Ex-Governor Romney backs down, weasels, retrenches, stonewalls, bobs and weaves, and dissembles

By Pablo Fanque, ATIT National Affairs Editor

Illustrations by Jack Brummet

OK.  The Ex-Governor came out on top in a couple of polls today.  But he did not get there by standing fast or holding his ground.  He arrived there by weaseling, backing down, retrenching, and dissembling.

In a handful of key zones, Mitt Romney has begun to position himself as a centrist.  He doesn't have to worry about the Tea Party anymore.  They are going to hold their collective noses and vote for him.  But as for the rest of us:  

1) He now says he won't deport young illegal immigrants given a chance to stay in the United States by Obama...kind of weaseling in sideways to The Dream Act..  

2) Mr. Romney is also playing catch-up on the Affordable Health Care Act; far from his earlier stance of running as rapidly and far away from it as he could, he is now playing up the health care program a/k/a RomneyCare (with its individual mandate) that was his biggest accomplishment as governor of Massachusetts.  

3) Rhetorically, he's backed down from his own tax plan.  In the first debate, it was hard to analyze the difference between his and BHO's tax plan.  Honestly, it's hard to tell just what his plan is now, but it's a fine one, he says.  "Trust me."

4)  He even admitted in the debate that government regulation “is essential.”  "I mean, you have to have regulations so that you can have an economy work,” he told us. The way he stated it in the debate implied, "Oh you silly people, this is what I had in mind all along."  And, 

5)  After all the bobbing, weaving, and stonewalling over the last couple of weeks, the contrite Ex-Governor told Fox News last Thursday that his comment about the “47 percent” of the electorate he wrote off as moochers, freeloaders, and just flat-ass lazy, when he met with campaign donors, was “completely wrong.”  You said a mouthful Governor. 

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