Had Romney somehow managed to win the election, he might have passed a comprehensive immigration reform law (out of cynical political expediency, mind) and perhaps done much to correct the Latino electorate's rightfully disdainful view of Republicans. Romney, and by extension Republicans, would have also collected credit (wholly undeserved, mind) for the recovering economy. The Supreme Court appointments, the evisceration of health care reform, the coddling of corporations, the acceleration of wealth polarization and all the other horrible consequences of a Romney administration notwithstanding, the Republican Party would have, or could have, become a formidable political concern, going forward.

Instead, the party's thought leaders on Fox, talk radio and in the Tea Party House of Representatives, complaining that Romney was too moderate, will do all they can to drag the party further to the right, which is to say further into the political wasteland.

It sucks from an immediate policy standpoint. There is little if any reason to share the Democratic hope, expressed during the campaign, that the Republican "fever" will break after the election and that Republicans will be willing to compromise. Nevada Republicans Dean Heller and Joe Heck, who both won reelection while pretending to be moderates, have signed Grover's pledge. Heck in particular mustn't break it, lest he find himself facing a Todd Akin/Sharron Angle style challenger in a 2014 primary. Fiscal cliff? At this point, the kicking of a can down the road of which people always speak so derisively would be a significant achievement.

But  in time, on that and other issues the chances for progressive victories in the ongoing struggle to, you know, make the the world a better place, are immeasurably better as a result of the 2012 election, not just in Obama's second term, but beyond.

"I don't have a $5 trillion tax cut," Mitt Romney said in his first debate with Barack Obama.

To which bitchy little area megalomaniac Sheldon Adelson probably answered, "Then why the hell am I spending so much money trying to buy you the presidency?" Or words to that effect.

Just kidding. Adelson knew Romney was lying.

And tax cuts are actually the least of Adelson's stated motives behind his fabulously financed attempted hostile takeover of the U.S. government. Those motives are reviewed in this week's CityLife, by the way.

Oh, and added bonus (and because I just happened upon it while looking for something else and even though it's old it seems more relevant than ever), here is Sheldon Adelson's explanation for outsourcing Nevada's high-roller industry to China, as told to the Times of India a few years ago while Adelson was in Macau.

"Manpower here (in Macao) is cheap ... Tax rates in Macau are much higher than in Vegas, but we intend to balance that with the much cheaper manpower here."

See? If Nevadans would quit demanding to be paid so lavishly to clean Sheldon Adelson's eleventy-nine thousand Las Vegas toilets, our economy would rebound in no time!

When thin-skinned quasi-senator Dean Heller threw his hissy fit and declared that his opponent was the most corrupt and unethical person he'd ever met, David Vitter must have felt slighted.

During the short, accidental Senate tenure of Dean Heller, he and his wingnut colleague from Louisiana appear to have struck up a close working relationship.

Vitter is also featured on this year's list of most corrupt members of Congress, as compiled by Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW). This year's dishonor marks the third time Vitter has made the list. In addition to indulging his fetish for wearing diapers with prostitutes (it takes all kinds), Vitter has come under fire for keeping a guy on staff who tried to stab a woman, and trying to bribe a cabinet officer. As CREW executive director Melanie Sloan helpfully explains, "There likely is no senator who has been before the Senate Ethics Committee more often than Sen. Vitter."

And there is no member of Congress who has received more money from Vitter's "Louisiana Reform" leadership PAC in 2012 than Dean Heller -- $10,000 as of Sept. 3 to be specific. That's twice as much as Vitter's PAC has contributed to any other politician in America, according to opensecrets.org.

Oh, well, CREW is just some icky liberal do-goody outfit that hates Republicans, so who cares, right?

Except innocent humans whose eyeballs have been subjected to Dean Heller's campaign commercials are left with the impression that CREW's "Most Corrupt" list is one of America's most sacred founding documents. Heller's campaign is almost entirely built around Shelley Berkley's appearance on CREW's list, albeit Berkley garnered a mere "dishonorable mention," a fact that Heller never honorably mentions because he, too, is probably embarrassed that Nevada -- Nevada! -- can't crack CREW's official top 12 "Most Corrupt" list, like his valued colleague David Vitter has not once, not twice, but three times.

