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"  Welcome back to the blog&amp;#039;s weekly survey of Our National Dialogue, which is, of course, what Handel would have sounded like if he&amp;#039;d composed &amp;quot;The Messiah&amp;quot; to be sung primarily by cormorants. Before we get to what the gobshites said on our electric television machines, a brief shout-out to some gobshites of the printed word. First, to Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia, who, it is said, is hard at work promoting a new doorstop he&amp;#039;s constructed wherein he backs his entire career up over his own feet because, frankly, he doesn&amp;#039;t care much about his day job any more. And then there&amp;#039;s the mysteriously unincarcerated John Yoo, waxing wroth at the president&amp;#039;s new immigration policy because, and I am not making this up, &amp;quot;President Obama&amp;#039;s claim that he can refuse to deport 800,000 aliens here in the country illegally illustrates the unprecedented stretching of the Constitution and the rule of law.&amp;quot; I tried to reach Irony for comment on both of these items, but she had downed 25 Xanax with a fifth of Stoly and was being rushed to the ER. And some people will tell you that print is dead. It was a bad day for Willard Romney on Face The Nation, and he was unquestionably Sunday&amp;#039;s chewiest cluster of fk. Smoke was seen coming from every opening in his head, and there was a nasty sound of grinding gears, and small springs were seen flying from his head. Former McKinley State Department correspondent Bob Schieffer doggedly kept trying to get him to cough up an answer as to whether or not he would repeal the president&amp;#039;s executive order regarding young undocumented immigrants. No answer was forthcoming. Hell, no identifiable human speech was forthcoming. First, he said... Well, let&amp;#039;s step back and \u2014 and look at the issue. I mean, first of all, we have to secure the border. We need to have an employment verification system to make sure that those that are working here in this country are here legally and then with regards to these kids who were brought in by their parents through no fault of their own, there needs to be a long-term solution so they know what their status is. This is something Congress has been working on, and I thought we are about to see some proposals brought forward by Senator Marco Rubio and by Democrat senators, but the President jumped in and said I&amp;#039;m going to take this action. He called it a stopgap measure. I \u2014 I don&amp;#039;t know why he feels stopgap measures are the right way to go and he \u2014 Then, he elaborated... Well, as-- as you know, he was \u2014 he was President for the last three and a half years, did nothing on immigration. Two years, he had a Democrats&amp;#039; House in Senate, did nothing of permanent or \u2014 or long-term basis. What I would do is I&amp;#039;d make sure that by coming into office I would work with Congress to put in place a long-term solution for the-- for the children of those that \u2014 that have come here illegally \u2014 Then, he explained... Well, it would be overtaken by events, if you will, by virtue of my putting in place a long-term solution with \u2014 with legislation which creates law that relates to these individuals, such that they know what their \u2014 their stat \u2014 setting is going to be \u2014 And, in conclusion... We&amp;#039;ll \u2014 we&amp;#039;ll look at that \u2014 we&amp;#039;ll look at that setting as we \u2014 as we reach that. But my anticipation is, I&amp;#039;d come into office and say we need to get this done on a long-term basis, not this kind of a stopgap measure. What \u2014 what the President did, he \u2014 he should have worked on this years ago. If he felt seriously about this, he should have taken action when he had a Democrat House and Senate, but he didn&amp;#039;t. He saves these sort of things until four and a half months before the general election. Then, both Strunk and White rose from their graves and dragged him off to Hell for crimes against the language. Also, Willard? Using &amp;quot;Democrat&amp;quot; as an adjective makes you sound unbelievably stupid. Pass it on. (Also, Schieffer mentioned something that I had missed: And Bill Kristol writing in The Weekly Standard this week, says, &amp;quot;We are reaching the time of consequence in our dealing with Iran on nuclear weapons.&amp;quot; He says it is time for the President to go to the Congress and say, &amp;quot;I want you to authorize me to be able to use military force, if that becomes necessary. And he says if the President is not willing to do that, then the Congress should do it \u2014 themselves. Honest to Christ, Bill Kristol belongs in a fking cage. How do you eat with that much blood on your hands?) Along came the panel, featuring Rich (Sparkle Pants) Lowry, who plainly hadn&amp;#039;t been watching the program in the Green Room. I expect, obviously, Romney has not stuck on an answer on this yet. I \u2014 I suspect he&amp;#039;ll have to say he will repeal this executive action but he&amp;#039;ll endorse basically the Rubio plan which does it legislatively. Sooner or later, Willard will do something completely unprincipled. Good bet, Sparkle Pants. And then, of course, there was