I had the increasingly rare opportunity to enjoy a Saturday off from work. Well, at least Gretchen got one – I, on the other hand, received an unscheduled consultation call on my POTS line at home, late in the afternoon.
Male Voice: Hello, is this Tom Collins?
Tom: Yes, who is this?
Male Voice: Tom Collins, hold for Ann Lois Romney.
Tom: Um, okay, sure.
Ann: Hello, is this Tom Collins?
Tom: Yes, it is.
Ann: Mr. Collins, this is Ann Romney. I’m not one to waste time, so let’s get right down to business. They tell me you’re the smartest person inside the Beltway.
Tom: Which is a lot like being the tallest building in Baltimore.
Ann: Baltimore? That’s in Maryland, right?
Tom: Last time I checked, ma’am, it was.
Ann: My people say Maryland’s going for Obama in November. They say it’s full of the forty-seven percent of Americans who are dependent on the federal government for handouts and so forth that my husband told the truth about last May, and there’s no way we’re going to get Maryland’s votes in the Electoral College in November.
Tom: We?
Ann: Excuse me?
Tom: You mean, there’s no way he – which is to say, your husband – is going to get Maryland’s votes in the Electoral College in November.
Ann: Look, I don’t have time split hairs here, okay? I’m blonde and I’m beautiful, and I gave birth to five children – all boys, mind you, and I raised every one of them myself, with only the usual help from domestic staff. I survived multiple sclerosis and cancer, I’m an internationally recognized dressage equestrian, I have eighteen grandchildren, and when my husband was governor of Massachusetts, I was his official liaison for federal faith-based initiatives.
Tom: I am well aware of those facts, madame.
Ann: Are you also aware of what happened to me yesterday, as I was traveling around America speaking to the Great Unwashed on behalf of my beloved husband? Well, I’ll tell you – as I was flying to Los Angeles, California from Omaha, Nebraska in a ten-seat charter plane, the [expletive] piece of [expletive] caught [expletive] fire! And it scared one of the Secret Service guys so [expletive] bad, he [expletive] in his [expletive] pants! And I had to smell that all the [expletive] way until we made a [expletive] emergency landing in [expletive] Denver! So if I want to say “we” instead of “my husband” when I talk about winning this [expletive] election and moving into the [expletive] White House – after I have it fumigated to get the [expletive] stink out, of course – then I figure that’s my [expletive] prerogative. You have a problem with that?
Tom: No ma’am.
Ann: Good.
Tom: Might I inquire as to where you obtained my home telephone number?
Ann: Rand Paul gave it to me. He told me his father recommends you highly.
Tom: I must remember to thank him. How can I help you?
Ann: How the [expletive] do you think? My husband Mitt’s blowing the [expletive] election!
Tom: You’re referring to his recent… reactions and responses to that… um… embarrassing video where he disparages people who don’t pay federal income taxes?
Ann: Let me tell you, Collins, if I didn’t know better, I’d swear Mitt has peanut butter on his toes.
Tom: Peanut butter?
Ann: Right – because he can’t keep his [expletive] foot out of his [expletive] mouth!
Tom: Ah, of course, I understand, but… peanut butter?
Ann: Oh, yeah, that… I say that because, well, don’t tell anybody, okay, but Mitt and I have… a thing… about peanut butter.
Tom: You do?
Ann: Yeah. It goes back to elementary school. I don’t know if you’ve heard about it, but we’ve known each other since we were kids.
Tom: Peanut butter?
Ann: Hey, he’s a Mormon, okay? Peanut butter and chocolate milk are about the only vices he’s allowed to have!
Tom: Chocolate… milk?
Ann: Um… yeah, that, too. We… we’ve had a lot of… fun with peanut butter and chocolate milk over the years, if you catch my drift. I mean, who needs caffeine, nicotine or alcohol when you’ve got peanut butter and chocolate milk?
Tom: You… put it on his… feet?
Ann: Sometimes. Usually, he puts it on mine.
Tom: And the… chocolate milk?
Ann: Let’s just say, when the Romneys throw a state dinner at the White House, instead of serving coq au vin, it will be chicken breasts poached in chocolate milk.
Tom: Sounds… ahem… delicious.
Ann: Believe me, it’s gonna taste like [expletive] victory. Now, let’s get started. My husband has been trying to straighten out this [expletive] forty-seven percent remark mess for a week now and the more he talks, the worse it gets.
Tom: Well, when his running mate tries to help by calling him inarticulate, I guess that does mean he has a problem, doesn’t he?
Ann: [Expletive]-A, it’s a [expletive] problem, and nobody in the campaign organization has come up with jack [expletive] as an antidote for this [expletive] Mother Jones commie [expletive] and I’m getting [expletive] sick of it!
Tom: Understood. Might I ask, first of all, then, do you suppose what your husband said about “the people who are going to vote for Obama anyway,” as he put it, was, in fact, a genuine gaffe?
Ann: What!
Tom: Pardon me, but that is, madame, what he said; and is it, by any chance, instead of being a mistake, a faux pas, or a misstatement, rather, in fact, his actual opinion?
Ann: What!
Tom: Which is to say, does he really believe that?
Ann: What!
Tom: Or was he, perhaps, merely seeking to say what he thought an audience of Republicans attending a fifty-thousand-dollar-a-plate Romney fund raiser would… ah… like to hear?
Ann: Mr. Collins, I can assure you, that what my husband said was taken completely out of context. Both Mitt and I dearly love and cherish all the poor, dirty, sweaty, drunken, benighted, stupid non-Mormon Americans of this great Nation, from sea to shining sea – swarthy, ugly, overweight, knock-kneed, cross-eyed, gap-toothed, barefoot, half-witted and perverted as they may be, whether or not they are legally required, on the basis of their gross adjusted annual income, to pay federal taxes.
