Can I Get An Amen?

Profile in courage?

Hardly. Mitt Romney's much anticipated speech on religious tolerance, far from being the "breakthrough" political moment some would make it, was instead yet one more pathetic profile in pandering from the man who just may be the most desperate, despicable hack I have ever seen in my lifetime.

Is there nothing this man won't do to cajole and massage some meager support from a potential niche of support? Apparrently not.

In Boston, right-wing radio talk show host Jay Severin hailed Romney's speech as a special, singular event not just in this year's campaign, but in American political history. But then, it's hard to imagine how Severin could have even heard or watched the speech, given that his eyes and ears are obscured by the cheeks of Romney's ass.

Give Severin half credit, though. The speech was a singular event--in the history of naked American political crassness. The wonder of Mitt Romney, in all his chameleon-like bobbing and weaving between stands on issues past and present, is not that he has the truly breathtaking chutzpah to do these flip-flops and panderings; it is that he seems to think that people won't sufficiently notice. In the end, I am more outraged by Romney's low regard for my intelligence than I am his own low regard for personal integrity.

As has been observed elsewhere, Romney was not calling for religious tolerance per se; he was asking rather for religious acceptance. Acceptance not for everyone, mind you, but for Mitt Romney as a Mormon by conservative Christian Evangelicals who mistrust his Christian bona fides. Sure, Romney paid lip service on behalf of other religions, but where was that plea for tolerance when he was up in the Iowa polls, and true-blue Christian conservative Mike Huckabee was safely in Mitt's rear-veiw mirror?

Once more, Romney acted only out of political expediency.
Even Huckabee, at the recent CNN/YouTube debate, had a moment that admirably blended both personal and political integrity, when he chastised Romney for suggesting that even the children of illegal immigrants should be dealt with punitively.

One wonders, where is that moment for Romney? Could there even be such a moment? On what subject would it possibly be? What significant constituency (gays, gun control advocates and Massachusetts residents don't qualify) is he willing to alienate on a matter of deep, unshakable (and non-malleable) integrity?

Keep wondering.
Keep marvelling at the most shameless hack in history.
And keep praying for poor Jay Severin--the man has to come up (out?) for air sometime...