Romney Tanking?

What in the world were they thinking?

The grim visual of Mitt Romney speaking in front of an empty football stadium, coupled with his latest foot-in-mouth utterance that "Ann drives a couple of Cadillacs actually" brings to mind a disastrous photo-op from another former Massachusetts governor turned presidential candidate two decades ago, a mere howitzer blast away in Sterling Heights, Michigan.

Michael Shear and Michael Barbaro of The New York Times mercifully fail to bring up the saga of a third Michael as they chronicle the missteps, avoidable and otherwise, that marred the Romney address: the campaign allowing organizers to choose a behemoth venue for a large event; the power of Twitter and Facebook to change a well-planned message; a candidate given to uttering statements that reflect his 1 percent status.

But the Romney campaign cannot simply finger point every which way. A crucial piece of the puzzle was their decision to leak key pieces of the economic message, leaving reporters with very little to do other than pick apart the scenery.

Romney has proven proficient at throwing millions at opponents to bury them under a storm of negatives. And he has been blessed with large target foes who offer themselves as paragons of hypocrisy of 10th Century values.

But left to his own devices, Romney inevitably lays an egg, exposing a stunning lack of awareness of his own life of privilege.

And that's where he veers off course from his Massachusetts predecessor, a guy whose major failing was an inability to project his genuine warmth and humanity -- and who has never been to big to stoop and pick up a piece of trash from a sidewalk.

Romney's resources appear poised to rescue him in both Michigan and Arizona and he will likely continue to run a campaign against a fictional Barack Obama created by the very same advisers who did nothing to nix the Ford Field venue.

But Romney may well be heading to the same fate as the two Massachusetts Democrats who trod the same path before him. Does anyone seriously want to have a ginger ale with him?

Desperately seeking Beacon Hill

It's Feb. 24. Do you know where your state Legislature is? On vacation.

The State of the State has been stated. The budget presented. Almost two full months into the election year-shortened schedule -- and one month after those two benchmarks -- and the Great and General Court has enacted 32 session laws. An accomplishment? If you are a community looking to create liquor licenses or set up a voting precinct, you bet. If not, meh.

Members of the ways and means committee from both branches are fanning out across the state, holding hearings on the budget while the unsung worker bee analysts on these committees are burning the midnight oil.

But the members, not so much. Maybe they are hunkered down, awaiting the bombshells expected to emerge from Worcester after imprisoned former Speaker Sal DiMasi tells what he knows about the probation department's hiring practices.

Like the promotions struck down by a Superior Court judge as invalid.

And we are told that lawmakers are finally "close" to an agreement on a sentencing reform bill they have been haggling about for months.

Meanwhile, the elephant in the room, the $161 million MBTA deficit, its strangling debt and how to deal with it in a way that's equitable from Provincetown to Pittsfield has drawn virtual silence from Deval Patrick on down.

Legislative bodies tend to act best when faced with a deadline. Just look at Congress. OK, bad example.

Actually it's a pretty good one. Act in haste, repent (or attack) in leisure isn't the best way to deal with the challenges we face as a state and nation.

Tick, tock.

Channeling Teddy

You know Scott Brown is worried about his reelection prospects when he starts claiming he's following in Ted Kennedy's footsteps.

But that's exactly what the man who won election in part on his promise to turn the "Kennedy Seat" into the "People's Seat" is doing.

Brown is claiming his support of GOP legislation to turn the clock back almost five decades on contraception is in keeping with Kennedy's dying plea to the pope for a "conscience protection for Catholics in the health field.’’

“Like Ted Kennedy before me, I support a conscience exemption in health care for Catholics and other people of faith,’’ Brown says in the radio ad, which began running yesterday.

Those who worked closely with the late senator are crying foul.

“Kennedy was interested in protecting the rights of individuals. Brown is trying to take away the rights of individuals,’’ said John McDonough, a Democrat who served on the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions when Kennedy was chairman.

“Brown is taking something Kennedy supported and is exponentially expanding it to something Kennedy never would have supported,’’ added McDonough, now a professor at the Harvard School of Public Health.

So is Elizabeth Warren:

In a radio ad also released yesterday, Warren said the amendment “threatens women’s access to contraception, mammograms, even maternity care.’’

“It’s just plain wrong,’’ Warren says in the ad. “This isn’t about the rights of religious institutions. We must respect those rights . . . but the president also made sure that women can get the health care they need. That’s the right approach.’’

Polls show a nip-and-tuck race, and Brown has amassed a considerable war chest. A lot of that money came from out-of-staters at the end of 2010 and the start of 2011 supporting someone who promised he was not Ted Kennedy.

