Anyone who admits that government is necessarily “inefficient, inflexible, duplicative, wasteful, expensive and burdensome,” who admits that “government doesn’t [work],” yet simultaneously seeks the highest political office, is a prima facie case.

I believe the free market works and government doesn’t — that when government takes over a function which can be effectively managed in the free market, we make a huge mistake. I think government is almost by necessity inefficient, inflexible, duplicative, wasteful, expensive and burdensome.”

Mitt Romney, I think we’ve got you dead-to-rights. Because if you really, honestly believed your rhetoric, you’d be involved in some sort of abolitionist movement. Instead, you’re trying to grab the reins, presumably because government power is bad unless you (or your friends) are the ones in control. I imagine that like most other small “r” Republicans, Romney is deluded by his own ideology: “With my business acumen, I can make it work.” Or something like that. But a government is definitively not a business, and cannot be run like a business, for the simple fact that a government faces no direct competition, and can achieve revenue without providing a single good or service for which people voluntarily pay.

In sum, Romney either believes that he can accomplish the impossible task of “fixing” government, which by his own admission is plagued by myriad evils by necessity, or that statement is empty rhetoric, and he does in fact understand what government is — he knows that it doesn’t work, that it can’t work, that it’s evil. But he wants to run it anyways. What sort of man wants to be in charge of an inneficient, wasteful, burdensome organizatoin?

Romney either thinks he can fix it, in which case he’s an idiot — or he knows that he can’t, in which case he’s no better than any other politician who wants to own your life.