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" BREAKDOWN: Mitt&amp;#039;s Got the Cash to Blow Another One! (Ditto Sarah Palin.) BOSTON \u2014 I consider myself lucky to have lived in Massachusetts during the years 2003 to 2007, when the Commonwealth (God save it!) was under the barely distinguishable leadership of Willard (Mitt) Romney, an affable parachute artist from Utah who came tumbling into and out of our politics so quickly that it&amp;#039;s hard to believe he ever was here. For the most part, Romney was the kind of Republican we&amp;#039;d always liked: He was rich and white, and he wasn&amp;#039;t dramatically concerned with either the civil rights of zygotes, or where some men might be putting their pee-pees when Jeebus wasn&amp;#039;t watching. And he&amp;#039;d already lost once, to Teddy Kennedy, in a campaign in which Mitt famously assured a local gay newspaper that, on the issues that concerned gay people, he would be gayer than Ted Kennedy. Anyway, he mainly got elected as a Republican for the same reason we always elect Republican governors \u2014 namely, to keep the overwhelmingly Democratic state legislature from stealing everything except the Sacred Cod out from under the golden dome of the State House. By and large, Mitt was the governor we all expected him to be. In his first term, he once vetoed 250 items in the state budget. The legislature overturned them all. Frustrated, he made a brief stab at galvanizing the petrified Massachusetts GOP in a subsequent state election, trying to smuggle more Republicans into the legislature. Unfortunately, it became apparent that Mitt&amp;#039;s charisma did not extend past his wrist watch. (More about this shortly.) After that, he pretty much gave up on statewide electoral politics. His eye was elsewhere. In 2006, working with several prominent state legislators, most of whom are not yet indicted, he pushed through and signed the groundbreaking Massachusetts health-care reform act. This, it was said, would vault Mitt Romney to the front of the 2008 Republican presidential field, health-care reform being at the top of every pollster&amp;#039;s list of issues. Which is about when the roof caved in. Romney proved the almost perfect anti-candidate. In fact, if any one person can be held responsible for foisting John McCain \u2014 and, thus, Sarah Palin \u2014 onto an unsuspecting nation, it&amp;#039;s our boy. He seemed to realize early on that the Republican primary electorate had lost its mind. He was not only the governor with the socialistic health-care scheme and the funky religious background, but also he was the governor of the state where gay people were getting married surrounded by sunshine and balloons and happy children, and not by plagues of locusts and rivers of blood. This threw him for a while, and then, in a desperate attempt to appease the lunatics, he began to talk even crazier than they did. (In one debate, he proposed to &amp;quot;double Gitmo&amp;quot; and argued about the efficacy of torture with McCain, of all people.) This turned him into such an incredible fake that there soon was actual polling data to the effect that, the more people saw Mitt Romney, the less they liked the guy. Now, however, it is time for people to run for president again. (In case you&amp;#039;re wondering, the only time when it is not time for people to run for president again falls between 11:59:59 A.M and 12:02:00 P.M. on Inauguration Day, and that&amp;#039;s only if Chris Matthews is in the john.) And, lo and behold, Mitt&amp;#039;s out there. Of course, he&amp;#039;s running. And it&amp;#039;s beginning to look (again) like he might be positioning himself as the &amp;quot;reasonable alternative&amp;quot; to people like Sarah Palin, Mike Huckabee, The Ghost of Vlad the Impaler, Trigger, or whomever else the batshit-crazy crowd decides to attach itself to for the 2012 election. The reason we know this is that Mitt \u2014 or, more likely, someone working for him \u2014 recently wrote an op-ed for The Washington Post criticizing the Obama administration over its new START arms-limitation treaty. Now arms control is not one of those issues ginning up the crazoid base. For example, it has nothing to do with the socialist-Kenyan-Alinsky-usurper&amp;#039;s plans to march Michelle Bachmann&amp;#039;s grandmother off into those nether realms wherein resides the congresswoman&amp;#039;s discarded sanity. This means that Mitt is trying to be a National Leader again. It&amp;#039;s an ungainly dive for the votes of serious people. And, yes, just as soon as it appeared, you could start feeling the plaster falling from on high again. It is impossible to remember an op-ed piece from a major political figure that has been so roundly mocked as this one has been. It is impossible to remember a political figure who has been so roundly mocked for having attached his name to an op-ed piece. The final deathblow was struck by none other than Richard Lugar, the white-haired Ent who has been representing Indiana in the Senate since shortly after George Rogers Clark beat feet out of Indianapolis. Lugar is so respectably old-school Republican that he belongs on a coin. The man&amp;#039;s career makes Margaret Chase Smith&amp;#039;s look like Lady Gaga&amp;#039;s. When Richard Lugar goes out of his way to pummel you within an inch of your political life, on an issue of serious importance, you really have only two choices: either retire again to private life, or strap on the clown shoes and go native. Anybody who can&amp;#039;t predict which way Mitt&amp;#039;s likely to go hasn&amp;#039;t been paying attention through the previous seven paragraphs or so. Quite simply, there is no viable constituency for the Sensible Republican this time around. If the midterms go as sour on the Democrats as it appears they might, then the Locked Ward element of the GOP is going to be so richly empowered that it will be far beyond anyone&amp;#039;s ability to control it. Hell, Mike Huckabee beat Mitt Romney in Iowa last time, despite spending about 85 cents on his campaign, and the party wasn&amp;#039;t anywhere near as nutty as it is now. I guarantee you, Mitt&amp;#039;s people are even now plotting how much of the Jesus-on-a-soda-cracker vote they can break off for him before anyone notices (again) what an unprincipled hack he&amp;#039;s become. Sorry, Willard. To them, you&amp;#039;ll always be the RINO in the funny underwear. Esquire contributing editor Charles P. Pierce writes frequently for The Politics Blog, and even more frequently for The Boston Globe and its Sunday magazine. His book, Idiot America: How Stupidity Became a Virtue in the Land of the Free, is now available in paperback. BREAKDOWN: Mitt&amp;#039;s Got the Cash to Blow Another One &amp;amp;gt;&amp;amp;gt; "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.esquire.com/news-politics/politics/a7968/mitt-romney-2012-campaign-071310/>