Chris Matthews didn't pull any punches with his "Let Me Finish" segment this Monday evening where he took Mitt Romney to task for who he's pandering to: Matthews: Romney is ‘a speaker system,’ not a candidate:
Let me finish tonight with this Romney character.
I don't think Romney cares all that much about the presidency except that he wants it. If he weren't running, do you think this guy would be watching this or any other show on politics? Forget about it!
Mitt cares about three things: his faith, his family, his business.
Right now, his business is running for president. That's why he's interested in the presidency. It's his business to be interested. Listen to him answer questions. If the interviewer doesn't ask the most obvious thing, something that Mitt's briefers have been over and over with him, he seems stunned. He doesn't have an answer. Why? Because he never thought of that one!
Fact is, he hasn't thought about many things outside his zone of interest, which again includes his faith, his family, his business. And this is the most dangerous thing about this guy. Since he doesn't have a foreign policy, he buys the foreign policies of the powers that be.
So he sings the song of his neo-con so-called "advisers." What they really are, of course, are people who advocate a point of view — the need for a new war with each new Republican president — and they need someone in the White House to push it for them. They need a president who speaks their language. So they write his speeches. They want war with Iran. They just put it in the next speech.
This, as I said, is the dangerous part. We've had experience with a president who came to office with an empty head on foreign policy and bought the entire neo-con pitch — hook, line and sinker. The result was the one war in this country's history that truly deserves a dunce cap.
Mitt won't say a word about taxes that Grover Norquist might disapprove. He won't approve any deal to cut spending that Grover won't say "okay" to. That doesn't make Mitt a leader; it makes him "Grover's Rover." Grover says, "Fetch"? Mitt Fetches. Grover says, "Beg"? Mitt begs.
Same with the religious right. Mitt won't say a word the Pat Robertson and Franklin Graham crowd hasn't approved for his political prayer book. There he was down at Liberty University getting an honorary degree. I didn't know they gave honorary degrees for pandering.
The scariest thing about Mitt Romney is that he really is open for bids. He's sold his soul to every right wing faction that's out there: the neo-cons on foreign policy, the religious right on social policy, Grover on the tax issue.
Why have a brain if you don't have to think? With this crowd around him, his only job is to do exactly what he's told.
He's done just that. Listen closely: tell me if you ever, ever hear Mitt Romney say something that's not pluperfect right wing talking points, the exact words the pressure groups are telling him to say.
This guy isn't a candidate. He's a speaker system.
It's too bad he didn't figure out the same thing about George W. Bush a whole lot earlier than he did.
