My Wednesday column debunks the myth of Peacenik Mitt...
Anyone who believed Mitt Romney's shape-shifting performance as "Peacenik Mitt" on Monday night is an amnesic, naive doofus. As we all know by now, Romney will do and say whatever is necessary to make it through the day. This is his strategy. By now, the Republicans, like the monochromatic lockstep Borg hive they are, will vote for Romney no matter what he says. This liberates Romney to take the form of Sergeant Slaughter one day, then [insert the Transformers switcheroo sound effect here] to the left Code Pink the next day.
However, in reviewing the debate it's clear that he wasn't entirely Pacifist Mitt throughout. If you look closely, Romney's real motives for war made a few subtle appearances.
First, during the debate, we heard statements like this about fighting extremism in the Middle East: "But we can’t kill our way out of this mess." Peacenik Mitt. Has anyone seen Dennis Kucinich and Mitt Romney in the same room together? Hmm.
Then there was the following about-face minutes later: "Well, my strategy’s pretty straightforward, which is to go after the bad guys, to make sure we do our very best to interrupt them, to — to kill them, to take them out of the picture."
I'm sure Romney meant to say disrupt them and not "interrupt them," which is what Romney typically does to debate moderators. [continued]