On the GOP side, the misreader-in-chief is clearly Mitt Romney. Can someone remind me why we were taking him seriously? I guess some people still are — just as the Democrats have their heavyweight troika, consisting of Clinton, Obama, and Edwards, so the GOP has its version, which evidently includes Romney along with Giuliani and McCain.

But the only things Romney has done while in the public eye confirm glaringly that he just doesn’t belong there. His big Sunday-morning unveiling in early February, on This Week, was humiliating even to watch.

You know how when you’re reading a book that’s so bad you actually feel embarrassed for the writer? That’s what Romney’s appearance was like. George Stephanopoulos tore him to pieces, without even trying that hard. Romney emerged as a devout Republican who voted in Democratic primaries (for a reason — to lend his vote to the weakest Democrat — that was patent nonsense), an incorruptible conservative who supported state abortion laws, and a “lifetime” member of the National Rifle Association — for the last few months!

This last one is technically accurate. One can join the NRA at any moment and check the box that says lifetime member; you or I could become one today and start calling ourselves that tomorrow. But its technical accuracy just shows what a metaphor for the emptiness of Romney’s campaign his membership is. ~Michael Tomasky

I know, this must be part of the wide-ranging conspiracy to destroy that great conservative, Mitt Romney!  That is apparently the new GOP spin to explain away the reality that everyone has begun to notice that Romney is as airy and insubstantial as one of the souffles that he would probably have banned from the White House kitchen if he became President.  Usually, however, people on the other side don’t regard their gravest foes and most worrisome opponents as a bad joke of a politician who is not even fit to compete for the prize. 

For all kinds of weird psychohistorical reasons tied up with a lack of their own ideas and the experience of the ’90s battles with Bubba, many conservatives regard Hillary as something like the incarnation of what the Zoroastrians called Drug, The Lie, and see in her election the end of all things good and true on earth (well, maybe it’s not quite that bad, but for some people it’s pretty close).  These people do not view her as a ridiculous buffoon, but as a deadly serious adversary.  Meanwhile, the left is falling over on the floor laughing at Romney, and no wonder.  He is a laughable candidate.  Not just flawed, not just lacking in credibility, not just out of sync with this particular political moment, but laughable.  Anyone who doubts this need only consider, as Tomasky notes later in his piece, that a key theme of his campaign will be his strong opposition to…France.  Tomasky neglected to mention Romney’s strong stand for freedom toast, liberation onion soup, the American way dip sandwich and liberty truffles, as well as his proposal to rename L’Enfant Plaza as Kid Square.  Some politicians succeed politically by vilifying hostile countries, but Romney is one of the first to try his hand at demagoguing against an ally.