• THANKS BUT NO THANKS: Mitt Romney couldn't bring himself to name George W. Bush after he gave Romney his elevator-is-closing endorsement.

Ernie Dumas writes this week about Mitt Romney's dilemma — how, really, can he avoid mentioning George Bush, whose policies put the country into an econommic free-fall?

Read on:

• WHERE'S THE COVERAGE: Ron Paul supporters seeking votes.

Noted: Backers of Ron Paul, the Republican presidential candidate, bought a quarter-page ad in today's Arkansas Democrat-Gazette encouraging votes for him in Tuesday's Arkansas presidential primary.

The message, which must have cost at least a couple of thousand dollars, urges voters to send likely nominee Mitt Romney a message by voting for Paul, "the ONLY presidential candidate who will truly protect your freedom and liberty."

Well then. You have a sitting U.S. congressman. You have a legitimate presidential candidate who's followed party rules to be on the ballot. You have dedicated supporters spending money. You have a proven record of amassing delegates in other states because of the strength of your underdog candidacy.

This would be a page one story in the Democrat-Gazette if it concerned a crank Democrat, would it not? Three of them, in fact, at last count. How about one for Ron Paul? There's still one day left.

(Heh heh. Heard about some Democratic mischief makers' plans to cross over into some Republican legislative primaries?)

Now that Mitt Romney is the certain Republican nominee, even the Republicans who detested him in the primaries — and they were in the majority of cumulative not-Romney votes — say it is simply unfair to repeat unflattering anecdotes about high school days. But if you must, the multiple eyewitnesses who stand by their story of the forced haircut of a lonely prep school classmate? They are to be ignored. You are supposed to believe instead those who were NOT there who say they can't believe Mitt Romney could ever be so insensitive.

I'm willing to forget a youthful conformist-rage haircut — though I don't believe he's being truthful when he says he doesn't remember it. But James Wolcott has encapsulated the Romney that has had such a hard time inspiring Republicans, never mind Democrats.

The incident of hair assault revealed this week that led colleague Bruce Handy to dub Romney "the Demon Barber of Cranbrook" shows the mark of a bully, part of a pattern that goes from strapping his dog to a car roof to "I like to fire people." But I think that Romney as bully misses something larger about the political, public man: He's a coward. He's never gone against the grain, stood up for an underdog or advanced an unpopular cause before it became popular, risked a single gleaming hair off his head, shown any backbone apart from the determination to win, tapped into anything larger than himself, risen to the moment. His selfishness is such that you think conservatives would appreciate him more, since that's their driving ethos. He may have to show some of that old nasty Cranbrook spirit if he truly wants to win their love.

A slow morning. But Joe Conason on President Obama's reversal on same-sex marriage bears quoting.

For honoring his conscience on the issue of marriage equality, President Obama earned angry rebukes from all quarters on the right, including the Uncle Toms of the Log Cabin Republicans, who said he was “a day late and a dollar short”; teenage mom Bristol Palin, who mocked him for invoking his daughters in changing “thousands of years of thinking about marriage”; and 50 year-old virgin Ann Coulter, often engaged but never wed, who called his decision “a sign of desperation.”

On the Fox Nation website, minions of Roger Ailes accused Obama of declaring “war on marriage,” echoing Rush Limbaugh‘s charge that “the president of the United States is going to lead a war on traditional marriage,” while Karl Rove simply gloated that the controversy has left him “in a bad place” with Catholic and conservative voters.

All of these reflexive attacks were consistent with Republican propaganda shrieking that matrimonial rights for gay people will destroy the institution they hope to uphold. It is a puzzling argument, especially because the principal right-wing complaint against homosexuals for so many years was their alleged promiscuity. Now gays and lesbians are charged with trying to ruin the family because they want to take vows of fidelity.

In this historic moment for human rights, listening to the likes of Ailes (now on his third marriage) and Limbaugh (currently married to wife number four), not to mention Rove (divorced twice), it is impossible to believe that Republicans screaming about the future of wedlock are sincere. If they are truly worried about marriage, they should stop harassing gays and campaign for the only change that might make a real difference.

They could outlaw divorce, or least repeal the ultra-liberal, no-fault divorce laws that they’ve used to their own advantage.

Speaking of marriage, here's a link to scholarship cited by a reader yesterday that finds evidence of same-sex marriage in church custom as far back as the 9th century.

Interesting feature in the Washington Post, highlighted by Talking Points Memo, about Mitt Romney's prep school days. It's full of anecdotes about "pranks," including mean-spirited harassment of a nearly-blind teacher and bullying of a classmate.

We've all done things we regret in our youth. But one anecdote still chilled me. It was about Romney's unhappiness with a classmate who dyed his hair blond and let it grow down over one eye.

“He can’t look like that. That’s wrong. Just look at him!” an incensed Romney told Matthew Friedemann, his close friend in the Stevens Hall dorm, according to Friedemann’s recollection. Mitt, the teenaged son of Michigan Gov. George Romney, kept complaining about Lauber’s look, Friedemann recalled.

A few days later, Friedemann entered Stevens Hall off the school’s collegiate quad to find Romney marching out of his own room ahead of a prep school posse shouting about their plan to cut Lauber’s hair. Friedemann followed them to a nearby room where they came upon Lauber, tackled him and pinned him to the ground. As Lauber, his eyes filling with tears, screamed for help, Romney repeatedly clipped his hair with a pair of scissors.

Full article here.

