The scorpion that stung Mitt Romney

If Fox is calling it for Obama, that's that. 

Interestingly, the NYT electoral map shows Ohio in pink and VA in solid blue. I've been saying for a while that the key state in this race would be Virginia. Of course, those colors may shift by the time you read these words.

Romney may attribute his loss to one key factor: Republicans brought The Crazy. And they kept on bringing it, even though The Crazy worked against them.

You've probably heard the story about the scorpion who stings the frog carrying him across the water, thereby dooming both. "Why did you do such a thing?" asks the dying frog. "Because it is in my nature," says the scorpion.

This year, the scorpion's name was legion. The scorpion was Roger Ailes. And Todd Akin. And Richard Mourdock. And Michele Bachmann. And...

...and let's keep this brief. The name of the scorpion that stung Mitt Romney was Tea Party.

Given Obama's manifest vulnerabilities, Romney would have won this election handily but for one factor: His party has been commandeered by lunatics. Mitt had to feign madness in order to go among the mad. As a result, the sane shunned him.

There's an old story that Churchill, in the early 1930s, met one of Hitler's comrades at a social function. Churchill said: "Tell your boss that anti-Semitism is a good starter but a bad finisher." The 2012 election necessitates an updating of that maxim: Extremism is a good opener but a bad closer. If you bring The Crazy, you can drive 30-40 percent of the electorate into a foamy-lipped frenzy, but you will also repulse more people than you attract.

Tomorrow I can go back to pissing on Barack Obama. What a relief!