Just go and scroll.

I’m torn on this. First, let me just clearly say this:

Perry would be better.

Perry would be better.

Perry would be way, way, WAY better.

Yeah, yeah, he’s inarticulate, he reminds people of Bush, blah blah blah. He has run a state well and he is conservative. He would be better than Mitt Romney.

OK. Now that that’s off my chest:

We probably are stuck with Romney. Now, I will not lie about the guy. I know someone who worked for him who says he has no core principles. At all. And this video, while it has some crap claims in it, is quite well done and reveals some real contradictions in Romney’s record:

As Ace says:

Some of these are bs (supporting a stimulus is not the same thing as supporting Obama’s failed stimulus; 95% of elected Republicans favored their own style of tax-cut-heavy stimulus; saying “TARP ought to be ended” is not the same as reversing himself on supporting it for the first two years), but others — on abortion, assault weapons, and Reagan — are troubling.

Indeed. The guy really doesn’t stand for much. And in terms of his electability, what has he won? Not much.

All that being said:

If he ends up being our guy, he beats Obama hands down. Maybe he has no principles. But (unlike Obama) he may end up responding to us. If we demand solid Justices, he may listen. If we demand fiscal responsibility, he may listen.

Obama won’t listen to us. He will listen to them.

And once he doesn’t care about getting re-elected, Lord knows what he’ll try to do.

So.

South Carolina? Vote for Perry. Please.

But if we can’t get him? Go to the polls in November and pull the lever for Romney.

[Posted by Karl]

The New Hampshire primary preempted my mockery of this New York Times article, which had the audacity to run the above headline — without the quote marks — in marking the departure of White House chief of staff William M. Daley:

It was a distracting shake-up in a White House that has prided itself on a lack of internal drama, with a tightly knit circle of loyal senior advisers playing a steadying role.

In the real world, no president has gone through as many chiefs of staff in their first term as Obama has to date.  And that’s just for starters, well beyond the shuffling of people like David Axelrod to Obama’s reelect campaign.

Consider Obama’s original economic team.  Peter Orszag, Christina Romer, Larry Summers and Jared Bernstein are all gone, as is Austan Goolsbee, leaving tax-cheating Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner as the anchor of Obamanomics.

Press Secretary Robert Gibbs is gone, as is Deputy Press Secretary Bill Burton and White House communications director Anita Dunn.

Melody Barnes was the White House’s chief domestic policy adviser. Not anymore.

Gen. Jim Jones is no longer Obama’s National Security adviser, after a tenure marked by sniping that sent Deputy National Security Adviser and Chief of Staff to the NSC Mark Lippert back to military service.  That happened before Obama’s major Pentagon shakeup last April in which the vacancy caused by the departure of Secretary of Defense Robert Gates was filled by Leon Panetta, whose seat at the CIA was filled in turn by Gen. David Petraeus.

Moreover, two books suggest there were plenty of factions and infighting during the president’s term.  One of them was written by Jodi Kantor — a reporter for the New York Times.

The NYT’s propaganda here is risible, but interesting nonetheless.  Reporting on a White House in disarray would underscore what happens when we elect someone with no executive experience.  It would also raise the issue of whether any of these people were simply scapegoats  for the failures of progressive policy.

–Karl