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They dislike him!  They really dislike him!

Time Magazines’ Joe Klein has an article on Mitt Romney today that isn’t particularly favorable. Actually, it’s downright hostile. Before continuing, I must confess to liking Joe Klein. I enjoyed “Primary Colors,” and have always thought him a far more entertaining media presence than the leftwing bloggers do. Those guys hate him.

The point of Klein’s article is that Mitt Romney rubs him the wrong way. There’s really nothing more substantive there, or certainly nothing more substantive that you haven’t already heard 8 million times before. As required by the Time Magazine style-book, Klein hits the flip-flop thing (breathtaking originality!) and misstates Romney’s past immigration positions which are the same as they are today, but big deal. Such things are all in a day’s work for a media Bigfoot. Fresh insights and reporting accuracy aren’t job requirements at dinosaurs like Time Magazine. No newsflash there.

But check out the way Mitt Romney obviously makes Joe Klein’s flesh crawl, and the way Klein makes no effort to disguise that fact:

Mitt Romney is the fastest-talking presidential candidate I have ever seen. He dashes through his stump speech like a racehorse in full gallop — he even looks a bit equine… But his speed of delivery also has an element of sleight of hand… When Romney slowed down and focused on a single issue — immigration — at a press conference in Dover, N.H., the brazen cynicism of his candidacy became almost embarrassing… Romney takes postures, not positions…

"You know," he often says, very Reagan, "there are people out there who actually believe America is great because of its government." Gasps and groans. "Well, we have a great system of government, but America is great because of" — pause for effect, cue passion — "its people."

There is something slightly anachronistic about all this. Romney is the most perfect iteration I've seen of the television-era candidate. At one point, I squinted a bit and saw him in the middle distance: blue suit, white shirt, red tie, high forehead, slick black hair, tan, tall and ramrod straight — he could have been an exhibit in some future Museum of Natural History: Politicianus americanus… His success or failure will be a reflection of how serious the electorate is in 2008.

Battle-hardened conservatives will recognize this tired media meme. As with the rest of Klein’s piece, it’s breathtakingly clichéd. In the eyes of super-smart reporters like Joe Klein, successful Republicans have only succeeded because they were so skilled at hoodwinking the unwashed masses who couldn’t recognize hokiness and “sleight of hand” when they stared them right in the eye.

Ronald Reagan got the same kind of relentless criticism from enlightened lefties for decades. Oh, how his purportedly empty platitudes about the greatness of America and the American people maddened the media. He, too, was labeled an anachronism, one that came straight out of the 1950’s. Why, the simpleton Reagan even selected “Family Ties” as his favorite TV show, a program that was frighteningly redolent of anachronistic 1950’s family values.

The fact that Romney has emerged as the candidate who most irritates the left is an unmistakably good sign for his campaign. Liberals by nature loathe their opponents. (Conservatives, on the other hand, mock their opponents.) The fact that Romney so angers adversaries like Andrew Sullivan, Joe Klein, and the Boston Globe is a good thing; for whatever reason, the only Republicans who ever get into the Oval Office are the ones who really rub lefties the wrong way.

The Klein article also reveals a fundamental divide between the liberal media and a guy like Romney. Romney really does believe in the greatness of America and her people. That’s why, even though we face such enormous challenges, he’s still honestly optimistic. He radiates this optimism, and it drives some people nuts. Shouldn’t he be despondent about Gitmo like everyone else?

Also, like Ronald Reagan, Romney effortlessly gets under his critics’ skin for having the audacity to be smarter and more insightful than they are. The media routinely dismissed Reagan as a senile dunderhead. Reagan was in good company there. Eisenhower had the same reputation a generation earlier. It never dawned on the gluttons at the press buffet to wonder how such dopes habitually ran circles around them. And how it must have shocked them when it turned out that Reagan was a more skilled and lucid writer than all of the knights of the keyboard who so vainly hounded him.

While Romney will be tougher to dismiss as an intellectual lightweight than Reagan was because of his impressive resume, his “simple” faith in America is sure to madden the media. It’s also telling that Klein attacks Romney for his “speed of delivery” and “sleight of hand.” One of the things that drove the liberal Boston media nuts about Romney is that they were convinced he had something up his sleeve, but could never find it. For four years the local media unloaded haymakers in Romney’s direction, and never laid a glove on him. Drove them nuts.

I got a glimpse into exactly how deep this frustration ran when I appeared on a local chat-fest with Boston Globe columnist and longtime Romney nemesis Joan Vennochi last week. I mentioned that Romney had balanced a wildly out of whack budget without raising taxes. Joan countered that he had balanced the budget only by raising fees and – I hope you’re sitting down for this – closing corporate loopholes! Since every Democrat since Woodrow Wilson has had “closing corporate loopholes” as the lynchpin of his economic plan, this was an odd attack for a liberal to make.

But such is the effect that Mitt Romney has on the liberal media. He has brought his message directly to the rubes, and it has resonated. Curses! No wonder why Joe Klein is so frustrated.

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