Mitt Romney Is A Terrible Politician, Ed. 387676

http://2012.talkingpointsmemo.com/2012/09/mitt-romney-obamacare-preexisting-condition.php?ref=fpblg

Romney, I apologize for the earthy phrase, can't keep from stepping on his own dick.

Admittedly, it's tea leaf reading, but yesterday had two grinning Democrats (see below) and Romney going culture war (with the "taking God off our money") and stepping all over his health care position.  The Obama campaign looks confident and is clearly getting some sort of bounce from its convention.  The Romney camp looks shaky because it got NO bounce from its convention.

And so Romney tries to say something he probably believes (about pre-existing conditions and other parts of ACA he'd love to keep) but immediately has to walk it back.

Some of this is just Romney's incompetence as a politician.  Like his "I didn't talk about the troops because I only wanted to talk about important stuff" gaffe.

But in a larger sense, Romney is in an impossible place.  As Deval Patrick said in his speech, Romney has one, unalloyed accomplishment as a public servant: RomneyCare.  Which he can't mention and has to run against at the national level.

Romney has to run not only against Obama but against his own past as a moderate Republican in a blue state.

F. Scott Fitzgerald said that genius was the ability to hold contradictory thoughts in your mind at the same time.  Now Mitt is a smart guy, but not in THAT sense, especially since he has to hold three or four different positions in his mind at the same time and that's just impossible.

So, part of the problem is Mitt.  But a larger part of the problem is that the GOP has taken positions that are just so extreme and combative that it's impossible for a credible national candidate to embrace them all.