Tom: That’s good, because there have been plenty of Republicans – conservatives, for that matter, and rather notable ones, who have commented negatively upon your husband’s… um… peanut butter foot… with regard to both the original remarks at the fund raiser in May and his attempts to explain himself this week. I believe it was no less than Peggy Noonan who said, more or less, that Mitt should “look straight into the heart of darkness where lies a Republican defeat in a year the Republican presidential candidate almost couldn’t lose.”
Ann: Yes, I know, that’s what that [expletive] said; and I say [expletive] her! Let’s see her have five of Mitt Romney’s boys, with heads the size of [expletive] basketballs, that’s what I say! Then maybe she can rate eight years as the First Lady of the United States of America! Sometimes, I feel like we’re getting picked on more than anyone else!
Tom: Perhaps – and I’m sure you’re not the first wife of a presidential candidate to feel that way. But consider this – Ms. Noonan went on to say that Governor Romney should, “imagine what it will mean for the country, for a great political philosophy, conservatism, for his party and, last, for himself. He must look down unblinkingly.”
Ann: That’s never been a problem for Mitt. He could stare the [expletive] off a brass monkey, if it came to that.
Tom: I’m sure, but what do you make of the primary thesis of the conservative critics’ argument, that the central problem revealed by the video is Romney’s theory of the 2012 election?
Ann: Theory? What [expletive] theory?
Tom: The theory that forty-seven percent of the voters get handouts from the government…
Ann: But they [expletive] do! Those [expletive] blood-sucking leeches are sapping the industrial-strength job creators like my husband dry!
Tom: Be that as it may, the point your husband’s critics are trying to make is that he’s willing to write those people off.
Ann: Why? Shouldn’t he? You know what I say to those windbags? You know what I say to those blowhards? I say, stop it, that’s what I say. I say, this hard, and if they think otherwise they should try it; they should get in the ring. Because it’s an important thing that we’re doing right now and it’s an important election; and it is time for all Americans to realize how important this election is and how lucky we are to have someone with Mitt Romney’s qualifications, experience and know-how to be able to have the opportunity to run this country! It’s nonsense, I tell you, and when I hear talk like that, I just don’t let it sink in. No, I hear it, but I just let it go right by! And now, you’re telling me, my husband shouldn’t write those voters off?
Tom: He most certainly should not. As Ms. Noonan points out, only inexperienced campaign operatives think like that.
Ann: All right, for the sake of argument then, suppose my husband’s critics’ analyses are correct. So what?
Tom: Madame, the reason people like the Koch brothers are contributing millions upon millions of dollars to super political action committees favoring your husband’s viewpoint, and millions of wealthy Republicans are, in addition, contributing huge sums, right up to the legal limit, directly to your husband’s campaign, is that they believe their money can, in fact, be used to persuade people who receive federal government largess to vote against their own interests!
Ann: Huh?
Tom: It’s been done before, you know.
Ann: It has?
Tom: Certainly. Using millionaire’s and billionaire’s money to get the working poor to vote against their own interests has been a bulwark of Republican campaign strategy since Warren G. Harding.
Ann: Who?
Tom: Ask Matt Rhoades. Look – what your husband needs to do is rely on the same things that got other great Republicans elected President.
Ann: Which is what?
Tom: Forget about promising jobs – the economy is getting better despite every trick Mitch McConnell and John Boehner have pulled over the last three and one half years, and, face it, your husband turns most voters’ stomachs because he’s so rich, so distant, so stiff and, well, not to put too fine a point on it… so incredibly odious.
Ann: Ha! What do those [expletive] cretins know? I happen to find rich, distant, stiff and odious a big turn on, frankly!
Tom: As your five rich, distant, stiff and odious offspring soundly attest, to be sure.
Ann: You bet your [expletive] [expletive], Tom Collins! Those [expletive] Democrats all wish they could be as rich, distant, stiff and odious as the Romney clan – they’re just jealous, that’s all!
Tom: Indubitably. Therefore, in the remaining precious six and one half weeks between now and Election Day, Mitt Romney has got to get back to his Republican roots and use the tried-and-true tools that have always worked for Republican candidates since the days of Andrew Johnson.
Ann: I thought Johnson was a Democrat.
Tom: That’s Lyndon Baines Johnson you’re thinking of, madame. Andrew Johnson was a Republican.
Ann: There was a Republican President named Johnson?
Tom: Indeed there was, right before Grant.
Ann: Oh – the one that’s buried in Grant’s tomb?
Tom: Right, and what I was saying was that your husband needs to start appealing to the elements of electoral prowess that have put Republicans in the White House for one hundred and fifty years.
Ann: Um… yeah… okay. What are they?
Tom: Fear, greed, bigotry, racism, hatred, envy, militarism, xenophobia, jingoism, exceptionalism and the moronic worship of ignorance. Your husband has to use those traditional Republican tools to convince that undecided, middle-aged, white, working-class voter in some place like rural Ohio to vote for him, even though doing so will totally screw them.
Ann: And that’s what will do the trick?
Tom: It worked for Richard Nixon, Ronald Reagan and both of the Bushes, didn’t it?
Ann: Oh? Really? I… I thought they won because…
Tom: Because Democrats are so evil?
Ann: Well, yeah, sure, of course.
Tom: If only it were that simple, ma’am.
Ann: Okay, fine, I’ll give my husband your advice, for what it’s worth. Speaking of which, what do I owe you?
Tom: Nothing more than a call when you and your husband move into the White House, madame.
Ann: Uh… sure. Right. Okay, ‘bye now.
Tom: And good day to you, too, madame.