information Facility at the National Security Agency at Ft. Meade, Md. Not many YouTube videos made there.

Wall Street’s Gekko was nailed by an underling wearing a wire.

Some of us are old enough to remember then President Richard M. Nixon (R) and his loyal Gal Friday secretary Rose Mary Woods’ pre-Disco Era erased Watergate tape segment which led to the downfall of his presidency. Now we have a surreptitiously recorded tape of Mitt Romney telling a fundraiser held by a controversial venture capital firm magnate of his distain for nearly half of Americans.

Swerving away from foreign policy debacles in London and Libya, the Romney campaign tried to find a Boy Scout camp scavenger hunt smoke-shifter to refocus on the slowly recovering economy. Then comes this.

There are fewer than fifty days until the election. The President’s polling advantage isn’t much beyond the statistical margin of error. Actual lever-pulls in the polling booth are still unknown. That said, Romney shooting himself in the foot might not even impress the National Rifle Association.

Ann Romney’s “you people” isn’t much of an improvement to Mitt’s “those people.”

It’s never too early for Republican strategists to make a reservation at the Betty Ford Clinic. A guy named Newt is muttering “I told you so.”