It's a flip-flop worthy of Mitt Romney, if only it didn't turn Kennedy's beliefs on their head.

The Do As I Say Brigade

One things clear from the Republican debates: the candidates are great at saying one thing while doing another.

Rick Santorum had his turn on the Hypocrite Hot Seat at the GOP debate last night, defending his congressional record from a furious onslaught by Mitt Romney, the unmatched -- and unashamed -- flip-flop king.

“While I was fighting to save the Olympics, you were fighting to save the ‘Bridge to Nowhere,’ ” Romney said, drawing upon a noted symbol of government excess to drive home his point against Santorum, a former Pennsylvania senator.

Of course taxpayers had a lot to do with that save, kicking in more than $79 million in earmarked procured through the use of five lobbying firms.

That was good enough for the red meat-eating crowd, that was booing Santorum by the end of the evening. Of course the millions the Romney campaign and Super PACs have spent beating up Santorum didn't hurt.

Speaking of campaign spending, Romney needed something to turn attention away from the fact he spent nearly three times more than he took in during January, hardly the type of credential one would expect from a candidate promising to take a battle ax to the federal budget.

But Our Man Myth made a bad misstep, pointing to his "accomplishment" of "balancing four budgets" during his term in the Corner Office.

That left Santorum a hole big enough to drive a General Motors truck through:

‘‘Don’t go around bragging about something you have to do. Michael Dukakis balanced the budget for 10 years — does that make him qualified to be president of the United States? I don’t think so.’’

Ouchie.

The debate was billed as the last of 20 GOP get-together, leaving some wanting more of the events that did little more than boost the ratings of the outlets carrying them. Esquire's inimitable Charlie Pierce waxed nostalgic:

“They should invite the whole cast back, all the people who left the show for their own spinoffs, the way they brought Rhoda and Phyllis back when Mary Richards got fired at WJM,” alluding to the classic sitcom “The Mary Tyler Moore Show.”

Although their man often had a bulls-eye on his back during these jousts, it's likely the Obama camp may miss them too. Some of the arrows aimed at him veered so far to the right the images are likely to resurface during the reelection campaign ad blitz.

As for me, I'll stick with my NCIS reruns.

Isn't this special

Move over soccer moms, here come the church ladies.

The Republican presidential nomination campaign continues to lurch sharply rightward, with Rick Santorum campaigning against Satan and Franklin Graham practicing a hate-based theology that questions the faith of Barack Obama and Mitt Romney.

Instead of taking the easy-to-reach high ground in this "debate," Romney jumps in with both feet, questioning Obama's Christian bona fides.

Was it coincidental this all took place on Mardi Gras?

The race for ayatollah continues its furious pace, led by the amazingly hateful words of Graham, who may somehow believe he is carrying on in his father's role of preacher-in-chief, which ought to be noted was an unelected post.

In one TV appearance Graham hit a daily double, declaring "Islam has gotten a free pass under Obama" and that "most Christians would not recognize Mormonism as part of the Christian faith."

Santorum, who has compared Obama to Hitler, sidestepped a question whether Satan was "attacking America" as "not relevant," before launching into a defense of his beliefs:

"I’m a person of faith. I believe in good and evil. I think if somehow or another because you’re a person of faith you believe in good and evil is a disqualifier for president, we’re going to have a very small pool of candidates who can run for president."

Not to be outdone, an increasingly desperate Romney took the bait when asked at a town hall forum how he would defend religious freedom:

“Unfortunately, possibly because of the people the president hangs around with, and their agenda, their secular agenda - they have fought against religion."

As usual, the would-be moralists offered nothing to back up their hateful spew.

The red meat of religion offers a comforting alternative to Republicans watching the economy improve and Obama's approval rating rise. Given this reality, they choose to pander to ancient prejudices and drive even deeper wedges into an already divided nation.

There's no doubt a special place in H-E-double hockey sticks awaiting them.

Second chances

As Tim "Crash" Murray sinks deeper into credibility gulch, Democrats are scratching their heads about the 2014 gubernatorial race. The alternative may be emerging right before our eyes.

The rehabilitation of Martha Coakley took another major step forward with a friendly profile in Globe, where the loser of the "Kennedy Seat" offers her most visible mea culpa over the perceptions surrounding her defeat at the hands of Scott Brown:

“The thing I feel worst about is people’s perception, and the media, that somehow I felt entitled to the seat, that I hadn’t worked hard enough, that I took it for granted. I knew if I was going to run for reelection I had to face it head-on among constituents.’’

Coakley worked hard to win reelection as attorney general and has compiled a solid record as a consumer advocate. But her name has never come up in electronic water cooler conversations about life in the post-Deval era.

