Do I have to make a choice?

by David Safier

Apparently I am "one of America's most notable Republicans." That's what it says in the first sentence of a mailer I just got from Mitt Romney.

Can anyone read a statement like that, even a loyal Republican, and not laugh out loud? How many "America's most notable Republicans" got this letter today, I wonder.

Here's the money line (as opposed to the money pitch, which comes later), centered, underlined, in bold type:

Do we place our trust in government or in the American people?

Does it really have to be one or the other, Mitt? I mean, didn't the founders of this country create, as Lincoln put it, a "government of the people, by the people, for the people"?

The mailer, in keeping with Romney's personna, is the standard pap: Obama, bad; Government, bad; American people, good; Romney, good. Except for a few laugh lines like the one above, it's a yawner.