Did Romney Just Kill His Campaign Before It Began?

I know he was speaking metaphorically, and that he didn't intend it to sound the way it did, but come on. Romney has got to be more careful than this.

Expected Republican presidential contender Mitt Romney tread on socially dangerous ground last night as he talked about the need to "hang" a misery index around the neck of Barack Obama, the nation's first black president.

Here's Romney's statement in full context as to avoid any confusion (emphasis mine):

"You remember during the Ronald Reagan/Jimmy Carter debates? That Ronald Reagan came up with this great thing about the 'misery index,' and that he hung that around Jimmy Carter's neck, and that had a lot to do with Jimmy Carter losing. Well, we're going to have to hang the 'Obama Misery Index' around his neck. And, I'll tell you, the fact that you've got people in this country, really squeezed, with gasoline getting so expensive, with commodities getting so expensive, families are having a hard time making ends meet. So, we're going to have to talk about that, and housing foreclosures and bankruptcies and higher taxation. We're going to hang him — uh, so to speak, metaphorically — with, uh, with, uh — you have to be careful these days, I've learned that, with an Obama Misery Index."

According to the report, the audience reaction was a mix of nervous laughter with applause. ...Applause. There is video out there that cuts off Romney's last few words as he tries to clarify his comments, which is why I'm almost certain this is going to be taken out of context and someone will run with it. But I doubt it will be Andrew Breitbart.

Some helpful advice for Mitt Romney. Don't speak off the cuff and STAY AWAY from "neck hanging" metaphors when running against a black man!

Just Like Kudzu

posted by Armadillo Joe

KUDZU: Pueraria lobata (syn. P. montana, P. thunbergiana) is one of about 20 species in the genus Pueraria in the pea family Fabaceae, subfamily Faboideae. It is a climbing, coiling, and trailing vine native to southern Japan and southeast China.

[...]

Kudzu was introduced from Japan into the United States in 1876 at the Philadelphia Centennial Exposition, where it was promoted as a forage crop and an ornamental plant.

[...]

It was subsequently discovered that the Southeastern US has near-perfect conditions for kudzu to grow out of control — hot, humid summers, frequent rainfall, temperate winters with few hard freezes [...] and no natural predators.

[...]

kudzu has been spreading in the southern U.S. at the rate of 150,000 acres (61,000 ha) annually, "easily outpacing the use of herbicide spraying and mowing, as well increasing the costs of these controls by $6 million annually." Its introduction has produced devastating environmental consequences.

Rick Pearlstein at the Washington Post online -- whose book on Goldwater I just finished and whose other book on Nixon I am currently reading -- puts this whole birther/deather/town-hell thing into perspective. But not in a way you might find encouraging:

...the birthers, the anti-tax tea-partiers, the town hall hecklers -- these are "either" the genuine grass roots or evil conspirators staging scenes for YouTube? The quiver on the lips of the man pushing the wheelchair, the crazed risk of carrying a pistol around a president -- too heartfelt to be an act. The lockstep strangeness of the mad lies on the protesters' signs -- too uniform to be spontaneous. They are both. If you don't understand that any moment of genuine political change always produces both, you can't understand America, where the crazy tree blooms in every moment of liberal ascendancy, and where elites exploit the crazy for their own narrow interests.

[...]

The instigation is always the familiar litany: expansion of the commonweal to empower new communities, accommodation to internationalism, the heightened influence of cosmopolitans and the persecution complex of conservatives who can't stand losing an argument.

[...]

The various elements -- the liberal earnestly confused when rational dialogue won't hold sway; the anti-liberal rage at a world self-evidently out of joint; and, most of all, their mutual incomprehension -- sound as fresh as yesterday's news.

[...]

The orchestration of incivility happens, too, and it is evil. Liberal power of all sorts induces an organic and crazy-making panic in a considerable number of Americans, while people with no particular susceptibility to existential terror -- powerful elites -- find reason to stoke and exploit that fear. And even the most ideologically fair-minded national media will always be agents of cosmopolitanism: something provincials fear as an outside elite intent on forcing different values down their throats.

[...]

The tree of crazy is an ever-present aspect of America's flora. Only now, it's being watered by misguided he-said-she-said reporting and taking over the forest

Really, go read the whole thing. It's worth it.