Romney is a candidate of the centrocracy.

Richard Fernandez takes issue with the ever louder demands on the Right that Romney has to sharpen his message, to stake out his positions, to come up with a program. 

But that’s probably wrong.  This election is not about Romney, it’s about Obama.  The decision in the voting booth will not hinge on Romney’s position on taxes, spending, jobs or international affairs.  It will be about Obama’s position on these issues.  Romney is the alternative to a continuation of the Obama policies, or perhaps the Obama policies on steroids once he won’t have to face re-election.

Fernandez:

 I think that while Romney is running against Obama and certain practices of the Democratic party; he is not necessarily running against the system as a whole. Romney is a candidate of the centrocracy. He intends to inherit Washington. But he claims, and there is reason to believe it because anyone can — that he can run things more rationally, that is less irrationally, than Barack Obama.

Obama by curious contrast, isn’t running against Romney at all. To him Romney is a generic white man; a generic country club Republican. Romney has a name in Obama’s universe only incidentally.

Obama’s running against the centrocracy. But what he wants to replace it with is essentially a one party version of itself — the permanent majority, so that DC eventually becomes like Chicago, without a non-Democratic alderman in living memory, or near enough.

It’s borderline fascism and Romney knows this. His candidacy is intentionally shapeless because “anyone but Obama” is actually a coherent intellectual position. If Obama were something like Bill Clinton, Romney would actually have to lift his policy game. It would have to make sense; as it is, it need only be not insane. He’d have to run harder against the system against a halfway decent incumbent. But because Obama is so destructive and a fraud to boot, Romney can like Stalin almost get away with being only slightly the lesser evil.

Look at the intellectual incoherence of the Obama campaign where the driving issue of the day is the date that Romney left Bain Capital.  Not only is Team Obama lying about this issue but the bigger question is why should anyone care? 

The explanation is given that issues like this are deliberate distractions from the economy and therefore are good for Obama.  But that assumes that the American people are as stupid as the press who seem to be incapable of thinking about more than one thing at a time.  It’s what happens to you when you get caught up in the gears of the 24/7 news cycle and the same bit of trivia is recycled every 15 minutes because something has to fill that time slot.   It’s one of those issues that’s so irrelevant and so silly that Erick Erickson at Red State is asking if “Bainers” are the new“Birthers.”

In the meantime, Americans are living with $3.50 per gallon gas, rapidly rising food prices, joblessness, homes that are worth less than the mortgage and watching their kids come home after graduating from college because they can’t find a job.  Romney doesn’t have to package these into TV ads - although he surely will – for people to associate the current misery with Obama.  And Obama’s talking about “fairness” to the shrinking group of emotionally driven admirers who will vote for him even if he murders someone.  Keep in mind that when Democrats had a choice in one primary 40% chose a convicted felon currently in prison over Obama. 

It doesn’t matter how many times Team Obama cries “look, a squirrel” because the only people who will appear to care are the media people whose job it is to furrow their brows and think deep thoughts about irrelevancies.  This fall we will have an election about Obama, which means he is doomed.

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