IN CASE YOU WERE WONDERING HOW "MODERATE" MITT WOULD DEAL WITH A TEABAG CONGRESS...

Some insider pundits believe it's likely, or at least possible, that Mitt Romney will govern from the right-center if he becomes president, even if teabaggers and other far-rightists control one of both houses of Congress. But if what David Corn writes about Romney and the Trump endorsement is true, we have our answer to that question, and it isn't pretty: Mitt, if you can't stand up to Donald Trump....

A day after Mitt Romney was slammed from all sides for declaring he's not "concerned with the very poor" ... why would he accept an endorsement from celebrity-birther-.001-percenter Donald Trump and appear at the magnate's Las Vegas casino to do so?

... Romney may not have had a choice. This morning, several media outfits -- Politico, the New York Times, and the Atlanta Journal-Constitution -- were reporting that Trump was going to endorse Newt Gingrich. This suggests The Donald was talking to both camps to boost his leverage as he was negotiating a deal. (Quelle surprise!)

The Romney camp had to worry that a Trump endorsement of Gingrich would hurt the front-runner's efforts to keep Gingrich from mounting a full-scale Tea Party rebellion against Romney.... Winning Trump's seal (or bark) of approval would certainly have helped Gingrich in this endeavor and, undoubtedly, caused the commentariat to question whether Romney really could win over the party's conservative base....

To prevent that, Romney needed to be hired (politically) by Trump. And it's not hard to imagine Trump laying down a demand: if I endorse you, you better damn well hold my hand in public. So what's a rich guy gonna do? He will allowed himself to be played by Trump, to be his sidekick, if only for the moment. This shows that Romney cannot escape the gravitational pull of GOP craziness....

You know what else it shows? That Mitt Romney is a freaking coward. He's up by 20 points in the Nevada polls with less than 48 hours to go before the caucusing starts. Coming up soon are states where he has a natural advantage -- Michigan, Maine -- followed by big-money Super Tuesday. He's winning. So why doesn't he have the guts to tell Trump where he can stick his endorsement if it comes at a painful, humiliating cost? I know Trump could theoretically make Romney's life miserable in the fall by mounting a third-party run, but does anyone seriously think he was ever going to do anything other than tease us with that prospect? And with tea party heroes and heroines going every which way in this campaign -- Sharron Angle endorsing Rick Santorum, Ann Coulter continuing to cheerlead for Romney -- why assume that Trump is the Pied Piper of Teabaggia?

If Romney doesn't have the guts to stand up to Trump, he won't have the guts to stand up to the congressional tea party crowd or Al Qaeda. What a gutless wonder.