I've generally avoided commenting on the dispatches of the Washington Post's right-leaning political blogger, Jennifer Rubin, whose posts have for months now been so startlingly adulatory to the Romney campaign that they have drawn criticism not only from the left but from fellow conservatives as well. I've left it to others to handle the full-time task of pointing out just how Pravda-esque this corner of the Post's Website has become. But one particular line just jumped out at me because, in addition to be being characteristically servile in tone, it plays into what readers know has become one my personal pet peeves. Rubin yesterday interviewed Beth Myers, who directed Romney's 2008 campaign and has now been chosen to oversee his search for a running mate. She reports back from this conversation (which follows closely on Rubin's "exclusive" interview with Ann Romney late last week):
"In our conversation it’s clear why [Daley and Romney] get along. Like her boss, she is unflaggingly pleasant but also disciplined and single-minded about the task ahead."
Aiiii. Do we really need to go through this again? Romney is so "unflaggingly unpleasant" that his sons have a name for all the occasions when he's not so pleasant -- they call them his "Mittfrontations." There was the time he got dragged to the police station after disobeying an overzealous park ranger. There was the time he cursed out an auxiliary cop during the Salt Lake Olympics, for which he later apologized to the man's superiors. There was the time he got into a physical altercation with a hip-hop star on an airplane. The Romney campaign and his own family have spoken openly about the fact that they need to keep Ann Romney at Mitt's side as much as possible -- thereby reducing the ground they could cover if she could campaign on her own -- because he is more likely to lose it if he does not have her around to "stabilize" him.
"Unflappable." "Imperturbable." "Unflaggingly pleasant." This characterization of Romney won't seem to go away. But it's insupportable.
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