Poor Mitt

Full disclosure:  I'm a little ticked off at Mitt Romney right now.  I drive 10 hours to Toronto to get away from the American political climate and write peacefully, and he decides to show up within walking distance from our apartment to read at a bookstore.  I mean, really.  Leave me alone, Mitt.  Stop following me or I'll get the wrong idea. I guess your appearance is a little offset by Judy Collins reading at the same store this week.

But poor Mitt Romney.  Seems like just whenever he switches his position to accommodate what he perceives as popular opinion, the political winds start to blow the other way.

Take gay marriage, for example.  When he was governor of Massachusetts, he did everything he could to stop same-sex couples from marrying in the Bay State.  He thought he might ride this wave of anti-equality right to the White House, if not in 2008, then certainly in 2012.  Well, it looks like that issue really isn't the hot button issue it was years ago.  Opponents of same-sex marriage seem to be mellowing.  But wherever Mitt goes these days its seems that there are protests and newspaper ads reminding Mitt and the rest of us that his church spent 30 million dollars to pass Prop 8 in California, which, by the way, polls show that people no longer support.

And then there's health care.  Mitt thought he had done himself proud when he brought health care reform to Massachusetts as governor.  It was so impressive, in fact, that some of this reform was incorporated into the health care bill that just passed.  Now how much does Mitt like his own reform?  Not so much.  He's defending himself by saying that health care should be a state issue, and that he helped his own state years ago.

But then there's this nagging issue of wanting the federal government to step in and make same-sex marriage illegal for all states.  He wants a constitutional amendment to that effect.  So two guys committing to a relationship rises to national importance, while millions of people who don't have health care -- thousands of whom will die -- is a state matter.

Mitt, you must have a computer program to keep track of all your twists, turns, changes and contradictions in your political views.

By the way, I stayed home and didn't say hello at the bookstore.   Even that didn't go so well for you.  You were completely upstaged by Ann Coulter's Canadian tour.