Frank Rich on the National Circus: Mitt’s Bleach-Bottle Bimbo

Frank Rich on the National Circus: Mitt’s Bleach-Bottle Bimbo

By Frank Rich

None. There is no more naked celebrity in America than Donald Trump. He doesn’t do subtlety. He doesn’t do “thought.” To say he has a political calculus is a wild overstatement. His strategy amounts to no more than junior high school algebra. The equation is: Trump + infantile public statement x infinite repetitions on TV and Twitter = maximum publicity for flailing Trump products and insatiable Trump ego.

There’s been no better cost-benefit analysis than that from George Will, who, in his now famous Sunday morning fulmination said: “The benefit — what voter is going to vote for him because he is seen with Donald Trump? The cost of appearing with this bloviating ignoramus is obvious.” To spell out the costs in the Trump case, I’d start with the fact that (1) Romney once again brandished his default mode as a coward, running away from the press before the Trump fund-raising event to duck embarrassing questions; it was a resonant replay of his disappearing act during the Limbaugh assault on Sandra Fluke. That he cowered from Trump queries on the same day he was urging increased U.S. bellicosity toward Assad in Syria undercuts any Romney pretense to “leadership”; (2) Romney again revealed his tone-deafness to the America where the hoi polloi live; he really does seem to think that Trump is an A-list celebrity who could serve as the right’s answer to George Clooney, when in fact Trump’s status is roughly that of Bristol Palin during her heyday on Dancing with the Stars; (3) It hands the Democrats another golden opportunity to make an ad mashing up Romney's "I like being able to fire people" with Trump's "You're fired!”; (4) If you will fly to Vegas for a one-night-stand with a bleach-bottle bimbo, you look as if you will do anything for money.

Birtherism is not an issue. It’s a slur that mainly benefits the Democrats. It ties the GOP to a fringe conspiracy theory whose racial animus is transparent: An African-American president must by definition be an alien, no matter what’s on his birth certificate.


The Audio-Animatronic Romney is incapable of improvisation in any high-stakes existential political moment, no matter what the subject. He can’t answer questions about his own Mormon ancestors in Mexico, let alone Obama’s origins, unless they are lame enough to trigger a pre-programmed response.

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