Romney Leads Weak Republican Field

After watching the Lakers lose again with Kobe Bryant missing shot after shot, channel surfing took me to C-Span, where I was momentarily entranced by the vegetable art behind Mitt Romney. Squash, pumpkins, zucchini, corn and other garden vegetables were carefully arranged in a farm style backdrop to a Mitt Romney with his shirt sleeves rolled up to permit manual work if Mitt didn't have millions of dollars deposited in foreign banks.

Romney reminds one of Tony Martinez in the sense that he is far better funded and organized than his opponents. His speeches do not inspire even with carefully crafted punch lines. He raises the pitch of his voice to allow for a smattering of claps, rather than have his words interrupted spontaneously by applause. As I watched him work the crowd at the Machine Shed Restaurant in Rockford, Illinois, it seemed like watching an actor play the role of presidential candidate.



My mild interest in the GOP presidential field started with a 2:00 am call last summer from a Southmost political gadfly, who declared giddily that Rick Perry would be the next president of these United States. Without being particularly knowledgeable or clever, I knew better than that. A governor doesn't threaten to secede from the union and become president in the same lifetime.

The country soon learned what many in Texas already knew, that Rick was "all hat and no cattle". Lorne Michaels, the producer of Saturday Night Live owes Perry bigtime for supplying so much comedy for the show.

Herman Caine gave Rick Perry a good fight for dumbest candidate before mercifully "suspending" his campaign, but both were topped by Rick Santorum. Santorum keeps getting tripped by his own words, current and archived. His old speech declaring Satan the Devil the greatest threat to our country and another statement dismissing the Catholic Church's long documented priest/child abuse scandal as "homosexuality" were both revived for review. In Puerto Rico he linked statehood with making English the official language.

Then, of course, there's Newt Gingrich. It's not the divorces or the infidelity or the betrayal of a sick wife. It's really all of the lies he had to tell to work through and around all of those situations. He comes off as the consummate liar. For all we know, he may be lying about giving us $2.50 a gallon gas if we make him our president.