some evidence that Rich has not been paying attention for some time now. I do think there&amp;#039;s a danger here of this move by the President seeming overly political, just like his move on gay marriage, because he is on the record in detail saying he does not possess these powers as President of the United States, and all of a sudden, his view of that apparently changed because he has to win Colorado. I am typing very... slowly... now. What the president did on immigration was very similar, not to his public endorsement of marriage equality, but to his order to the Justice Department not to enforce the Defense Of Marriage Act. So, when he said he didn&amp;#039;t have the power to decide the question of marriage equality in the states, he was speaking the truth. He doesn&amp;#039;t, and he isn&amp;#039;t pretending to have it. He&amp;#039;s just getting the federal government out of the question. No view of his &amp;quot;changed.&amp;quot; And God knows, an incumbent president doing things that might help him stay president is just goddamned unprecedented in American politics. Why don&amp;#039;t they just say &amp;quot;uppity&amp;quot; and get it over with? Drifting a few feet above the rest of the panel, on a cloud made up of sweet memories and old chardonnay, Peggy Noonan, the Magic Dolphin Lady, spun her usual witchcraft, advising Willard Romney to be even less coherent than he has been. She&amp;#039;s the Sheherazade of the 2-for-1 Happy Hour. He&amp;#039;s got to go meaningful and graspable. I agree with you, so that people understand what it is, maybe not specifically, but in general, he wants to do, what his priorities are. There is a tendency when you are running for office to want to do constant, quick, bright, applause lines, and there&amp;#039;s been a lot of that going on. But a series of applause lines is not a serious statement about this is the trouble we&amp;#039;re in, and this is the direction we want to go in. I&amp;#039;m begging you, Willard, take this advice. Be more... graspable. Moving along to This Week With George Polysyllables, we find Tim Pawlenty, last seen fleeing the presidential race in sheer terror at the prospect of running against Michele Bachmann, and now working vigorously in the vineyards of the Romney campaign \u2014 no, really, it has actual vineyards, and I&amp;#039;ve seen them \u201A where the finest grapes are stomped into the purest vintage bullshit, and Tim has the purple feet to prove it. VANDEN HEUVEL: Has he saved the auto industry in Mitt Romney&amp;#039;s state? Has he? WILL: We have... PAWLENTY: Has he saved the auto industry? (CROSSTALK) PAWLENTY: That would have been saved under Governor Romney.  Good dog, Tim. Now roll over and play dead because you&amp;#039;re not going to be VP. And thank god for Austan Goolsbee, who later made sure that America knew Pawlenty was an ignoramus. PAWLENTY: Austan, he had a Democrat Congress. GOOLSBEE: He had a Democratic Congress...  And Matthew Dowd continued his career-long search for the very essence of uselessness. I want to go back to those focus groups we saw, because I think this is what the fundamental problem I think with both political parties in this country and the leadership on both sides of the aisle in this, is there seems to be an inherent incapability to tell the American public the truth, to tell the American public what&amp;#039;s ahead for us, to tell the American public that we can no longer do certain things that we have to do, to tell the American public that we have to have a shared sense of sacrifice, that we can no longer have the state of government that we had and we can no longer have the tax policies that we have.  Yes, out abroad in the land, I sense a great hungering to be told we have to screw up our economy as badly as Great Britain and Ireland have screwed up theirs. Good grief. By comparison, the gobshitery was at something of a minimum on Dancin&amp;#039; Dave&amp;#039;s Disco Dance Party, where John McCain made the latest in a series of pathetic stabs for his old reputation as a &amp;quot;maverick,&amp;quot; even though the presence of journalistic potato-blight Mark Halperin did offer some promise, especially on a panel with the exceptionally irrelevant Harold Ford, Jr. (D-Green Room). Here&amp;#039;s Mark, being banal and making sure his phone calls will be returned no matter what happens in November. You know, it&amp;#039;s strange, as you say, it&amp;#039;s unusual to have both your parents. But I know he doesn&amp;#039;t consider himself a politician. He&amp;#039;s one term in office in Massachusetts. Thinks of himself as a business person. For those of us who spend a lot of time thinking about how are the president and Mitt Romney similar, how are they different? I think they&amp;#039;re both pretty detached from politics. Romney has been nothing but a politician since the moment he closed down the Olympics. The guy&amp;#039;s been running for president for seven goddamn years. I guarantee you that the president is not &amp;quot;pretty detached from politics,&amp;quot; either. At your feet or at your throat, I guess. (Photo Illustration by DonkeyHotey via Flickr/Special to The Politics Blog) "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.esquire.com/news-politics/politics/a14452/mitt-romney-immigration-9833953/>