A Transparently Phony Prez Candidate for a Fundamentally Dishonest Governor

Suddenly it all starts to make sense. Digby, whose Hullabaloo is the moral fulcrum of the left-blogosphere, posts a transcript of a recent Chris Matthews broadcast that featured uber-conservative Pat Buchanan. Strange that we should need to rely upon a
wingnut like Buchanan to lay bare the foundations of our governor's
support for the Presidential campaign of Mitt Romney, but telling nevertheless. From the transcript:

Pat Buchanan: ...Look, I think
this, look, clearly Romney's position is 180 degress from what it was.
If I were him I wouldn't say "I evolved," I would say "I changed my
mind." What he has going for him is that there's an enormous vacuum on
the Reagan right. Reagan was a believer in these things and Giuliani
and McCain and Romney are all suspect. But they're the three front
runners and they're running into that vacuum -- and some lower
conservatives are trying to get up into it --- so that's what gives
Romney the possibility of winning some of those votes.

Chris Matthews:
But what does it mean Pat, you're an ideologue, what does it mean he's
just denying ... he's got an anullment of his past beliefs, I mean, is
it like Rudy dumping three wives fromk history? How can you dump from
your past your entire ideological rap sheet and just say that doesn't
matter, never mind. How do you do that

PB:
Very simple. These are not conviction politicians. They are politicians
trying for the nomination of a party which is conservative and
traditionalist which is [against] a lot of what they believe ... argued
and said, so they are accomodating themselves to the party. Is it
sincere? I don't know but everybody knows what's going on.

"Everybody knows what's going on." Everybody knows, it seems, but Matt Blunt. Just this weekend, Blunt had this to say about his support for Romney:

"I think we need a conservative candidate and a president that believes
in the traditional values that make America great," Blunt said. "I
think he's somebody that's a demonstrated problem solver."

In direct contravention of Blunt's stated beliefs on Romney, Buchanan continued on national television...

Chris Matthews: ...what kind of conversion
are we talking about whereby a person can simply say "I swear to God I
never believed what I believe."

Pat Buchanan: Do I believe that these are sincere honest conversion of Rudy or, uuh, Romney, in my judgment, probably not. They're changing their positions for political reasons...

So arch-conservative opinion leader and Washington insider Pat Buchanan tells the world that Romney isn't "sincere" in his new-found conservative views, and that "everybody knows what's going on" with Romney's conversion. Yet Matt Blunt, who claims to believe in the need for a "conservative" candidate, supports Romney anyway.

The dynamic at play here isn't difficult to parse. Matt Blunt is more comfortable --not less-- with a candidate who is transparently disingenuous in his values because Blunt is, at his core, fundamentally dishonest himself. Sewage seeks its own level. Blunt's dishonesty has manifested itself in his dealings with the press, the style and substance of his governance, and the nature of his rhetoric.

Should we really be surprised that a governor who said during his campaign that he'd never cut Medicaid but who promptly cut more than 100,000 off that program once in office supports a Presidential candidate who was pro-choice in 2004 but is anti-choice in 2007? You'll excuse me if I don't faint from the shock...