MITT ROMNEY TO USE DEBATES TO MAKE AMERICANS DISLIKE HIM EVEN MORE THAN THEY ALREADY DO

In the right-wing bubble, this must seem like a brilliant idea. Outside the right-wing bubble, it's clearly a terrible idea (unless, of course, you're a Barack Obama fan):

Mitt Romney to 'fact check' Obama in debate

Mitt Romney plans to turn himself into a one-man truth squad during the first presidential debate next week, casting President Barack Obama as someone who can't be trusted to stick to the facts or keep his promises.

Top Republicans are telegraphing Romney's hard-line strategy for his faceoff with Obama, according to Mike Allen's Playbook in POLITICO on Thursday....

So the guy who's getting clobbered in the polls on likability is going to devote significant time during the debate making himself seem even less likable, by finger-wagging, nitpicking, scolding, and generally seeming like the Hall Monitor from Hell, which is already what he seems like to many Americans? He's going to do this even though he's been overwhelmingly more dishonest than Obama, and will probably be more dishonest than Obama during the debate itself, a fact the press will be only too happy to point out? And he's going to do this, presumably, instead of offering a positive, detailed plan for America in the next four years, which is what persuadable voters were begging him to offer all through the campaign, until most of them just gave up?

Oh yeah, that ought to work.

*****

If I didn't know better, I might imagine that Romney has simply given up trying to win this thing and is just doing this to blow off steam. But what I really think is going on is that Romney feels pressured to be a nasty attack dog in the debates because that's what his crazy base and crazy right-wing billionaire donors want from him. They think the entire electorate thinks like them and will respond positively, despite all empirical evidence. (Oh, sorry, I forgot -- all the polls are skewed!)

And it's not just Mitt. At one time I was worried about the huge amounts of money going to Karl Rove's American Crossroads, but if this is the kind of ad Crossroads is spending money on, we can all breathe a little easier:





What the hell is that? It starts with a whispered exchange between Obama and former Russian president Dmitri Medvedev, which the wingers are obsessed with. It goes from there into a stew of conspiratorialism so loopy it almost departs Glenn Beck/Dinesh D'Souza territory and sails into Lyndon LaRouche Land: "President Flexible is on a new mission: dismantle the U.S. economic system," a voiceover says, and then we learn the plan -- more Fed action from Agent of Evil Ben Bernanke destroys the dollar, which leads to literal class warfare; Obama runs up debt, raises taxes ... clearly it's all a big plot to let the Red Russkies take over!

Hunh? What century is this?

This is catnip to the base. It's nuts (or incomprehensible) to everyone else. But I guess Rove's paymasters want him cranking out ads like this (because they watch Fox and believe this crap) rather than producing ads that are, y'know, effective.

And I guess Mitt is equally afraid to cross his patrons and his base; they want him to go into the debate planning to be a dick, so that's what he's going to do.