How Do Republicans Deal With the Aftertaste...

     ...after they eat their own?
     Maybe that's why Mitt Romney smacks his lips 50 times a minute. The taste of Donald Trump's ankle must be driving him even crazier than he already is.
     Today, Romney delivered a speech at the University of Utah that was a masterpiece of delusion, projection and right wing bathos. Suddenly, all the things that Romney stood for during his almost invariable failure of public service is now a bad thing: Invading Iraq. Torture. Trump's bullying tactics. Killing children. Outsourcing US jobs overseas. Fear-mongering about Muslims. Flip-flopping. And, of course (and yes, he actually said this out loud), releasing tax returns.
     No, really. Romney actually ragged on the Donald for not releasing his tax records. And for not revealing the tapes of his confab with the NY Times.
     Of course, all this was coming from the same guy who as Governor of Massachusetts once proposed wire tapping mosques and putting all Muslim students in the Bay State under surveillance. He was also for the invasion of Iraq before he was against it. As head of Bain Capital and even after, he'd outsourced US jobs by the tens of thousands. After leaving Beacon Hill in 2007, Romney had bought up then destroyed all the servers used by the Governor's office, hence all the emails.
     And, lest we forget, there was also the missing tax returns that Romney viciously refused to release four years ago.
     The entire speech, delivered from a teleprompter that black men aren't allowed to use, was like those coded messages spies used to exchange before encryption became more sophisticated: Every other line was to be read literally while the other alternate lines contained the code.
     And the code essentially boiled down to, "We in the GOP don't like Donald Trump ripping the pointy white hoods off our pointy white heads. Learn some discretion, bitch!"
     And it stands to reason Willard couldn't resist getting in some shots at Hillary, accusing the former Secretary of State of releasing classified information (long since discredited, as Secretary Clinton had rightly said much of the classified information in her Foggy Bottom emails were retroactively made classified).
     Indeed, virtually everything Romney accused Trump of doing was spot-on but were also things of which he is equally guilty. Such as Trump going after female journalists.

     Remember this from one of the 2012 presidential debates? This was the face Romney made when Candy Crowley of CNN had the effrontery to interrupt the rich white man (not long after that, Crowley was out at CNN).
     In short, what Romney was saying to the Hinckley Institute was that even though Trump stands for everything he and the rest of the GOP stands for, Trump is unacceptable for damaging their brand by not bothering to use a filter and throwing the dog whistle over his shoulder.
     If Ben Carson has uttered one true thing, it is this: That nothing Romney said today made a lick of difference. The Trump Straight Talk Express, especially after a seven state pickup on Super Tuesday, is barreling at top speed toward the bridge that's out ahead.
     And nobody. not the National Review, not Ted Cruz or Marco Rubio or the entire GOP establishment, least of all Mitt Romney, can even slow it down.