"Its a gift"

[Scooter]

Or skip that step and go right to the enema.

[Lord Jim]

Eventually he will fade away from the national spotlight and go back to spending his time counting his money and rich friends.

I think Romney is going to disappear from the national stage more quickly than any losing Presidential candidate since Michael Dukakis...

There is not, and never has been, a "Romney constituency". Outside of his immediate family, paid staff and official surrogates, (and not even all of the people in the last two categories) there are no "passionate Romney supporters"....His whole candidacy was based around the idea of not being as awful as the others running for the nomination, and having the best chance of winning...nothing more...."there is nobody who's going to say, "Gee we need Mitt's input", and since he has no constituency, he also commands no loyalty.

Also, unlike other defeated Presidential nominees of recent vintage, (John McCain, John Kerry, Al Gore, Bob Dole) Romney has no long time roots or involvement in national politics, separate from his Presidential run.

[Long Run]

I thought Peg Noonan's observation pretty much provides Exhibit A on why the election turned out the way it did:

These are just the players in the scandal of the week. Have we noticed a certain lack of modesty in our political figures? Thank goodness, therefore, for Mitt Romney, who in a conference call with donors said he got beat and beat bad, that his campaign was lacking, that his gut on the big issues was probably off, that he shouldn't have allowed his campaign to become (in the grandiose, faux-macho lingo of campaign consultants who wish they wore fruit salad) an air war and not a ground war, and that they were smoked in get-out-the-vote. He added, with an eye to concerns larger than his own, that he wanted to help the party analyze and define what didn't work in 2012 so it would be stronger in 2016.

Sorry. Kidding! He didn't say that.

[Gob]

Huh?

Sorry Andrew, I missed this. I was referring to rubato's childlike/Aspergerish personality trait of egocentrsim, which colours his every post and motivation here.

[Andrew D]

I was referring to the incoherence of this, Gob:

"Essentially, egocentric children believe that those who have a different perception than their own are either considered false or nonexistent."

What does that even mean?

(For that matter, who originally wrote it?)

I find it incomprehensible. Is it trying to say that egocentric children are the ones who believe that the other people are false or nonexistent? If so, what is the word "considered" doing in there?

Is it trying to say that egocentric children are the ones who believe that the other people are considered false or nonexistent? If so, "considered" by whom?

Is it trying to say that the other people are either (a) "considered" -- whether by the egocentric children themselves or by some other unidentified people -- to be false or (b) are actually (regardless of what they are considered to be and regardless of who is doing that considering) nonexistent? That is how it reads.

Or is it trying to say that the other people are either (a) "considered" to be false or (b) "considered" to be nonexistent? In that case, it should read "are considered either false or nonexistent" (or, less economically, "either considered false or considered nonexistent").

Etc.

[Gob]

I see, thanks Andrew. It was a (not very well constructed,) sentence on Piaget and egocentrism in kids..