If Dean Heller wants Nevada voters to know anything this election year, it is that earning a dishonorable mention on CREW's list disqualifies Shelley Berkley from being a U.S. Senator. That's the core message of Heller's campaign.

So to recap: Heller is using money provided by a disgraced skank and recurring star of CREW's list to buy ads saying that Berkley can't be in the U.S. Senate because she's on CREW's list. Hypocrite? Or just a Republican? Ha. Trick question obvsly.

Speaking of disgraced skanks, the disgraced skank who more than anyone else is responsible for Heller being in the Senate in the first place, John Ensign, still had $20,000 in his leadership PAC, as of the last reporting period, anyway. In this cycle Ensign has already donated to Mark Amodei, whoever that is, as well as that one weirdo who is always running for something (and always losing) whose dad was a basketball coach. The Hairdo might as well fork over the rest to Heller. He'll take anybody's money.

"The most unethical, corrupt person I've ever met in my life is Shelley Berkley," appointed senator and dumb blond Dean Heller says.

Actually, in an embarrassing blow to Nevada's hard-won reputation as an unethical backwater where organized crime apologists get elected by acclamation and all public policy is determined by which sleazeball juice-broker can swing the most lucrative sweetheart deal over whores, cocaine and cocktails on any given day, Berkley and her wildly boring micro-scandal earned merely a "dishonorable mention" on CREW's report of the most corrupt members of Congress -- a report that serves as the sum total of Heller's campaign.

The dozen members of Congress who were named full-on "most corrupt" are, according to CREW, anyway, by definition more corrupt than Berkley. And presumably Heller knows all of them, especially the two-thirds of them who are Heller's fellow Republicans.

Plus...

Surely Heller knows Sheldon Adelson.

Heller knows Jim Gibbons.

Heller knows, or at least has endorsed, Mitt Romney -- although now he doesn't want to get any on him.

Heller and the other "grown up" Nevada Republicans would prefer to pretend that the Nevada Republican Party doesn't exist. Yet it is hard to imagine that Heller has never met state GOP chairman and standard-issue Nevada flim-flam man Michael McDonald.

Indeed, Heller is a career politician who has been in one elected office or another for nearly all his adult life. Name any prominent Nevada sleazeball, and chances are Heller has met them.

And the obvious specimen, as Ralston quickly noted on his new post-Sun website thingy, is the vile piece of work whose corruption created the Senate vacancy Heller was appointed to fill.

Berkley's new ad about Heller's drug-trafficking money-laundering crony is exactly the kind of televised noise that has nothing to do with anything that matters to anybody's life, which is to say it truly reflects the campaigns being waged by both sides in this dumb-as-dirt race for Senate. True, unlike Heller, Berkley has run some substantive ads on public policy. But evidently polling shows the best chance of winning is to join Heller and his handler Mike Slanker by mounting a campaign in the shit-covered, vomit-drenched milieu that is Slanker's preferred habitat.

One would prefer to see Berkley focus on dismantling Heller's puerile policy prescriptions and make a case for an aggressive progressive agenda. Alas, Berkley is not an aggressive progressive. So evidently we'll just have to settle for Berkley needling, taunting and teasing Heller, prompting Heller to ball up his fists and stamp his feet and yell "stop it you stinky poophead! You're the stinkiest poophead I've met, so there!"

In other words, the race is shaping up exactly as anticipated.

Just because it has been revealed, in no uncertain terms and so as to remove any sliver of doubt, that Republican nominee by default (really, who else did they have?) Mitt Romney's loathsomeness is mutual -- he thinks you're vile and disgusting, too -- Nevada Democrats must not get complacent.

For one thing, Romney doesn't deserve to lose Nevada. He deserves to lose Nevada by a soul-crushing margin that will humiliate not only him but anyone who has campaigned, supported and/or apologized for the lies, race-baiting, class warfare and condescending claptrap that is his presidential campaign (i.e., Brian Sandoval).