The story struck me because it brought back high school memories of a lifelong friend who adopted "Beatle bangs" — as a retrograde relative of mine called the hairstyle — about the time the episode in the Romney story occurred. As at Romney's prep schools, the mere sight of my pal's long hair enraged members of the football team and some of the faculty, too. With an assistant principal guarding a restroom door, bullies hauled my friend inside, held him down and butchered his hair, administering a good thrashing in the process. They walked away smirking. Another long-haired friend received similar brutish treatment away from school.

I mentioned a favorite teacher this week, Arkansas native Iris Murphy. One of many reasons I admired her was this: She took a break from Latin declensions one day to decry the persecution of these kids. To our astonishment, our gray-haired magister quoted from a song then playing on Top 40 radio, "Home of the Brave, Land of the Free." It was about pressure on a kid with long hair and funny clothes to conform. "Why won't you let him be what he wants to be?" Miss Murphy quoted from the song. It was heroic in the context of that time and place. (Thanks to wonders of YouTube, above, I can relive it.)

Long hair is safe now. But conformity is no less in demand in some quarters. Romney's past is prologue to his party's modern-day politics.

UPDATE: Now Romney apologizes, sort of.

ALSO: Interesting commentary on Mitt Romney's youth from Josh Marshall. More classmates coming out of the woodwork.

By now, you've probably heard or read that President Obama has made a surprise visit to Afghanistan and will address the U.S. on TV tonight.

I thought you might find a White House press pool report interesting:

• Wikipedia
• HE'S BACK: Robert Bork.

This was that Romney might look to Robert Bork for guidance on matters legal.

Robert Bork? Read on for a refresher in Ernie's column this week, along with a cartoon George Fisher drew up for Dumas when he wrote about the failed U.S. Supreme Court nominee almost 25 years ago. This is personal, Arkies. Bork would have really Borked the state on the Grand Gulf power plant, had his legal reasoning prevailed.

Republican mouthpieces are up in arms that the Obama administration is trying to score political points from the killing of Osama bin Laden.

No Republican ever boasted — prematurely or otherwise — about an accomplished military mission, did they?

But this takes the cake. Mitt Romney, tone deaf as usual said, "even Jimmy Carter" would have given the order to take out the terrorist.

Got it? You can always throw down on the wimp Jimmy Carter.

Even if you're Mitt Romney, who did not do military service, thanks to missionary and academic deferments for five years until a high draft number spared him altogether. Jimmy Carter merely attended the Naval Academy and did six years of active duty on battleships and submarines. Wuss.

• GENE CAULEY: The former LR lawyer invested heavily in 2008 presidential primary. Not this year.

But it's worth noting that the process was long ago subverted by money, mostly unaccountable. We still don't know much about all the special interest groups that funneled both direct and indirect money into races in Arkansas in 2010 at every level from state legislature to U.S. Senate.

Just the other day, somebody sent me an interesting squib they'd dug up in rooting through Arkansas-related contributions to political campaigns.

It was in 2008. A 527 political organization called Americans for Change spent $144,500 in 2008 to influence a federal election with a media buy in South Carolina. Chalmer Wayland III of White Hall, a Republican political consultant (he worked for Tim Griffin in 2010), was the contact. Albright Ideas of Little Rock did the media buy. Dempsey Film Group of Little Rock and Cam Emrick of Siloam Springs did some of the media work.

I have some calls out. I'd be guessing this was an independent expenditure friendly toMike Huckabee's presidential candidacy. Clint Albright of Albright Ideas did work for Huckabee over the years. UPDATE: Albright tells me: "That was a group that shared some of the conservative views of Mike and other Republicans…………..we were not part of anyone’s campaign at the time and just hired to place the media"

South Carolina proved to be Huckabee's last stand against eventual winner John McCain. Huckabee's emergence was foiled by the popularity of Fred Thompson, who, after spoiling Huckabee's chances in South Carolina, dropped out of the race.

Here's the prime factoid. The media buy was underwritten entirely by Gene Cauley of Little Rock, described as a self-employed entrepreneur. Cauley made a number of other contributions, mostly to Republicans, in 2008.

You probably won't find the name Gene Cauley on political contribution lists this presidential election year. The former Little Rock securities lawyer is doing a seven-year stint in federal prison. Cauley had his fingers in all kinds of pie in his high-flying days, from law to real estate development. He fell hard. Here's one of many articles about him.

How many 527s are working out there this year? Start counting around Labor Day.

Jon Huntsman, the Republican former governor of Utah, nailed modern Republican politics in remarks Sunday. Talking Points Memo reports:

At an event Sunday night, Huntsman, who was uninvited from a GOP fundraiser in Florida in March because he called for a third party, said of the incident, “This is what they do in China on party matters if you talk off script."

Huntsman tried to roll that remark back a bit on MSNBC Monday morning, but ended up repeating himself.

“As we were talking about that last night,” Huntsman said on “Morning Joe” Monday, “I said, you know, if you’re not on-script and you get knocked out of an event like that – the parties are supposed to be big-tent, you’re supposed to bring in all ideas – and I said, I thought for a moment about what they do in China if you go off-script. The party, they knock you out. We shouldn’t be doing that here, we should be accommodating all voices.”

It's the same in Arkansas. The growing Republican legislative and constitutional officer delegation gets its talking points from the same factory. They might as well have had a parrot doing the talking Friday, for example, when the Legislative Council pushed ahead with taking available federal money to set up health insurance exchanges established by federal law to expand insurance coverage for millions of uninsured. Republican heretics are not tolerated — be the subject taxes, abortion, gay rights, guns, immigrants, injecting religion in government, labor. And here's the thing: It generally works. There's a base, not the majority, but a substantial base that's energized by the dogma. A candidate like Huntsman, no liberal, was shunned.