This week, Mitt Romney made news by formally announcing that he is running for president, as you may have suspected if you happened to have been alive and living on the planet Earth at any time since about 2003, when it became clear that's what Romney wanted to do with his life.
Yeah, okay, so it was something of an anticlimax, wasn't it? And you can tell that's exactly how the media received the news as well.
Fox News Channel was the first to cut away from Mitt's formal announcement, though whether it was because they were bored or just irked that someone not from Roger Ailes' approved stable of presidential showponies was taking up the screen time.
It didn't matter, though: MSNBC, in short order, cut away as well. CNN lingered a bit longer, and then, perplexingly, cut to a studio shot seconds before Romney finally said that he was running for the White House. Was it poor timing, or is CNN just "the most trusted name in talking over news that is suddenly happening?" It's tough to say.
Apparently, it also became tough this week to say anything nice about the guy. On the coattails of Mitt jumping into the race, came a clutch of statements that seemed to indicate that Romney wasn't going to benefit from Reagan's Eleventh Commandment. Sarah Palin, who was all up in Romney's grill, geographically speaking, warned him that the Tea Party didn't care for his invention of ObamaCare. Rudy Giuliani said the same thing, only more bluntly. Tim Pawlenty dinged Romney for being inauthentic. Ron Paul set up Romney as the villain to inspire his coming "money bomb." FEMA failure-boy Michael Brown threw a barb at Mitt. And since everyone else was getting in on the act, train-wreck Senate candidate Joe Miller announced that he was starting a "Stop Mitt Romney" campaign -- proving once again that in America, if you work hard and are a biped, you too can grow up to start your very own "Stop Mitt Romney" campaign.
Speaking of Alaska's many semi-professional vagrants, most of the rest of this week's 2012 campaign coverage was dedicated to Sarah Palin's publicity vacation, which traveled up the East Coast, media in tow. Donald Trump took her out for pizza at New York City's worst pizza chain, in an apparent effort to teach the suddenly-wearing-a-Star-of-David-because-I-hear-there-be-Jews-afoot Palin what a shonde was. Speaking of deep and relentless shame, it turns out that Palin's concept of who Paul Revere was and what he did was largely based on the Beastie Boys song, or something.
Between Mitt and Sarah -- and Anthony Weiner's crotch mysteries! -- there wasn't much of a newshole left to go around for the other candidates. Rick Santorum is set to reveal his plans this coming Monday, so get excited for that. Buddy Roemer has made the entire state of Iowa an intriguing offer. Herman Cain continues to ascend in the eyes of voters and pundits.
And does anyone know where Newt Gingrich has gone? Rumor has it that he's off on some cruise in the Greek Isles, actually. I suppose he won't be able to bring continual ruin to his candidacy if he stays on vacation, so good for him!
For all the campaign news, please enter the 2012 Speculatron for the week of June 3, 2011.
The 2012 Speculatron Weekly Roundup, June 3
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