Posted on 01/14/2015 5:18:18 AM PST by Kaslin
In 2007, when President Obama announced that he was running for president, he did it in Springfield, Ill., to highlight his supposed connection to Abraham Lincoln. He brought in his biggest fans to cheer him on. When George W. Bush announced in 1999, he did it in Cedar Rapids, Iowa. The Bush campaign, likewise, brought in a big crowd of supporters. John Kerry announced in Patriot's Point, S.C., in 2003, amid a sea of American flags, war veterans and an aircraft carrier in the background. And where was Mitt Romney when he announced on Friday that he was thinking of another run in 2016? He, too, was talking to his base: about 30 deep-pocketed donors in New York City. "Tell your friends," he said.
You know how superhero flicks often have an extra scene after the credits to hint at what the sequel will be like? Well, this would be the perfect end to the movie "Romney 2012."
The problem is that "Romney for president" is now an art house film thinking it's a blockbuster franchise and that there's a huge market for another sequel. There's not.
Don't get me wrong. I wanted him to win in 2012, and I think voters made a serious mistake not following my advice. I've met the man, and I know several of his friends and former staffers. He inspires great loyalty in them, and that speaks well of him. He's an honorable, capable and decent person.
But I know lots of honorable, capable and decent people. I don't want them to run for president either.
Romney's support outside his personal network of donors is largely made up of people who lament that he lost the last time around. That -- and name recognition -- is probably the biggest explanation for why he polls so well. The last poll to include him among the GOP contenders (Fox News, Dec. 16), had him leading the field at 19 percent, with Jeb Bush second at 10 percent.
But the only poll you need to know about was the exit poll of voters in 2012, which asked, "Which one of these four candidate qualities mattered most in deciding how you voted for president?"
Romney won three out of four. On "shares my values," Romney won 55 to 42. He won on "is a strong leader" 61 to 38. He took "has a vision for the future" 54 to 45.
But in the category "cares about people like me," Romney lost by a staggering 63 points (81 to 18).
That may be a totally unfair impression of the man, but it is a sincere one. This was not a verdict on his policy positions, which were fairly conventional.
As I've been saying for years, Romney has an authentic inauthenticity problem; he seems fake, but that's actually him. Not only does he look like the picture that came with the frame, he talks like a 1920s college president. Maybe it speaks ill of America that voters put so much stock in empathy and authenticity, but they do.
It's no secret that Romney took the loss hard. But there would be a great irony in thinking that the 59 million votes he garnered in 2012 indicate a base for him to build off of in 2016. Most of those voters voted at least as much against Obama as they did for Romney. And that's exactly how the Romney campaign wanted it. "Our whole campaign is premised on the idea that this is a referendum on Obama," Romney strategist Stuart Stevens admitted to the New York Times. Well, Romney nostalgia, too, is largely a referendum on Obama.
But Obama won't be on the ticket in 2016. And the idea that a one-term Massachusetts governor, who hired Jonathan Gruber to help design his health-care plan, is just what the Republicans need to run against Hillary Clinton is odd, particularly when the GOP has a much more talented, and fresher, field than it did in 2012.
There's chatter that Romney is just trying to keep Bush from locking up all the big donors and preventing a Bush coronation. If so, I'm sympathetic. But the sympathy ends the day Romney announces. Then, he's just another contender.
I live in MA. I have NO Romney nostalgia. The name makes me sick!
Another rich loser.
I’m tired of the country club crowd in the republican party sticking knives in the back of the middle class.
The problem is that a faltering, flailing Obama was able to take him out at the kneecaps with a whispering campaign about his EEEEEEVIL activities as a venture capitalist.
In ‘16 the Dems are likely to run on a platform of flat out, full-throated economic populism (most likely with the Fake Indian at the helm).
Could there be anyone WORSE to put up there than Mitt Romney under those circumstances?
Mitt should be asked if he still carries a pix of Nelson Rockefeller in his wallet...
