Triangulators

In a succession of debates and in other public forums in the past six weeks, Republican presidential candidates Michelle Bachman and Rick Santorum in particular have repeatedly attacked fellow Republican Rick Perry, while curiously silencing their criticism of the other leading Republican candidate, Mitt Romney. This is curious, since Perry is clearly more in sync with the views of Bachman and Santorum, both as a social and a fiscal conservative.

It's hard not to conclude that both Bachman and Santorum have looked at their own moribund campaigns for the presidency and decided to audition for Mitt Romney as potential vice presidential candidates by attacking his only credible opponent, Rick Perry. Romney's big problem is that - despite his efforts to appear otherwise - he is Establishment to his core. He has none of the qualities that most Republicans look for in a candidate: a record as a fiscal conservative or a willingness to stand up to the pathological desire of Democrats to meddle in every aspect of our lives, much less their desire to steal all of our money and give it to their friends.

And don't even get me going on the gigantic elitist stick Romney apparently had shoved up his ass at birth. You know the one I'm talking about: It's the stick that makes him incapable of loosening up. Not that he hasn't tried, with disastrous results. A month ago, he deigned to roll the sleeves of his $140 custom fitted shirt up to his elbows, or more likely had his manservant do it for him. On another occasion about two months ago, he actually ventured out amongst the Hoi Polloi and ate a hot dog. That was a one time deal by the way. There is no public record of Romney having eaten a hot dog before or since.

Romney's real problem is that the stick up his ass is the only thing in him that approximates a backbone. And thus the convergence of Romney's ambitions and those of, say, Bachman and Santorum. For an electorate that craves authenticity, a politician that speaks his mind and damn the torpedoes, the likes of Romney is anathema. He is the ultimate Triangulator: a Shape Shifter who can pass ObamaCare in Massachusettes out of one side of his mouth, and castigate it two years later out of the other.

He needs authenticity. Enter Bachman and Santorum. Both have the credentials if only because they have devoted a large portion of their political capital to speaking their minds, gigging Democrats, and calling a spade a spade. In other words, their candor (up to this point) has been balm to the soul of a weary electorate, and the one quality above all others that would endear them to the Tea Parties.

How strange then, to see them both take their primary asset, and pimp it out to a guy who is indistinguishable from, say, George Herbert Walker Bush.

And how sad.