Clearly, based on his fact-free performance at this week's debate and his fresh repudiation of the infamous "47 percent" comments he had made to rich patrons, Mitt Romney has decided to channel Richard Nixon. Or, more accurately, TV-channel Nixon.
Nixon, you may recall, was the flaming Republican reactionary who in 1968 ran for and won the presidency by becoming the "New Nixon," a widely used media moniker for his sudden, drastic shift leftward to the political middle. Of course, a tiger doesn't change its stripes. Although Nixon -- faced with a powerful Democratic Congress -- did offer up numerous moderate positions (for instance, creating the EPA and proposing a far more leftist health-care reform bill), at bottom his instincts remained sociopathic. That led to the "White House plumbers," the Nixon-directed Watergate break-in and other serious violations of law -- and, in turn, Nixon's resignation before he could be impeached.
Romney spent the primary season trying to out-conservative the rest of the mostly far-right Republican field. But it's become apparent to everyone that the ground he staked out then has become toxic to the general electorate. So he's turned on a dime, disavowing the wing-nut positions he espoused right on through the GOP national convention. Those positions either never were taken or he didn't mean them or they were wrong. Swallow all of that and Mitt's your man in November.
Actually, Romney has out-Nixoned Nixon, by transforming himself at least twice and, arguably, multiple times. Count 'em up below the fold.
Romney began his political career as a moderate Republican, the only kind that can win in Massachusetts. This was after he ran but failed to unseat Sen. Edward Kennedy. Even then, though, Romney morphed between an avowed believer in Roe v. Wade and other moderate to liberal positions from a more conservative GOP candidate. And before that tour de farce was his -- shall we say? -- sociopathic performance as a take-no-prisoners corporate raider at Bain Capital.
Romney's career thus has evolved into a political sitcom of gross proportions. It's unlikely to put him in the Oval Office (notwithstanding Republican-engineered vote suppression schemes in numerous states), but it may have been Romney's only remaining gambit. It's evidence his promises to tea party Republicans were hollow, and even suggests he may have planned this pirouette to the left all along.
True, the New Romney may sway a few -- like the PBS Newshour's undecided voter who, after the debate, described how impressed he was with Romney's apparently sympathetic stance toward the plight of the 47 percent of Americans, whom the candidate had dissed in private as lazy wards of the state. However, it's more likely that more people, including even some in the GOP fold, will find this flick-of-a-switch politician's transformation into a quasi-Democrat utterly unbelievable and unpalatable.
Which is why I predict the Romney sitcom will be canceled while the Obama action drama wins a four-year renewal.