I see Romney as a lamentable, pathetic, insipid figure making a last gasp for relevance with smug, pious rhetoric about the founding fathers and the constitution ("Mitt Revere" credit goes to www.thkelly.net). Consistent with the above cartoon was that ludicrous spectacle on the steps of the Statehouse a week before Thanksgiving: a politician veering to the right, carefully wrapping his anti-gay rhetoric in a vapid civics lecture about the legislature's obligation to take up all issues about which they have been petitioned.

Unimaginative as was his argument, his timing was downright nonsensical. Why the massive public showing to challenge the already-recessed legislature? Why didn't he orchestrate this feeble crowd of rabble-rousers while the legislators were still in session? And why ignore the fact that there was a vote in the legislature which by comfortable margin clearly signified they no desire to entertain, much less pass this silly petition. Why, Governor Romney, would you bother to demand the legislature return now for a vote which you curiously (or disingenuously) failed to rally for earlier, while the legislature was still in office? I have a theory. I think you are nothing more than a shape-shifting, milquetoast politician, blowing like a leaf in the wind. Today, you found an anti-gay rally so you went with it. You lack courage; and worse, rather than having vision, you look backwards.

Undignfied, and pathetic, Romney surely sunk to a low point that day, chanting the mantra with the throng: "Let The People Vote! Let the People Vote!" Had he not missed the fact that the legislature is an elected body; that the people do have an opportunity to vote at regular intervals; and that if they wanted to replace the current lot with anti-gay bigots next go around (because they sure didn't do it in the 2006 election cycle) they will have the opportunity to do so then? The constitution does not require the legislators to vote on every issue for which petitions are circulated, as Romney would have us believe. (Imagine what that would look like: endless petition drives, endless sessions, endless lawsuits against legislatures for failure to vote on every measure.) [Andrew Sullivan, blogger extraordinaire, disagrees with me on one aspect of this. Allow me to paraphrase: he feels the legislature should have voted, and had the Constitutional amendment gone down to ignominious defeat as expected, the vote would have served the purpose of giving "democratic legitimacy" to civil marriage equality. I feel strongly that our rights should not be up for a vote; a popularity contest should not determine fundmental human rights. Caving in to those who want otherwise is a dangerous step in the wrong direction.]

This was not, as Romney phrased it, a failure of democracy because the 170,000 signatories had failed to convince a majority in the state legislature to bring their homophobic amendment to a vote. No, democracy worked as it was intended, Mitt. You just lost, is all.

Despite your constantly changing positions (The Boston Globe columnist, Joan Vennochi) wrote a gratifying (for me) excoriation of him), you grab headlines and airtime, giving false hope to the vocal anti-gay minority, suggesting that as "the people" they can control the agenda. Since they cannot unseat the legislature on a whim, Romney leads them in a public temper tantrum. And like the senseless Pennsylvanian, Rick Santorum, Romney conveniently forgets gay and lesbian citizens are also "the people" as are their children, siblings, parents, friends, employers, priests, rabbis, physicians, and teachers.

At the rally, Romney tried to bully the legislature, branding their failure to vote on the anti-gay petition as "tyranny." This is what the formerly pro-choice (another evolving-position Republican, probably a creationist too!), pro-gay Republican is referring to when he uses the word "tyranny": the duly elected legislature's refusal to strip certain citizens of their right to marry, to turn back the clock on civil rights, to re-institutionalize oppression, and to give credence to a fringe group that cannot learn to live peacefully with its neighbors. Now to call that "tyranny" takes some chutzpah. What is the "voice of the people" that you invoke as a justification for you presence, that you repeat with Orwellian, false-ringing populist phony baloney? MOBOCRACY. We cannot be ruled by a mob. Romney will run for president and continue to appeal to this mob. What a sorry display of empty effluvium. Watch here, read one of the sadder quotes below.

“As I listened to the debate in the legislative session 10 days ago, I was struck by the irony and the hypocrisy,” he added. “Legislators so energized to protect the newly discovered ‘right’ to marry for some citizens had no compunction whatsoever about trampling the long established constitutional right of the people to vote.”

More to follow, as Romney is now suing the legislature in teh very court that ruled in favor of gay marriage. Return to BLOG here.