Romney's Dream World

As he Meets the Press, sort of, the Republican standard bearer shows how much of a bubble he’s inhabiting.

In a pre-taped travesty of being grilled by journalists, Mitt Romney burbles with admiration of Bill Clinton’s convention speech while taking digs at the President.

“I don’t want to keep bringing it down as the president’s doing,” he says. “This sequestration idea of the White House, which is cutting our defense, I think is an extraordinary miscalculation in the wrong direction.”

Romney is, of course, talking about last year’s debt-ceiling fiasco created by the madness of Tea Party Republicans, including his running mate, Paul Ryan.

If he were appearing live and unedited, Romney might have been asked about Bob Woodward’s account of that impasse published in today’s Washington Post.

It’s a story of the American president being humiliated by a runaway Congress. At the end of the ordeal, Barack Obama tells his aides:

“This will forever change the relationship between the presidency and the Congress. Imagine if, when Nancy Pelosi had become speaker, she had said to George W. Bush, ‘End the Iraq war, or I’m going to cause a global financial crisis.’”

Until Mitt Romney understands exactly what happened, he is going to be living in a dream world where all that ends if he were to move into the White House.

Someone should tell him that the Tea Party doesn’t like him much better than Obama and that his temporary allies would without doubt be practicing their treacherous madness on him, Paul Ryan at his right hand or not.

That kind of corruption by power wouldn’t stop with a Republican in the White House.

Update: In the full “Meet the Press” interview and Paul Ryan’s encounter on ABC’s “This Week,” both Romney and Ryan run into the contradictions between their views but refuse to specify how they would resolve them, leaving voters with empty promises and a “Trust me” response to their doubts.

The strategy is clear. Romney moves centerward while Ryan reassures GOP crackpots that he doesn’t mean it.