We love writing Romney off, don't we? Reporting on his every gaffe—the NRA thing and now Battleship Earth—but the sad truth is that Romney's missteps and flip-flops don't matter in the least to the GOP or their hardcore constituency. Wonks may wag their fingers, but real people don't vote on substance.

Take last night's declamation contest, where McCain and Romney waved their pathetic little hard-ons. Romney'd reaped a whirlwind of righteous outrage (on the right and the left) for what were actually some very sensible remarks about Bin Laden (he said "It's not worth moving heaven and earth (and) spending billions of dollars just trying to catch one person.”)

He backpedaled last night, offering up this bit of overcooked rhetoric: "We'll move everything to get him. . . . He is going to pay, and he will die." Now that Mitt has his NRA membership, and is a lifelong hunter, he may actually be the one to pull the trigger, too. Grrr! Go Mitt!

McCain (who Bryan York at the rightwing National Review likened to Jack Nicholson in The Shining) shot back with: "We will do whatever is necessary. We will bring him to justice, and I will follow him to the gates of hell."

So that's what we're dealing with here.

The GOP has shown that they have a huge stake in electing morons to office. The party's raison d'être since Reagan is to see government fail for all except their old boys network. They would run a trained chimp if they thought his antics would win them the White House. Oh, wait a minute...

My point is: to argue that the GOP is looking for qualified candidates is to get the party's MO all wrong. And to deny Mitt's appeal to The Base would be to ignore a quarter century of losers who won the White House, sometimes by a landslide.

Romney has already taken significant steps in addressing all his flip-flopping. He said in a recent interview: "Everybody in this race that I know has changed their mind on certain positions and they've done so as they gained more experience." And added: "I'm not going to apologize for saying I was wrong and now I think I'm right."

If we look back at that other famous flip-flopper, John Kerry, we can see that flip-flopping per se was not the problem. Romney is absolutely right that all politicians do it. It's whether or not you're balls-out about it that counts.

In the last race, Kerry reacted like he knew there was something wrong with changing his position, in inconsistency. He spent a lot of time explaining, denying, clarifying, apologizing. The accusation (like the "slick-willy" label they stuck on Clinton) got to him. He was perpetually on the defensive. And when you're on the defensive, you're not defining the debate. It's as good as over.

In politics, as in gay sex, flip-flopping can be fun. And Mitt's said as much himself.  If he had a profile on the gay hook-up site Manhunt*, say, he'd probably list his role as "versatile." "Versatile-top" or "versatile-bottom" is hard to say, and it's mostly an academic distinction anyway. McCain strikes me as a bitter old bottom who's trying to come off—and not too convincingly—as a top. And the electorate does not want to hop in bed with that, trust me. They're worse than useless.

"Electibility" eclipses everything else in political campaigns, of course. And electibility is a kind of self-fulfilling prophecy. Someone somewhere decides, based on some focus group that some one or other of the candidates is more likely to be elected. Hillary is said to be "unelectable" by those who oppose her flip-floppery.

Romney's sleezy used car salesman good looks (no accounting for taste) seem so far to have trumped his obvious weaknesses as a candidate. It's one of our species' chief faults that we seem eager to forgive a handsome man anything. This may be where evolution clashes with common sense.

And Romney has got the evolution thing down.

After Romney claimed that Battleship Earth was his favorite book, John Dickerson wrote in Slate: "Romney, the most meticulously arrayed and perhaps the most careful of the candidates may be giving us a peek at a robust inner goofball."

With the exception of the tart Bush père, the GOP has favored goofball presidents. Reagan with his wacky “We begin bombing in five minutes" jokes. Bush with his crazy Bushisms.

McCain’s POW past isn’t a joke.

But Romney’s tenure as Massachusetts Governor sure was.
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*A reader pointed out to me after reading this that Romney had actually used manhunt.net's old slogan "get on, get off," in a television appearance before the debate. He told Jay Leno: "It's going to be very short. Get on, get off, keep your hair from getting messed up." He's definitely a versatile-bottom.