By Jeffrey Page

It’s over, thank God. Years after the Republicans decided that Barak Obama would be easy pickings in 2012, it’s over. And after the crowd of GOP candidates grew so thick it looked like the E Train during rush hour, it’s over. Finally it was just Romney, and as Mitt went down to defeat, he took some very annoying people with him.

The major pin to fall of course was Mitt himself. Unless he changes his mind about ending his political career – and remember, he has changed his mind about everything else – we no longer have to listen to his non-answers. (Yes, but which income tax deductions would you end? he was asked again and again, and never said anything of substance.) In doing so, Romney inadvertently proved that a majority of people in the United States will not be bamboozled by a candidate waging a campaign that says nothing, answers nothing, and ultimately is nothing. Romney’s form of a careful, nonspecific campaign for fear of offending someone recalls a line by E.E. Cummings: “A politician is an arse upon which everyone has sat except a man.”

And a Romney episode that shocked me but seemed to run out of steam fairly quickly was the case of the boy with the bleached hair. Years ago when he was in prep school and before he adopted his Ozzie Nelson persona, Mitt spotted a fellow student on campus with chemically blond hair. With a group of likeminded Neanderthal vigilantes – not even one-on-one – Romney attacked the other boy and cut off his hair. Such an act identifies you for life and maybe you ought not run for president if you were part of the gang because America doesn’t like cowards who attack in packs.

Goodbye Mitt.

By now, it has likely dawned on Nan Hayworth, the one-term backbencher, that you can’t win an election by saying nothing more than your opponent doesn’t live in the district. Nor can you romance the Tea Party while flirting with everyone else at the dance with a hint that you’re really pro choice.

Goodbye Nan.

What should have been apparent to certain national Republicans is that sometimes you actually have to be civil if you hope to accomplish something. The example is Angus King, the former Republican governor of Maine who jumped into this year’s contest as an independent for the Senate seat being vacated by the moderate Republican Olympia Snowe.

His move could have been orchestrated by George Washington Plunkitt, the Tammany boss of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, who once declared (in another context) “I seen my opportunities and I took ‘em.”

King took ‘em and won, despite being trashed by the GOP. Now he has a decision to make: Will he caucus with the Republicans or the Democrats? Take a guess.

As noted by Zest writer Jean Webster last week, a man named Joe Walsh ran for a congressional seat in Illinois. His opponent was Tammy Duckworth, a career soldier who reached the rank of lieutenant colonel and who lost her legs in combat in Iraq. It’s hard to run against someone gravely wounded in combat so Walsh declared total war on Duckworth. He said she was not heroic enough and, in one of the ugliest quotes of the year, said: “What else has she done? Female? Wounded veteran? Ehhhhh.”

Duckworth: Elected. Walsh: Back under his rock.

Todd Akin and his “legitimate rapes?” Gone.

Tammy Baldwin, the openly gay candidate for senator from Wisconsin? Elected.

Florida. Admit it. At times Tuesday night, you experienced the sickening feeling that, as in 2000, this election would wind up in the hands of state officials in Florida and that the state Supreme Court would rule one way and the U.S. Supreme Court would rule another way, and that Obama, with a minuscule Florida lead, would be the new Al Gore.

But then came Virginia, Pennsylvania, the fabled Ohio, and suddenly you understood that Romney was going home to Boston, that President Obama was going home to the White House, and that Florida didn’t matter.

This entry was posted on Sunday, November 4th, 2012 at 6:20 pm and is filed under Jeffrey Page. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.