Thank God for Bill Clinton. At last – somebody willing to tell it like it is when it comes to the piece of performance art that Mitt Romney delivered last week:

I do have to admit that I was probably just as horrified by Romney’s jumpy, overly aggressive style as I was by his flip-flops and fibs. Not only have I actually been playing attention for the past year, I’ve also been following Steve Benen’s regular Friday feature at the Maddow Blog where he’s been collecting Mighty Mitt’s prevarications under the title “Mitt’s Mendacity” (here’s the 37th and latest installment) for months now. (It helps to have lists.) As a consequence, I knew better than to expect an honest debate. But you’ve got to hand it to Bill Clinton – lots of folks have pointed out that Romney was lying himself silly (and offering proof of same), but it takes Clinton to get to the heart of the issue and present it to us in a way that makes Romney’s deceitful campaign game so obvious.

And while we’re going on about Moderate Mitt, Ed Kilgore offered an analysis that perfectly gets at Clinton’s point:

… if Democrats can’t mine the vast record of extremism compiled by the GOP and its ticket over the last two years, and show that it’s a more shocking and uncompromising version of what the party stood for prior to 2008, then they really can’t expect to win. So they should place a lot less emphasis going forward on style points and “energy levels” and all the other superficial jazz the pundits love so much and concentrate on what is actually endangering Obama’s re-election (other than deeply ingrained perceptions of his performance): the repositioning of Romney and Ryan as thoughtful leaders who just want to fix the economy and “reform” the more excessive features of government. If these birds get away with that, it’s going to take one hell of a GOTV effort to get the incumbents over the hump.