This Week in Politics

It's only late September and many Republicans are already wishing Mitt Romney would go into hibernation until November 7. One conservative friend told me, “We shouldn't have even had a convention. We should have just nominated the guy and locked him in a closet until the election was over. No debates or anything, just a lot of TV commercials and some stock video footage of him shaking hands in crowds. Every time he opens his mouth, stupid spills out.” I reminded him that this was the guy he planned on voting for and he fell silent. I think I saw a tear well in his eye.

The myth that people didn't like Romney because they resented his wealth or he'd done a bad job "humanizing" himself in interviews is quickly being replaced by the reality that people don't like him because he's a jerk, as further evidenced by his recently professed disdain for just under half of the people in a country he's campaigning to lead – and his obtuseness in terms of why that's got some of them creased.

If primaries are like speed dating, modern general election campaigns are like living with someone. You can only keep up a facade for so long. Someone who is trying to sell themselves as something else is eventually going to succumb to exhaustion and be themselves. Check out the cold opening for SNL's season premiere for a hilarious parody that manages a pretty accurate depiction of what this means for his campaign and how easy Romney's gaffes are making it for President Obama.

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Keith Fitzgerald and Vern Buchanan are locked into one of the nastiest campaigns of recent memory. The two have recently agreed on at least two debates, but they'll likely have to tarp the stage with all of the mudslinging that's going on. Sarasota Supervisor of Elections Kathy Dent tried to explain the under vote of 18,000 in the 2006 race between Buchanan and Christine Jennings by suggesting people were so put off by the negative campaigning that many of them skipped the upper ticket race. This year, we might finally learn if that was true – just wait to see if the under vote is twice that.

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It was hilarious to see House Republicans suddenly concerned with the impact on the domestic economy of reducing government defense spending through sequestration. While debating the National Security and Job Protection Act passed last week, one GOP Congressman after another came to the dais to bloviate on the hundreds of thousands of jobs that would be lost if we cut defense spending by half a trillion over the next nine years – as a result of their bill, that they demanded while holding our economy hostage during the debt ceiling debacle.

Did they realize they were making the same Keynesian argument that they so often deplore – the one that usually gets a Republican's conservative card pulled before they all but tattoo RINO on their forehead? Probably not, but it was amusing nonetheless. Not one of them got up to argue that the invisible hand of the free market would simply redirect that investment in the most efficient manner. Next we'll have the GOP pontificating on the dangerous impacts reducing military spending can have on global warming, alternative energies and public education. 

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Has anyone at the Manatee County School District thought about hiring Linda Schaich in the finance department? Schaich was defeated in her August bid to replace Bob Gause, dubiously aided by recently departed Superintendent Tim McGonegal having kept from the public the fact that Schaich's accusations that the books had been cooked were true. In a recent interview, it was clear that despite limited access to information, Schaich's got the best handle on what's what, though she's unfortunately limited to three minutes of public comment and voluntary suggestions via email. The taxpayers, students, teachers and parents would be well-served if someone with her tenacity, expertise and lack of an agenda had some teeth in the process. Then again, maybe that's why some people worked so hard to make sure she wasn't elected.