More importantly, Nevada Democrats need to show up at the polls in huge numbers, not merely to rid America's political landscape of Willard once and for all, but also to vote for Shelley Berkley, Steven Horsford and John Oceguera. No, your Gleaner has no interest in any of those people as, you know, people. Their individual political careers are neither here nor there. Seriously, don't care. Really, if potted plants were running as Democrats against Republicans the need to support the foliage would be no less urgent (and maybe easier?).

It's just that the Tea Party mustn't control Congress, s'all. (More on this in CityLife later this week btw.)

Now is not the time for Nevada Obama supporters to dance on Romney's grave. Now is the time to toss the rest of the Republicans in after him.

Oh so now Obama's going all "um, I'm the president, Mitt Romney is not now and never will be the president, for which the nation can give thanks, so let's go through the motions over the next couple of months and hopefully a handful of Republicans will grow a brain cell or two after the election but if they don't we'll forge ahead best we can and at least weirdo Mitt Romney won't be president."

Fair enough. As I 'splain in this week's CityLife, that message, or something like it, has been working in Nevada for months.

The big fat X factor -- emphasis on big -- is the amount of money Sheldon Adelson and the rest of America's drooling rich old angry white guys (as Harry Reid might say) are going to spend on anti-Obama ads in Nevada and other swing states over the next two months. Romney's SuperPac has raised four times as much as Obama's, and that's not even counting the jillions that will be casually spent by secretly funded Hellmouth spawn like Karl Rove's Crossroads abomination and the Koch Brothers' Americans for the Koch Brothers' Prosperity.

By the by, we had Obama campaign press secretary Ben LaBolt on The Agenda the other day. Inasmuch as the Obama campaign is about to be terrifyingly outspent, I asked, might the campaign step back from advertising in smallish swing states like Nevada to concentrate spending on Florida, Virginia and Ohio (that latter of course is the ball game)? Never, LaBolt answered, more or less.

That's good, because the more active Obama's campaign is in Nevada, the better for Democrats down ticket (although the fact is evidently lost on several down-ticket Nevada Democrats).

Meantime, if America's campaign finance system is going to be a revolting exercise in corruption and an immoral offense against democracy, revolting, immoral and corrupt billionaire wingnuts might as well keep spending lavishly to offend Nevadans on TV. It's not like the American right has any other plan to stimulate Nevada's economy.

After the Supreme Court tossed the Medicaid expansion portion of Obamacare and said it would be up to states to opt-in, Gov. Brian Sandoval said "oh dear we must wait and see, mustn't we?" which to the highly overrated governor's credit is actually a more rational response than the flat-out "hell no" delivered by most of Sandoval's fellow Republican governors.

Nevada's Democratic legislative leadership, meantime, took a firm and strong stand in favor of ... Sandoval's wait-and-see approach. An exception was Democratic Assembly Health and Human Services Committee Chair April Mastroluca, who shamefully raced to reinforce wingnut narratives and said "I don't think it would be in our best interests to expand right now."

(Harry Reid had the sense, or at least the political investment in Obamacare, to tell the truth: that given the enormously generous federal payments [never less than 90 percent of the cost of expansion] and Nevada's traditionally sky-high rate of uninsured low-income people, Medicaid expansion in Nevada is a "no brainer.")

If state officials are going to freak out about the cost of Medicaid, they should know, as Bill Clinton pointed out while thoroughly demolishing Republican policy in Charlotte, that Mitt Romney proposes to slash federal Medicaid spending by a third over the next ten years. That means states will be forced to dramatically curtail Medicaid services, or pick up more of the tab on their own. Perhaps at some point between now and the election, Romney apologist Brian Sandoval might explain why his candidate wants to shift a huge financial burden from the federal government to Nevada, and why that is such a good idea.

Dean Heller should also be forced (media? hello? anyone?) to explain why this is such a good idea -- Heller, after all, has already voted to shift Medicaid costs to states at least twice when he voted for the original Ryan budget.

Every third word out of Shelley Berkley's mouth is Medicare. Might she be coaxed into hammering Heller on Medicaid, as well?