Both remind voters of the Moneybags guy from the Monopoly game.
If Romney running screws Jeb Bush and Christy, and gets Cruz or Pence the nomination I’m all for it.
Let those three asshats split the liberal vote three ways.
You want to know the really sad part? Out of all the Republican nominees since Reagan — Bush included — Romney was probably the best. And that’s saying something really, really bad.
The biggest problem with “Romney nostalgia” is Mitt Romney.
I don't know yet for whom I will vote in the 2016 TN primary, but you can be sure that I will vote in the general election for whoever is our nominee.
I'll be damned if I will sit at home or vote for some third party candidate who has no chance whatsoever and therefore hand Hillary or Fauxtahona Warren the victory over. It will not happen, and if I have to hold my nose, so be it. It wont be the first time
“Romney nostalgia” is probably right up there in likability these days with Muslim extremism.
Of course. Because when Romney talks about tax cuts, it has no effect on the 47% of "people like you" who pay no income taxes. If Romney campaigned on increased welfare benefits I bet you would say "he cares".
Given this perceived detachment, Romney would need to put together an easy-to-understand plan directed at the middle class and campaign on nothing else. Overcome perception with reality.
1-Too Liberal
2-Doesn’t know how to fight
3-Doesn’t know how to govern
4-Too easy to paint as the white villain of success.
I’ll never forget Romney sitting in his chair with that stupid grin on his face when he got double-teamed by Obama and Candy Cruller in the debate.
Then Benghazi happened, and I deliberately ignored what I knew God was telling me. I voted for Romney anyway. The result was a long separation from feeling God's presence which began the day after the election. The difference was like night and day.
I learned a tough lesson. I will never again cast a vote for a Republican who might as well be a Democrat; the Godless views are the same, regardless of the letter after the name. And I don't care who the Dems run. Nothing is worth jeopardizing my relationship with God.
How come Mr French Missionary wasn’t over at the useless march along with the rest of the parasites? He could have been showing some “leadership”.
This is very reasonable, in fact, this is exactly how I thought, as a long time conservative Republican. But, I've since changed my thinking mostly as a result of how the Romney campaign, specifically, and the Republican Party, in general, behaved in Virginia during the 2012 campaign. I realized I was hated by them more than they hated Obama or the Democrats.
Thus, the only real choice we have is to vote for a genuine conservative or, if the genuine conservatives have been eliminated by the party, allow the Dems to complete the destruction of the country and hope that the country finally wakes up (and there is still enough of something left upon which to rebuild.)
I realize this is a risky strategy. . .but simply enabling the party elites while "holding our nose" is just delaying, by a few years, the inevitable, inexorable and catastrophic collapse. I say, conservatives now.. .or bring on the destruction as soon as possible so that the rebuilding can begin.
Save the flame. . .I fully accept the possibility that I may have gone insane.
Wrong. It's saying something really, really false.
Bush never said that two gay men "who love each other" have a "right" to adopt children (i.e. that government has a moral obligation to force adoption agencies to cooperate out of respect for those "rights").
Bush never said that if a minor teen is pregnant and her parents refuse consent for her to have an abortion, that the teen has a "right" to get a judge to over-rule them.
Bush never said "Any carbonplan has to be world-wide in scope ... let's have a world-wide solution NOT an American one ...."
Romney SAID all those things, every one of them, and it is on record. So your claim that Romney was somehow a "better" bad option than Bush, is flat out NUTS.
Bush was bad. Romney was OFF THE TABLE. It's why I and millions of fellow American patriot conservatives snubbed him in 2012 and Thank God the bastard LOST. May he lose again in 2016 if he gets the nomination.
Romney was the worst, not the best, he was far to the left of anyone who has ever reached such a level in GOP politics.
Romney left the GOP because of Reagan, he eventually became a democrat supporter, fund raiser and voter.
Romney is too left to be called a rino.
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