IN A ROMNEY PRESIDENCY, DON'T COUNT ON ROMNEY TO PLAY THE GOOD COP

John Cole flagged this New York Times story under the headline "Here's an Idea -- Stop Financing the Elections of Nihilists and Crazy People":

Big business groups like the Chamber of Commerce spent millions of dollars in 2010 to elect Republican candidates running for the House. The return on investment has not always met expectations.

Even though money for major road and bridge projects is set to run out this weekend, House Republican leaders have struggled all week to round up the votes from recalcitrant conservatives simply to extend it for 90 or even 60 days. A longer-term transportation bill that contractors and the chamber say is vital to the recovery of the construction industry appears hopelessly stalled over costs.

At the same time, House conservatives are pressing to allow the U.S. Export-Import Bank, which has financed business exports since the Depression, to run out of lending authority within weeks. The bank faces the very real possibility of shutting its doors completely by the end of May, when its legal authorization expires.

And a host of routine business tax breaks -- from wind energy subsidies to research and development tax credits -- cannot be passed because of Republican insistence that they be paid for with spending cuts....

This is what they're doing when they control one half of one branch of government. This is what they're doing to the business community, which we assumed was part of their coalition.

Now, you can argue that they're just trying to harm the economy until they can elect one of their own as president. But they don't think Mitt Romney is one of their own, do they? Do you really want to be the rent money on the notion that they're going to moderate if they win the Senate and get a president of their own party, even if (or perhaps especially if) they think he's a squish? They'd rather burn the whole country down than compromise now -- do you think they're going to be the ones doing the deferring if Romney is president? Romney, a guy whose core principles are always "Whatever you guys want"?