Turd Blossoms

Perhaps the only news more surprising than the RNC’s sudden denunciation of the “Hussein” in Barack Hussein Obama is identity of the man who helped push it through: Karl Rove. According to the Atlantic, Rove has been telling his party that the repetitive use of Obama’s middle name would “perpetuate the notion that Republicans were bigoted and would hurt the party.”

This is the same man, of course, who helped label a triple amputee as soft on defense, and who orchestrated a whisper campaign that a judge’s concern for abused children stemmed from the fact that he was secretly a pedophile. And hey, didn’t John McCain sire a black baby or something?

What a difference two years out of power makes.

Related: If Ryan Lizza’s recent piece on the inner workings of John McCain’s Straight Talk Express doesn’t make you wish you were sitting on that horseshoe couch right now, you’re probably an accountant. Ink-stained wretches everywhere dream about having that kind of freewheeling access. It makes our jobs easier, and as Liza shows, when our jobs are easier, everybody – us, the people we cover, and the people who have to read our copy – wind up better off.

It also makes me feel really, really bad for the poor bastards who were stuck following Mitt Romney around for months on end.

The Hill and the Hall Week in Review

(Cross-posted to Boston Daily)

Mitt Romney’s campaign for president has ended. Who’ll we make fun of now?

It was, by all accounts, a bizarre scene at City Hall on Wednesday when the Boston firefighters union met with members of the City Council.

“What they really should’ve done is convene the Council psychologist,” says a source. “They seem crazed, like they’re living in denial. I get it – they’re feeling pressure, the leaks are pissing them off, they feel like they’re being dragged through the mud. But nothing good can be coming from them fighting drug testing. Fifty minutes of that one hour meeting was just them venting. There were no talking points. It was just stream of consciousness emotion.”

As far as we’ve been able to ascertain, the union’s vaunted PR firm was not in attendance.

Electoral Losers and the Code of the Streets

I did some calling around yesterday, trying to get quotes reacting to Mitt Romney’s sudden France-hating, anti-Jihad implosion. And as much as it hurts to say, Howie got it right today – getting dead does do a lot for your popularity. Here’s a guy who, four years after mercilessly excoriating John Kerry as a fake, up and tried to fake his way clear to the White House. It doesn’t work. So what happens? The people in his own party – both those who were with him, and those working against him – praise him for exiting graciously and talk up his bright, bright future. Get your shades, son.

And what of the reaction from Massachusetts Democrats – people who have, more or less, spent the past six years battling Romney, cursing him, serving as the punchlines in his rightward-pandering jokes, and lobbing one nasty quote after another towards reporters? What do they say when this man fails?

Nothing.

Smile a Little, Mitt

These are not fun times for Willard Mitt Romney. His campaign’s nearly done for actually done for and with good reason. Quoth the Globe:

With 499 total delegates up for grabs through March 4, Romney would have to win more than 80 percent of them to catch McCain, assuming the Arizona senator won none. And, even if Huckabee won them all, he would still trail McCain. Dividing the total among the three candidates makes over taking the front-runner more difficult still.

Awww. Looks like woobums needs a hug. Or a good laugh. Hey, that Sal DiMasi’s a funny guy. He’s always good for a laugh.In fact, there was once a time way back in the spring of 2006 when Romney and DiMasi shared a great, full laugh together. What fun they had. In times like these, it’s best to go to one’s happy place – and for Mitt Romney, there can be no happier memory than the day he put on a massive show and signed the state’s landmark health care reform law. Let’s revisit that day, Mitt, and hopefully brighten your day a little bit.