Bravo Michael Gerson! Bravo.

At a secretly recorded, high dollar fundraising event in Boca Raton, Florida back in the spring, way before Mitt Romney secured the GOP Presidential nomination, the truth about how conservatives view the world was articulated with the line, "the 47% who don't pay income taxes in this country,...".  To put a finer point on it, Mitt went further by describing these 47% as "victims" and wove it all together with the Ayn Rand narrative of the "makers" and the "takers".

Like a luxury cruise ship emerging from a fog bank, the full view of conservative ideology (at least this version of conservatism) has come into focus.  In today's Washington Post, editorial writer Michael Gerson concisely articulates the problems with embracing this radical ideology by today's Republican Party, and how Romney has spilled the beans on how the monied elites of the GOP really think about people who don't even make enough money to have to file a Federal Income Tax form.  Gerson states,...

Yet a Republican ideology pitting the "makers" against the "takers" offers nothing.  No sympathy for our fellow citizens.  No insight into our social challenge.  No hope of change.  This approach involves a relentless  reductionism.  Human worth is reduced to economic production.  Social problems are reduced to personal vices.  Politics is reduced to class warfare on behalf of the upper class.  

In eight sentences, Michael Gerson sums up what's wrong with today's Republican Party and tells you why Mitt Romney's path to victory in November is fading, and the window is closing for him to right his campaign.  The damage is done and it is likely too late.

With anything that involves competition and a long season that has to be played, a warning of peaking too soon is often uttered.  I've never heard anything warning about tanking too early.

Just 47 days to go until Tuesday, November 6, 2012.

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