Medicaid is known primarily as the program that provides health care for low-income mothers and children. But as Clinton pointed out, a huge portion of Medicaid spending is used to provide nursing home and Medicare premium assistance to none other than Berkley's holy sacred senior citizens.

It is tempting to suggest that Heller either hates poor kids and their poor grandma, or he thinks that the state of Nevada (already one of the cheapest states in the nation) needs to spend less on education and infrastructure so it can spend more on Medicaid. But either suggestion assumes Heller's support for gutting Medicaid was a deliberate act of policy sentience instead of a thoughtless knee-jerk political reaction.

In any case, Sandoval and Heller, and Joe Heck too -- to say nothing of the Romney Nevada campaign and the rest of the "Team Nevada" corporate Republican machine -- are championing a policy that will either cost the state hundreds of millions of dollars or, more likely, deprive health care to Nevada's most vulnerable citizens. It would be nice, not only politically but, you know, for the poors, if Nevada Democrats could take a few minutes out of their busy schedule to pound the living shit out of Nevada Republicans on this issue. Ooh, look, another diamond ad. Sigh.

Harry Reid's speech to the Democratic National Convention demonstrated all the charm, eloquence and passion we have come to expect from the Senate Majority Leader, which is to say pretty much hardly any at all.

And yet it was still better than Brian Sandoval's speech to the GOP convention, and not just because of Sandoval's monotonous insincerity.

Reid stated an obvious but no-less actual fact: If you like what the Tea Party did when they took over the House, you'll love what they'll do if, in all their collective rage, paranoia and whackadoodledoo, they take control of the Senate and the White House.

Sandoval, by contrast, merely echoed the GOP's silly trope that business owners and only business owners are Real Americans, except unlike other GOP speakers, Sandoval had been directed to use the word "Hispanic" in every third sentence. Outreach, GOP style!

*    *    *

Yes, Michelle's speech was not only a far more enlightened, inspirational and, frankly, patriotic exploration and explanation of American values than anything that was muttered at the Republican convention. Education, health care and the safety net, women's freedoms, the brink of economic collapse and the need to move forward not backward -- her speech was also more detailed and sophisticated with respect to policy than either Mitt Romney's or Paul Ryan's.

*    *    *

Perhaps the Republican Party's primary achievement thus far this campaign cycle, aside from going down on Sheldon Adelson, of course, has been deliberately taking an innocous Barack Obama line about the public good wildly out of context and turning into a pathetic cliche. A whole night of the Republican convention was devoted to the "we built it" nonsense. Coupled with the fact that the delegates can't stand their nominee, who is but a nominee by default because nobody else who was even remotely credible would run for the party's nomination, and little wonder the GOP convention seemed a loveless and rather dreary affair. Whether either conventions will make a dent in the overall campaign narrative remains to be seen (indeed, polling suggests the Republican gathering might as well not have happened). But if there is an "enthusiasm gap," as the nattering media grown-ups are always saying, the Republicans are the listless ones, at least judging from the conventions.   

A dork in youth as well as adulthood, your Gleaner has paid pretty close attention to every national convention since 1972 (Eagleton!), and if I may I would suggest that even the most objective observer would agree that none of them, not even John McCain's Palin-infested tracigcomedy four years ago, was as lame, in an uninspiring sort of way, as Mitt Romney's dumb convention this year -- especially considering the economic conditions the Republicans had to work with.

So what best describes Romney's speech?

A) Pap

B) A Hallmark card -- oh wait, that's the same as A)

C) Really who cares because Mitt Romney should have waited for 2016 anyway.

And looking ahead to the 2016 GOP convention, here's a dead lock: The roster of speakers will not include Willard Mitt Romney.

Washington Post regurgitator of conventional thought Chris Cillizza summed up the winners and losers from Talent Night at the Republican National Convention...

LOSERS

* Brian Sandoval: In the run-up to tonight’s slate of speakers, a number of Republican strategists flagged the Nevada governor’s address for us as one to pay attention to. Sandoval, after all, is a Hispanic Republican with a terrific resume (former state Attorney general, former federal judge). But his speech felt thin and he was clearly quite nervous.  It was a decidedly forgettable for someone who is seen as a future face of the party.

