Mitt Romney

Any decent human being with a modicum of shame would be embarrassed to be seen publicly with Mr. Trump, which is partly why Romney refused to be photographed with the grotesque parody of American wealth-worship when meeting with him late last year, but Romney is in desperation mode as he seeks to win the support of a bunch of people who just don’t like him very much. Now Trump is headlining Romney fundraisers and making radio appearances on behalf of the candidate and making sure that Americans know that they can expect Mr. Romney to be as fine a president as Trump University is a (non-accredited for-profit online) college.

Romney, truly the “Trump Steaks” of Republican presidential candidates, is statistically tied with Rick Santorum in the most recent Michigan poll, and running even with Santorum nationally as well, but this Trump endorsement should be a huge help in his efforts to win over the all-important “credulous racist birther moron” vote.

Trump made sure his big endorsement coincided with the premiere of the new season of “Celebrity Apprentice,” and he is also counting on the fact that everyone basically forgot exactly how toxic his own pretend run for the nomination eventually became last year. And basically only liberal blogs are even bringing up the fact that Trump’s “platform” as a candidate was dark insinuations about the president’s birthplace and personal history, and that it collapsed entirely after the president actually released his “long-form birth certificate,” which showed that his already released regular birth certificate was genuine and accurate. (Though a couple conservatives have criticized Romney’s open embrace of Trump, more because Trump is extremely unpopular than because he’s a racist fraud.)

Romney indulging Trump by accepting his endorsement was gross, and Romney recruiting Trump to actively campaign for him should be universally declared well outside the realm of “acceptable” national campaign behavior, but it’s maybe too obviously sad and desperate for people to get up in arms about. (And the political press is uncomfortable explicitly calling a ridiculous con artist a ridiculous con artist, even when it’s post-birtherism Donald Trump, so the lack of “nationally reviled untrustworthy clown endorses candidate” headlines at the traditional news organizations is not terribly surprising.) But it’s also gross that NBC renewed Trump’s contract and launched a new season of his terrible show, and it did it for similar reasons as Romney: He gets ratings, and headlines.

It just shouldn’t be forgotten or ignored that the only substantial difference between campaigning with Donald Trump and campaigning with Orly Taitz is that Trump is considered kosher because he’s a major-network TV star. (Well, and Orly has much better hair.)

Mike Huckabee! Glenn Beck! Rush Limbaugh! That time Time magazine called him an “influential evangelical” even though he’s a Catholic and therefore not actually an evangelical Christian! Sarah Palin! The Wall Street Journal!

I have a couple of thoughts on this.

First, those little tildes instead of em dashes for the quote attributions are bugging me. It makes all the quotes look like message board signatures. Second, the Santorum logo is pretty funny. The “O” sun that the eagle is blocking is too small or something, and it looks like this is an ad for Rick Sant Rum.

Also, obviously, if blurbs from Sarah Palin and Glenn Beck make you more inclined to support a candidate, you are basically the sort of person who sums up why America is broken and ungovernable.

Many of these positive quotes came from when Rick Santorum was a fringe candidate polling in the single digits, and they can best be understood as an attempt to be polite to the guy (Palin, a Gingrich enabler, is offering him faint praise here), or, alternately, attempts to damage Romney back when it was still possible for a new acceptable-to-the-elites candidate to enter the race (that was the point of the Journal’s inexplicable attacks on Romney’s perfectly supply-sidey tax plan). But none of that matters now! Rick Santorum will make everyone regret saying nice things about him back when they thought he’d go away after Iowa. (Except Glenn Beck, who probably does think Rick Santorum is likely the next George Washington, even though nothing about that makes any sort of sense, at all.)

Santorum will also maybe make Mitt Romney regret focusing all of his attention (money) on Newt Gingrich. Here’s Santorum’s other, better new ad, in which a creepy Romney lookalike (more a George Romney lookalike, actually?) shoots … “mud” at a Rick Santorum Fathead in that abandoned building from the end of “The Departed.”

George Romney looks so sad when he gets mud on his nice shirt, at the end! (He is also a horrible shot!) Also is Romney just doing target practice with these cutouts or is Santorum tricking him with decoys? It is not entirely clear. (And what does cap-and-trade have to do with anything?) But this ad is much better than the other one, because it is disgusting and odd instead of boring.

It is also, obviously, a negative attack ad attacking another candidate for airing negative attack ads, because an important aspect of the modern political campaign is constantly acting as wounded as possible for any reason at all while calling attention to your opponent’s total lack of basic human decency. Santorum is adept at playing the aggrieved victim (Google and homosexuals are so mean to him!) though he’s practically preempting Romney’s actual attack on Santorum, which didn’t really begin in earnest until, like, yesterday. Still, the important thing is that Santorum has reached the “hiring an impersonator of your opponent” stage, and there is no turning back now. (Next stop: comparing your opponent to a possessed sheep.)

At the National Review’s Katrina Trinko points out, Santorum has bought $41,000 in airtime in Michigan, compared to Romney’s $824,000. So Santorum needs the sillier gimmicky ads, like a Romney doppelganger firing a shit-rifle in a warehouse, to go “viral.” (We’re helping, Rick!) The best way to get free media pickup is to be extremely outrageous and/or shameless, so it’s all downhill from here, in terms of tone. Especially because Santorum’s lead is extremely precarious and based in large part on his not being Gingrich or Romney, both of whom voters now think of as detestable assholes, because of the ads they both ran against each other. (So be careful, Rick!)