Hell, man, give me enough time and money and I bet I could get elected governor. Palin got elected governor.
(Seriously, give me the money. I’ll totally do it.)
I think having to feed the right wing tea party masses of his party has truly caused him to be in uncomfortable positions. In Mass he could win with a more moderate position, now he needs red meat for his base and it seems untenable, almost like a “DOES NOT COMPUTE” is going off in his brain.
This, and what Balance said, I should steal that chameleon line. 
What I think we see is Romney’s reaction to the drubbing he must be having from tea party “supporters” that are not just demanding, but **ordering **to a conservative moderate (Romney) to be just as rabid and intolerant as they are.
He got elected to governor of Massachusetts as a moderate, which he probably actually is. He is flailing trying to pretend he is a hardcore conservative now.
Romney released a new campaign ad today where he speaks directly to the camera, claiming he’s for everybody, his heart aches, etc.
The Democrats Respond (video in article).
The Daily Show did a wonderful piece last night in which Stewart concluded that Romney was going through his own personal Flowers for Algernon story, becoming less and less intelligent as each day passes.
I know I am hopelessly partisan. But, damn, the Democrats are putting out some hard-hitting ads this year. Where were these kinds of ads in previous elections?
That was classic. Particularly Stewart’s “Come on, read a fucking book!” aside to the audience.
[aside] Did the audience groan because they didn’t know the book (and isn’t it really a short story or novella), or because Jon basically said Romney is mentally retarded? [/aside]
Are they really allowed to use the “I’m Mitt Romney and i approve this message” at the end?
I got the sense that it was a prepared part of the bit that Stewart would have used no matter what the audience had done, but the joke he made was that the audience groaned because they knew they were going to have to look it up later on Wikipedia to figure out what it was.
Originally a Hugo winning novella, then turned into a novel.
Some of them laughed and some of them groaned, and both responses (as well as the context of the joke) suggest they understood what he was saying about Romney. I’m not sure why he went with the “read a fucking book!” line, but maybe it was directed at some people who didn’t react to the joke.
I think he would’ve responded with a “Read a fucking book” no matter how the audience reacted. It seems like a good way to acknowledge that they’ve just made a literary reference that is semi-obscure. It’ll help the portion of the audience that doesn’t understand it not feel so dumb.
Off topic of course, but is Flowers for Algernon really semi-obscure? We had to read the novel in class in the fifth grade.
Oh, and that Democratic ad featuring Romney quotes is one of the most brutal I’ve ever seen. I approve - its about fucking time the Dems played hardball.
If Al Gore’s team had half the testosterone that the Obama team does, there never would have been a W presidency, the Iraq War would never have happened, and the recession would have been prevented.
It wasn’t Gore’s lack of testosterone, it was Clinton’s excess that made the W presidency.
The new 47% ad from the actual Obama campaign is actually harder and more brutal than the DNC ad:
Really? The novel in fifth grade? I seem to remember that it’s pretty long, and has some non-trivial relation to sex. Are you sure you didn’t read the short story? It’s only twenty pages or so. And, of course, it’s much better.
Oh, and Jophiel, that ad is devastating. I love that it has no narration, no commentary, just a recording of Romney himself. It’s simple, and the Obama campaign correctly judged that it needs no adornment.
And just imagine what Obama will do when he decides to stop being Mister Nice Guy!