A doubly super-sad review of your governor's national debut, considering it was easily the best speech he ever made. Make no mistake: He didn't write that.

The obvious cognitive dissonance coursing through Sandoval's speech was exposed well before it was written. There is much more to mock, but one incongruous nugget in particular stands out: While proclaiming that Democrats are icky, Sandoval said, "They tell us not to dream, but to settle." This from a governor whose vision for his state consists of presiding over the further deterioration of its educational, social and physical infrastructure, muttering "now is not the time to raise taxes," and otherwise keeping a low profile while waiting for the construction industry to come back.

Sure, Sandoval's foray into the national political milieu may have been greeted with an audible thud. But perhaps something can be salvaged from his speech. "They tell us not to dream, but to settle" is a line that applies to nothing if not Sandoval's administration and the corporate lobbyists for which it stands. The phrase would serve very appropriately as a new state motto.

(UPDATE: Now the Republicans say your governor is still ready for prime time, albeit something far shy of a Warholian 15 minutes worth, on Tuesday. The RNC's latest revised convention schedule has yet to be confirmed by a spokesman for Isaac/god/Todd Akin.)

Poor Latino heartthrob Brian Sandoval. The strapping young(ish) governor was all set to give a prime time (!?!) speech at the National Republican Convention. But then The Lord registered His displeasure with Republicans for a) failing to nominate Rick Santorum in the first place and then b) cutting and running like cowards from Holy Todd Akin. So Goddy McGod sent a storm, the severity of which has nothing whatsoever to do with anthropogenic climate change (same goes for the midwest drought, obviously, and everyone will politely refrain from bringing up that uncomfortable topic, thank you).

Upshot: No prime time speech for Nevada's governor. Oops, almost forgot area media's standard usage; make that Nevada's "popular" governor.

Yes, "popular" is a euphemism for not under investigation for corruption and not accused of slamming a woman half his age up against the wall and telling her to put out or else. The governor of Nevada is an out-of-sight, out-of-mind entity. Provided a Nevada governor can resist the urge to get indicted while in office, inattentive (i.e., typical) Nevadans, if asked, are likely as not to answer, sure, other states have a governor so we should probably have one too, so yeah, favorable, whatever. It's a low bar.

But I digress.

Sandoval's speech will be "folded in" to the remainder of the truncated convention schedule. Maybe he can introduce Sheriff Joe Arpaio!

Such awkwardness would be of a piece with the rest of Sandoval's brush with the 2012 cycle. First he endorsed blazing idiot Rick Perry. Then Sandoval hosted arguably the biggest fail of a dumb presidential caucus in the nation. Then he sat idly by, gubernatorial thumb snugly lodged up gubernatorial bum, while his state party splintered into vaguely amusing chaos. And just when it looked like he wasn't going to get any more on him, Sandoval decided to unfurl his skirt, the better for Mitt Romney to hide behind, and effectively defended a deliberately, undeniably false Romney ad campaign laced with the not-so-subtle implication that the Black Man in the White House would let black people collect welfare forever without ever having to look for a job, so white people better show up and vote for the white guy.

And through it all, the state in which Sandoval blithely "governs" exhibits the practical consequences of right-wing economic ideology more starkly than anywhere this side of Somalia -- a fact that might have dawned on someone in the national political press corps had Mitt Romney's god not rained on Sandoval's big night.

But hope springs. Between now and November, perhaps Romney will deploy Sandoval as a surrogate on the national campaign trail, where the bright shiny governor might finally attract all the klaxons and klieg lights his failed state so rightfully deserves in an election that is supposed to be about the economy. That's not the role Sandoval would prefer to play in (all together now) The Most Important Election of Our Lifetimes. And it wouldn't be good for Romney. But for the nation, it would easily be the best possible thing that could happen as the result of Brian Sandoval's ongoing clumsy collisions with campaign 2012.

