Tagg: Mitt Romney “wanted to be president less than anyone I’ve met in my life”

Like when Stimpy was about to cry

Like when Stimpy was about to cry

Miracle Mike Sebba sent me this long postmortem of the Romney 2012 campaign, in which the candidate’s son says:

He wanted to be president less than anyone I’ve met in my life. He had no desire to . . . run. If he could have found someone else to take his place . . . he would have been ecstatic to step aside. He is a very private person who loves his family deeply and wants to be with them, but he has deep faith in God and he loves his country, but he doesn’t love the attention.

That’s saying something, since Tagg Romney meets only people who might plausibly become president. Why is Mitt Romney so much more likable in defeat? Call it the Citizen Kane effect: a rich person who wants more is a scary monster, but a rich person who has been disappointed is the human condition.

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Cory Booker calls Obama ad “nauseating”

Evil tie adjustor Mitt Romney in the "Romney Economics" ad

Last month, Cory Booker saved his neighbor from a burning building. That’s called political capital, and it enables you to do stuff like, say, criticize an attack ad from a presidential campaign you support. Booker described the “Romney Economics” ad, which paints Bain Capital as a “job-killing economic vampire”—thank you, CBS—as “nauseating.” He was particularly bothered by what he perceived as an attack on private equity:

It’s nauseating to the American public. Enough is enough. Stop attacking private equity. Stop attacking Jeremiah Wright. This stuff has got to stop, because what it does is it undermines, to me, what this country should be focused on. It’s a distraction from the real issues.

Before you accuse Cory Booker of a false equivalence, you should see the ad, which really does portray Bain as a mad job destroyer leaving a trail of broken pension funds across the midwest. It’s also six minutes long and about a steel mill closure, so check to see if Bruce Springsteen is standing behind you before you watch it. You don’t want to wind him up.

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Good night, sweet priss

Pictures into which flaccid dicks must be Photoshopped immediately

Shocking news yesterday: Rick Santorum has suspended his campaign for President. That in itself is not so shocking, but I still can’t believe that it happened before a sex scandal destroyed his personal life. As of this writing, I can only conclude that he has no personal life to destroy. Where a normal person would crusade against gay rights and contraception because he is raw-dogging it six days a week in the bathroom at Wal-Mart, Santorum seems to genuinely believe the words that emerge from his mouth. In this way, he was an anomaly in contemporary politics. I would say that he will be missed, except everything he said—sincere or no—was insane. It’s like if there were a bird that, instead of singing, made extremely realistic farting sounds at high volume, and then it became extinct.

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This Newt Gingrich rap is of inferior quality

"I'm the hypest lyricist / while you're like 'what type of beer is this?'"

Today is the Florida Republican primary, when grandmothers across the state will vote on whom they like better: Mitt Romney, who looks like the hedge fund manager their granddaughter married, or Newt Gingrich, who looks like the guy who tried to finger them in the hot tub. It may be a tough day for Newton.* Fortunately, he has a comprehensive plan to expand his appeal beyond just, you know, munitions factory owners. Speaker Gingrich is for everybody, and everybody enjoys hip hop. Seriously, there is a pro-Gingrich rap song now, and that’s it—he was the last one. Props to Ben al-Fowlkes for the link.

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Perry leaves race, endorses Gingrich

"Is he the fat one? Yeah, what the fuck."

It was a classic story of the cruelty implicit in the American dream: Rick Perry, born son of struggling ranchers and once a serious contender for President, is now reduced to being the millionaire governor of Texas. His meteoric rise A) lasted about a week and B) only made his fall more vertiginous—and all for the simple crime of never knowing what he was doing. Perry has formally withdrawn his candidacy for the Republican nomination and, in one last act of electoral incompetence, instructed his followers to support Newt Gingrich. That’s like your dog running away and, as he goes, suggesting that you play fetch with the microwave. In a completely unrelated story, it turns out that Rick Santorum actually won Iowa.

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