The Beltway bubble's clueless Romney-for-EM punditry

Fox News

This just in from Planet Washington: Mitt Romney ought to be Detroit’s emergency manager.

That wisdom, dispensed by pundits Charles Lane of The Washington Post and David Weigel of Slate show why the D.C. Beltway deserves its reputation as a bubble divorced from the rest of America. This half-baked half-wittery seemed to emerge from the Romney is a Michiganian School of Analysis – that is, since Romney is from Michigan, then he will win Michigan (wrong). Similarly, just because Romney hails from Metro Detroit doesn’t mean he’s the best EM for the City of Detroit.

“His hometown of Detroit, right now, has just been put into state receivership or it’s about to be,” said Lane mindlessly. “I wonder if there is no role for him in the restructuring of Detroit. He’d be the perfect person to do it. He has got the expertise, he’s a hometown guy, and he is a kind of a political free agent at this point.”

“Romney’s ties to the city are tighter than most city emergency managers, roving technocrats who do a few years at a time in troubled metro governments,” added Weigel.

What nonsense.

To begin with, Romney’s native Bloomfield Hills is a long way from Detroit, though it may not look that way from the beltway. And anyone following the EM tale knows that Governor Snyder has been careful to build bridges to Detroit leadership. His appointment as EM of Detroit Public Schools, for example, was Roy Roberts – a high-ranking black executive with GM. His Detroit EM is likely to be a similarly nuanced choice. Why would Snyder roil Detroit’s Democratic political waters with an unpopular Republican who tried to unseat Barack Obama?

But with the big microphones of the MSM’s Washington-centric coverage, such drivel  quickly becomes American political currency. So naturally, Snyder had to respond to these beltway emissions first thing Monday morning. No, Snyder predictably told the Paul W. Smith radio show, Romney is not a candidate for EM.