Occasionally, I read Michelle Malkin's twitter feed (the doctor says the tumors should clear up after the election). And something on the rise in conservative circles, something the rabid right is retweeting regularly lately, is the phrase:
SQUIRREL!
Yes, the right has taken a break from insisting that our children's movies are brainwashing toddlers into mini-Stalins to quote Pixar's "UP." In it, a dog with a special collar that enables him to talk seems to have doggy A.D.D., constantly interrupting himself mid-sentence to point out that he thinks he sees a squirrel.
Fun fact: if you can get through the first ten minutes of "Up" without crying, you are a Republican.
Anyhow, the point here is that the GOP claims that the liberals are playing a game of "Squirrel politics," pointing out one distraction after another, to keep the focus off of what's important.
So... what IS important? I've figured it out.
Here's what the GOP considers a distraction:
-Mitt Romney tells 47% of the country can take a long walk off a short pier.
-Mitt Romney says some dangerously-untruthful, misguided things about the situation in the Middle East. Unlike the above statement, he didn't say these things in some secretly-recorded video to some campaign donors; he called a press conference, which generally means you specifically think that what you have to say is worth talking about.
-Clint Eastwood yells at a chair.
Taking it top to bottom, Romney has demonstrated contempt for half the country. He said a bunch of ignorant shit about Barack Obama that wouldn't have been considered a distraction from the issues if the press had run with what he'd said instead of fact-checking it, the Clint Eastwood thing, although minor, does indicate a severe lack of decision-making skills and a creeping desperation.
So basically, if the conversation rests on Mitt Romney, it's a distraction. If we're talking about Barack Obama, it's fair game.
This goes to the core of the Romney campaign- even people in the GOP are starting to get annoyed with Romney's lack of specificity on the campaign. He doesn't talk about himself, he talks about Obama.
That's because he's trying to run as a generic Republican, not as Mitt Romney. The fewer issues he can be seen to discuss, the more mainstream GOP voters and the Tea Party can assume that he agrees with them on major issues. He doesn't run on his record as Governor of Massachusetts, because that's full of liberal quirks and compromise that people in the right just hate.
He's not running to be president, he's running to UN-President Obama. His entire campaign depends on a lack of scrutiny directed towards him, even on issues that are clearly fair questions about his ability to govern or his position on certain key issues. He doesn't want the base looking at him too closely. He doesn't want independents looking at him too closely. He doesn't want the left to look at him at all. He only wants the media to look at him when he's telling them to look at Obama.
Mitt Romney IS the Squirrel. Whenever we notice Romney, we notice the squirrel.
So I'm in favor of Squirrel politics. Let's stare at the Squirrel. Let's only talk about the Squirrel. Let's make the Squirrel the constant focus of this campaign.
Because you know what? The Squirrel is running for president, godammit.