Nevada Gov. Brian Sandoval will speak at the Republican National Convention in Tampa at ... 10:43 a.m. Tuesday? Introducing Ted Nugent perhaps? We don't know. 6 p.m. Monday night, when the nation will be electrified by his oratorical excellence. Nor do We don't know what he thinks he will say.

However (as I muttered on TV Wednesday) we absolutely positively know what Sandoval won't say: If America wants to see how the anti-tax, small-government approach to economic development championed by Romney and Ryan works in the real world, America need look no further than Nevada, which sports one of the cheapest state governments in the country by several measurements, and is one of only three states that taxes neither personal nor business income.

So elect Romney, and all of America can be just as prosperous and successful as Nevada.

Nope, Sandoval won't say that. He may be welcome at the convention. Truth isn't.

That was quick.

Paul Ryan is your Republican vice presidential candidate because he made a plan that takes money and other nice and fine things away from the undeserving poor, sick and elderly and gives all their stuff to the truly deserving wealthy, as Jesus and Ayn Rand intended.

Without his magic plan, Paul Ryan is just another annoying Republican white guy in Congress yammering on about imaginary job creators and voting to repeal Obamacare 119 times. Without the plan, Paul Ryan is Joe Heck. Or a metrosexual version of Dean Heller.

Unfortunately for Ryan, his plan is very much like Mitt Romney: The more voters know about it, the less they like it.

So obviously Romney, all Stinky Cheese Man-like, is running from Ryan's plan as fast as he can, vowing that he will introduce his own stupid plan, because for Pete's sake he (Twit Romney, not Pete) is the important personage atop the ticket. Ergo, it is cruel and unfair for Democrats and other humans to associate Romney with the anti-human parts of Ryan's plan (i.e., all of them). And for good measure, Shelley Berkley must stop calling Heller and Ryan psychopathic soulmates. Because it unsettles Mitt Romney.

And somewhere in there lies the explanation for why, after the Wunderkind Ryan visits bitchy little area megalomaniac Sheldon Adelson in the secrecy of the latter's wingnut masturbatorium (or as the media

calls it, The Venetian) and assumes the position, and then ventures out into public to speak to the little people whose money and other fine and nice things Ryan wants to take because Adelson is a very old and very lonely monster who can only be cheered by endlessly amassing the assets of others, Heller won't be there (and probably Heck neither).

 

 

Announcer: Paul Ryan, Mitt Romney just named you the 2012 Republican vice presidential candidate! What are you doing next?

Paul Ryan: I'm going to Las Vegas to kiss Sheldon Adelson's ass!

So much for the "first do no harm" school of selecting a running mate.

Shelley Berkley should send Mitt Romney flowers, or candy, or a mid-sized company for him to pillage, or something nice.

Perhaps no one in America should be more pleased with Romney's selection of Paul Ryan than Berkley. Dean Heller's support for Ryan's skanky budget is the centerpiece of Berkley's otherwise boring campaign. Now Obama will eviscerate Ryan's creeponomic repudiation of the social contract and mock Ryan's knee-jerk assault on the common good -- exactly the sort of things that Obama does exceptionally well -- and each time Obama takes Ryan out for a spin, he'll reinforce Berkley's narrative of Heller as a full-on tool. Serendipity, no? Berkley still has an up-hill fight, not least because Heller's a cute blond and she, well, isn't. But by naming the smarmy junior wingnut as his running mate, Romney has effectively made an in-kind contribution to Berkley's campaign.

First he wilfully and of his own volition endorsed a towering twit for president. Then he presided over the dumbest caucus in the history of dumb caucuses. Then he grinned like an idiot while a flim-flam man won the state chairmanship of his political party and the state party subsequently dissolved into a smelly puddle of extra-weepy fail.

So the conventional wisdom -- that Nevada junior governor Brian Sandoval would prefer to stay out of the 2012 election from here on out lest he get any on him -- is understandable, on the logic front.

And yet asked to be a shameless apologist for lying sack Mitt Romney and the vile dog whistle masquerading as Romney's campaign ad on welfare, Sandoval was pleased to answer promptly. And obediently...