Mitt Romney: Ultra Phony

There's a lot of news coming out on the 2012 presidential election races, so you know what that means: Time to make fun of Mitt Romney.

First, there was the news that the paperback edition of his book not only represents a reduction in price, but also significant changes in sections that didn’t resonate too well with Republican voters.  That is, he had the opportunity to change his lukewarm support for the stimulus and inability to identify differences between ObamaCare and RomneyCare (which was the model for ObamaCare).  Now, those are both “failures”:

The first rewrite excises a relatively even-handed assessment of the 2009 economic-stimulus package. In the original, Romney wrote that it "will accelerate the timing of the start of the recovery, but not as much as it could have." The paperback pronounces the stimulus "a failure," and blasts Obama's "economic missteps" with conservative red-meat language — for example: "This is the first time government has declared war on free enterprise."

The other major change comes in a chapter on health care. In the original hardcover, Romney tried to carefully distinguish between the Massachusetts law and the national version that was nearing passage as he wrote.

But the Massachusetts model has become Romney's bête noire among conservatives, who loathe the national reform they call "Obamacare." The rewritten paperback swings much harder, proclaiming that "Obamacare will not work and should be repealed," and "Obamacare is an unconstitutional federal incursion into the rights of states."

Other additions in that section blame the Massachusetts legislature for altering his plan, and the current Democratic administration of Governor Deval Patrick for botching the implementation.

The book, ironically enough, is titled No Apology—but why would anyone apologize when (like the editors at MiniTrue in 1984) they can simply go back and rewrite history.

But now Mitt has outdone himself with his pandering:

He's going tieless on network TV, strolling NASCAR pits in Daytona and sporting skinny Gap jeans bought for him by his wife.

His latest campaign book, just out in paperback, opens with a regular-guy scene: wealthy Mitt in a Wal-Mart checkout line, buying gifts for his grandsons and comparing the surroundings to Target, another discount store he says he's familiar with.

Okay - that the multimillionaire goes shopping at Wal-Mart when he's not campaigning is a bit tough to swallow, but other politicians (looking at you, Joe Biden) pretend to be "regular guys".  And showing up at NASCAR events is right out of the politicians' playbook (after all, Obama, Hillary Clinton, and McCain all addressed a WWE crowd with lame wrestling jokes). 

But wearing skinny jeans?  Come on.  No one wearing skinny jeans can be taken seriously as a presidential candidate.  And does that even have a constituency?  Does anyone want to see Romney in skinny jeans?