Then came Murray's crash and the fall-out over everything from Michael McLaughlin to changing stories to his cell phone records.

Can Coakley trade her 20th floor office overlooking the city to a third floor corner office with a nice view of the Common?

Conventional wisdom has said no. The loss to Brown made her a national laughing stock. Then there was "The Curse": no attorney general since Ed Brooke has been able to move up to a higher office.

But let's face facts. The 2014 field is pretty weak -- in both parties. Murray may have had a semi-incumbent advantage but was hardly a shoo-in. Name one other prominent Democrat?

Because Coakley's predecessor, Tom Reilly, lost to an unknown named Deval Patrick, it's unwise to rule out another long shot emerging. But Coakley now looks much better when compared to the muck accumulating around Murray's tires.

Flattering profiles certainly add to that luster. And Coakley will know she's on the right road when the Herald moves on from their assaults on Elizabeth Warren and JoeK3 and starts dredging up the past and taking swipes again.

Martha II: The Sequel? Time will tell.

Gas bag

Newt Gingrich says vote for him and he'll lower gasoline prices to $2 a gallon. If bogus campaign bloviations could do that, we'd be paying the oil companies.

And kudos to the Associated Press for stepping outside what is likely it's normal comfort zone and calling out Gingrich and the GOP chorus for thinking presidents have all sorts of unfettered powers to move heaven and earth.

As we have seen, they have a hard time moving congresses that are as stubborn as jackasses.

Holiday from banks

Once upon a time, "It's a Wonderful Life" was the archetype movie about banking. Today it would be "Jaws."

But somehow that hasn't stopped banks from snatching up storefronts here, there and everywhere, as the Globe's Todd Wallack chronicles today.

Brookline's Coolidge Corner is a great example: at least 10 banks clustered in a tiny space, filling spots once held by by an eclectic mix of retail from boutique wine stores to McDonald's. The banks even outnumber the phone stores!

The question is why? Boston Redevelopment Authority director Peter Meade offers one answer:

“The biggest problem is that local businesses simply can’t compete with the banks’ money. Banks can come in and bigfoot a place so a local business doesn’t have a chance to compete.’’

That's the greatest irony. Back in George Bailey's day, banks and their savings and loan kin were supposed to foster community: take in local deposits and lend them back out to earnest businessmen and women looking to build their lives and the local economy.

Today? Banks headquartered across the country or across the ocean take in money -- not just deposits but endless fees. In return, aside from microscopic interest paid for the right to hold that money, not so much.

The nation's inability to snap out of the Great Recession -- caused, never let us forget, by irresponsible bank lending -- has been a reluctance of those very same taxpayer bailed-out banks to invest in the communities they helped to bring down.

Yet somehow the banks have the cash to throw around to outbid convenience stores and bagel shops and businesses that provide some life for a community after banker's hours.

No wonder neighbors are taking up petitions to keep the sharks out of their neighborhoods.

Ayatollah so

Is Rick Santorum running for president or religion czar?

The former Pennsylvania senator decried Barack Obama's "phony theology" at an Ohio campaign stop Saturday, around the same time the media dug up a 2008 speech in which Santorum declared mainline Protestantism "is gone from the world as I see it."

Buoyed by polls showing him doing well as the last, best anti-Mitt, Santorum is stepping up the holier-than-thou mindset that appeals to the GOP base, you know the group that despises Romney for his Mormon faith. It's also the group that clings not only to its guns, but the phony proposition that Obama is a Kenyan-born Muslim.

Santorum comes loaded with red meat. His view of the Obama "agenda":

“It’s about some phony ideal, some phony theology. Oh, not a theology based on the Bible, a different theology,” he said. “But no less a theology.”

Karl Marx famously noted religion is the "opium of the masses," and hard economic times increases the desire the run from worldly woes. But it is increasingly distressing that candidates offer not suggestions on how to improve the economy but instead preach sermons on whose beliefs are right and whose are not.

The 1st Amendment does more than simply allow the free exercise of religion. It forbids the state and federal government from establishing an official religion or set of beliefs.

The increasingly shrill debates over abortion and contraception can certainly be viewed as efforts to impose one religion's beliefs on that subject on others -- despite the pious protestations of true believers that the opposite is true.

The views of Santorum and others are also protected by the 1st Amendment. But they would be wise the recall the words of Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr. in describing the limits of free speech:

"The right to swing my fist ends where the other man's nose begins."

Santorum's desire to be this nation's ayatollah is a protected right. But his rights to believe in certain things end where mine to believe in other things begin.

That freedom to believe separates us from the types of societies that religious zealots have created to impose their own beliefs.