Blooper

It's that thing where you have to keep leaping back in time over and over again to kill off the guy you were 15 minutes ago before he says stuff that was politically expedient then but became a political liability 15 minutes later.

Except, y'know, you don't actually have a time machine.

So the best you can do is repeatedly disavow things that just came out of your own mouth and rely on the Beltway media's depraved sense of "fairness" and plutocrat propinquity to make sure that no one who matters will be rude enough to mention what a colossal liar you are.

Side effects include David Brooks jizzing himself absolutely blind over the return of "Moderate Mitt".

Here's a sample platter:

Moderate Mitt Returns!

Far from being a lackey to the rich, Romney vowed ...

Far from being an individualistic, social Darwinist, Romney spoke comfortably...

Far from wanting to eviscerate government and railing about government dependency, Romney talked...

Far from being a pitchfork-wielding populist who wants to raze Washington, Romney said...

Far from being an unthinking deregulator, Romney declared...

And, having taken this step, he’s broken the [Tea Party's] spell.

As I point out here, this debate was a Beltway media hack's wet dream come to succulent, 3D, Sensurround life. So no one has any right to be surprised that the Lord High Mayor of the D.C. Media Village found himself so overcome with the ecstatic Centrist delight of it all that he simply could not help breaking out an actual Exclamation!Point! and rub one out in the pages of the New York Times.

Of course nowhere in his op-ed Song of Songs -- 

Pleasing is the fragrance of your perfumes;
your name is like perfume poured out.

-- describing Mr. Romney's rapid-fire lie-a-thon does Mr. Brooks ever mention the word "lie". 

Nor does Mr. Brooks use the word "calumny".

Nor deceit, deception, defamation, detraction, dishonesty, disinformation, distortion, evasion, fable, fabrication, falsehood, falseness, falsification, falsity, fib, fiction, forgery, guile, inaccuracy, invention, mendacity, misrepresentation, misstatement, myth, obloquy, perjury, prevarication, revilement, reviling, slander, subterfuge, tale, tall story, vilification, white lie or triple-decker fraud sammich with bullshit gravy.

Instead he tells his readers this:

Romney didn’t describe a comprehensive governing philosophy, but he gave us a hint of a strong center-right pragmatic approach. It starts with 1986-style tax reform and Wyden-Ryan Medicare reform and then offers a glimpse of experimental pragmatism on most everything else. 

And this:  

Yes, it’s true. Romney’s tax numbers don’t add up. Yes, there’s a lot of budgetary flimflam. No, Romney still doesn’t have an easy answer to wage stagnation (neither does Obama). But Romney’s debate performance signals the return of Governor Mitt. Democrats call it hypocrisy; I call it progress.  

Because having built a very prosperous life for himself by first trading on and then lying about his own Conservative past, it is hardly surprising to find Mr. Brooks praising Mr. Romney for following the same strategy.

Because having been skull-fucked for months by "severe Conservative" Mitt and the teabagging marauders, Mr. Brooks desperately wants to believe he now has two ardent Centrist suitors 

vying for his stale favors.

And as with Iraq or the Bush tax cuts, a lie is never a lie if it makes David Brooks feel all gooey inside.