Why won't Mitt Romney stop ingratiating himself with these Neanderthals?

He presents himself as a uniter who disdains negative campaigning, and then in the next breath, in his home state of Michigan on Friday, he makes a cheesy birther crack about the president — a bat’s squeak calling to the basest emotions — especially bizarre given that his own father was born out of the country, in Mexico, with a questionable right to run for president…

Even Bob Dole, known as the conservative Hatchet Man in his day, is warning that his party could curdle if it doesn’t start appealing to ethnic minorities, young people and the “mainstream,” and stand up to the far-right lunacy. The G.O.P. has veered so far right that Jack Kemp, Dole’s running mate in 1996, now looks like Teddy Kennedy compared with Kemp’s protégé Paul Ryan…

And that is what’s disturbing about the prospect of a President Romney. Even though he once seemed to have sensible, moderate managerial instincts, he won’t stop ingratiating himself with the neo-Neanderthals.