The New Republic

I am not a software programmer, but I have worked with some. 1. I think Romney is an artificial intelligence android. 2. He is an early model with imperfect software. 3. He has now fallen into what is known in programming as an infinite loop. This loop triggers on the cue "flip flop." Even Novell Mormon junior programmers can code better than this. Perhaps Romney is a product of a Somali programming trainee.

- skahn

November 11, 2011 at 7:01pm

Molly Redden-- While I agree that Romney is an incurable flip flopper, I'm afraid that this new strategy of his--proclaiming his "steadiness and constancy"--might actually work, or at least work better than anything Mitt had tried prior to Wednesday's debate. This is a strategy that Karl Rove and the Bush administration crafted to almost Orwellian perfection: take what is least true about a policy or a candidate, turn that truth on its head, and then proclaim the new reality, as if it weren't an invention, as if it weren't fiction. For just one instance, the term "coalition of the willing," which was employed to suggest that there was broad international support for the 2003 US invasion of Iraq--when nothing could have been further from the truth. (While some 46 nations were listed among said coalition at the time of the invasion, only three of those countries contributed troops to the invasion force.) We see the same strategy at work, night after night, on Fox News: Obama's health care plan, for instance, is not about saving the lives of the uninsured, it's about "death panels." There are hundreds of such examples one could cite, and many of them have been almost shockingly effective, in terms of taking a demonstrable reality, turing it on its head, and doing so in such a way that it convinces millions of American voters of a new collectively shared narrative, a new collectively shared fiction. Given the nature of our culture, I guess this shouldn't be so surprising (although it is). It is an axiom of advertising, after all, that one takes what is least true about one's product and turns this around in the ad, to one's advantage. In other words, one invents, one distorts, one lies, and does so in order to recreate the new public face (or fiction, or image) of the product. For instance, for many years the catch phrase of a radio news station here in the NY area has been, "More than just the headlines." When, in reality, all the station provides is indeed headlines, stories of less than a minute or 30 seconds. What Karl Rove and Fox News and the Tea Party--and now, perhaps, Mitt Romney--have discovered is that this is a consistently effective (if soul-corrupting) strategy. And, unfortunately, the Republicans are very, very good at it.

- BenNevis

November 12, 2011 at 10:07am

nice try Ben, but the Romney family dog is finally applying for asylum in Canada, and my bet is that dog story will ultimately take down the whole campaign. Seriously, the dog story from 2008 has started to pop up again on Fox cable's Five light news in the past week, which made me wonder if even Fox is tired of Romney. skahn: thanks for the laugh - "Somali programming trainee" and no doubt illegal :) BTW, the one thing Romney HAS been consistent about, since 2005, is his belief that he wants to be President.

- K2K

November 12, 2011 at 11:14am

K2K-- You write: "nice try Ben, but the Romney family dog is finally applying for asylum in Canada, and my bet is that dog story will ultimately take down the whole campaign." I'll take that bet, K2K! I'm not a Romney supporter, not even in the slightest, but I can't see the family dog story taking Mitt down. Yes, back in 2007, there was some attention paid to this story (in the Boston Globe, for instance), but over the four long years since it was last reported, the Romney dog story doesn't appear to have gotten any real traction anywhere in the press, except for one place: the columns of Gail Collins (who has mentioned said dog story some twenty different times). So, sorry, K2K, but I'm afraid that dog won't hunt.

- BenNevis

November 12, 2011 at 11:56am

Enlighten me. How does having the same wife and religion for a long time make one politically consistent? Would the obverse obtain: sexual promiscuity would guarantee erratic policy positions and ideological volatility? Give me a break.

- orray2

November 12, 2011 at 12:08pm

I can see Mitt losing in mostly three ways ... one, if Obama kills him with kindness (i.e. Obamneycare), two, if the PACs are able to make the "flip flopping cynic" label stick ("I'm running for office, for Pete's sake"), and three, if Obama continues to pound on Republicans in general. The combination will hopefully do the trick.

- NR409654

November 13, 2011 at 11:52pm