YOU WANT TO SEE "SHINY OBJECTS," JENNIFER RUBIN? I'LL SHOW YOU "SHINY OBJECTS"

A couple of weeks ago, in an interview with Fox's Neil Cavuto, Mitt Romney said:

"Well, I think you're going to find throughout this campaign season that the president's team will be doing everything in their power to try and hold up various shiny objects. Many of them will be in regard to me, some will be with regards the president's policies or promises of some new major giveaway.

"All these things designed to take people's eyes off the ball, which is the massive deficit this president has put in place, his inability to develop our energy resources in this country, his ObamaCare, which is not attractive at all to the American people. And an economy which is stumbling along..."

In other words: there are two kinds of things we can talk about in this campaign -- what Mitt Romney wants to talk about ... and distractions.

According to Jennifer Rubin, the insane obsession of one of Romney's chief fund-raisers and surrogates, a man with whom Romney has chosen to appear at more than one campaign event, is a "shiny object":

The notion that Donald Trump's fundraiser is some kind of debacle for Mitt Romney is one more “shiny object” stunt that is a transparent diversion by the Obama campaign so the media will avoid examining President Obama’s record. And it’s yet another indication of just how in-the-tank-for-Obama is so much of the media coverage....

But here's how "shiny objects" work on the other side. The right-wing base isn't really motivated to vote for Mitt Romney, whose full commitment to the Cause is suspect. So the right keeps ginning up stories meant to enrage the base and make sure that the crazies in the base think the whole country is going to hell in a handbasket and the only possible salvation is the defeat of Barack Obama. These things don't even have to be connected to Obama -- the base sees everything to the left of the GOP as one hydra-headed evil octopus, so the right-wing blog obsession of the past few days -- Brett Kimberlin -- serves as a "shiny object" meant to distract from Romney's weaknesses as a candidate (right-wingers are being victimized by the liberal media, and the liberal criminal justice system, and liberal George Soros-funded organizations!). So is the sting video released by the anti-abortion group Live Action, in which a Planned Parenthood staffer who's since been fired agrees to help a right-wing activist posing as a woman who wants a sex-selection abortion. It's all meant to keep the base enraged. It's all meant to advance the Cause. It's all meant to make righties feel outgunned and under siege, with their vote of November being their last chance to avoid extermination or an irreversible totalitarian hell.

When our side talks about Trump, it's because Mitt Romney has done everything in his power to cozy up to Trump short of putting the loutish SOB on the ticket. He's Romney's highest-profile surrogate. Why is Romney's press secretary-wannabe acting as if talking about him and his cockamamie ideas is somehow out of bounds for Obama supporters?