Does Mitt Romney Have Any Friends?

Does anybody outside of Romney’s family circle actually like him? Did Seamus? Does Rafalca or any of his other three dressage horses? It occurs to me that I haven’t seen a single Romney bumper sticker (but I see Obama stickers every day), and a somewhat conservative leaning friend of mine muttered, after seeing a Romney ad on TV, “I can’t stand that son-of-a-bitch.”

It seems Romney just can’t find a friend. Matt Drudge apparently like him, but he’s a sleaze and a scoundrel, and there are credible rumors that he has some very bizarre sexual fetishes that might give squeaky clean Mitt pause. He’ll gladly make use of Drudge’s knack for distortion and disinformation, but he’ll keep him at arm’s length.

So what about political allies? There the situation is similarly bleak and lonely. Look at the the VP possibilities. Have you seen that troupe of doormats and non-entities that compose Romney’s short list? Tim Pawlenty? The man is a walking sedative. He’s Sominex. He’s phenobarbital. Rob Portman? Who? Then there’s David Petraeus, lifelong Pentagon bureaucrat. He’s about as exciting as oatmeal and rice cakes. If you had never seen what he looked like, all you have to do is repeat the words “lifelong Pentagon bureaucrat” to get a pretty accurate image of the man. Besides, I’ve never been crazy about military men being around the White House. One of these days the electorate might figure out that they they usually don’t make very good presidents. None of these dull gray shadows will do anything to help Mitt. He is simply too inept a politician to be saved by some bland political weeny from a swing state.

Then there’s Paul Ryan, Eddie Munster’s long lost twin. He appears to be a full grown adult but still reads Ayn Rand novels. There is just something intrinsically wrong with that, like bestiality and incest, or dressage. Full disclosure: I’ve read almost everything she ever wrote (except Atlas Shrugged, although I tried. It is beyond terrible. It is a disaster on every level.) This was many, many years ago when I was a callow youth and hadn’t yet figured out the way the world really works. But someday I would, in spades. All of my dreams about becoming a capitalist übermensch were shattered the first time I ever punched a clock.

I never much cared for Victor Hugo either, who was Rand’s favorite novelist; nor do I really think one way or the other about Rachmaninoff, her favorite composer. To a normal human being such inconsequential differences of opinion are properly dismissed as irrelevant. Some of us actually cherish them because they make our species more diverse. In the objectivist universe, however, it is a reflection of deep seated psycho-epistemological disorders that may indicate some kind of pathological attachment to altruism or something equally vile. If nothing else, it exposes you as an utterly reprehensible and worthless human being, maybe even worse than Immanuel Kant, who was Ayn Rand’s Lucifer. You can sum up the damage Objectivism has done to our country in two simple words: Alan Greenspan. Moving on …

Which brings us to another aesthetically challenged contender, His Rotundity the Second Chris Christie (John Adams was the First). For largely inexplicable reasons, the media has fallen in love with him just as they have Paul Ryan. He must be people like Howard Fineman’s beau ideal of a real man. The fact that he is just a corpulent and obnoxious jerk, the kind who tramples people to death at Wal-Mart every Christmas, just makes the eunuchs in the Washington press core swoon more ecstatically. If Christie was a war hero Chris Matthews would have to be committed to the psych ward for compulsive self abuse.