a gay marriage problem, an ineligibility problem,
a MORE TAX as fee problem, a RomneyCARE problem,
a liberal judge problem, and a lying problem.
Posted on 10/26/2011 6:36:56 AM PDT by Kaslin
A ghost from 1968 haunts the campaign of Mitt Romney—and no, it’s not the memory of his father, the late Michigan Gov. George Romney, who stumbled as a leading GOP contender 43 years ago.
For the younger Romney, the more worrisome blast from the past involves the campaign of Richard Nixon, who ultimately won the nomination by default but never managed to inspire real enthusiasm from the party faithful. As with Mitt, nearly all Republicans considered Nixon acceptable as a standard bearer as the former vice president positioned himself in the safe center of the party.
But grassroots activists felt far more excitement about candidates like Arizona Sen. Barry Goldwater and California Gov. Ronald Reagan on the party’s right, or New York Gov. Nelson Rockefeller and New York City Mayor John Lindsay from the party’s moderate, establishment wing.
Nixon carried the taint of a perpetual candidate who had lost high-profile races. He couldn’t get elected California governor two years after losing the presidency in 1960, and he looked like an ideological chameleon who would assume any policy position or employ any unscrupulous stratagem for the sake of victory. The nickname “Tricky Dick” became inescapably affixed to his public persona.
Rightly or wrongly, skeptics apply similar negatives to Mitt Romney, highlighting the hardball tactics he employed in disappointing defeats in the 1994 Massachusetts Senate race against Ted Kennedy and the battle for the GOP presidential nomination in 2008, while ridiculing his many shifts on major issues from abortion and guns to health-care reform and gay rights. Even the fiercest Romney and Nixon critics concede formidable intelligence and proven competence but raise fundamental questions about authenticity—offering descriptions like “phony,” “plastic,” or “empty suits.”
Of course, Romney enthusiasts dismiss such comparisons as unfair to their favorite: for one thing, Mitt qualifies as the most freakishly photogenic presidential candidate since John Kennedy, and he remains preternaturally suave, confident, and unflappable even in the most combative situations. Nixon, on the other hand, frequently came across as sweaty, vulnerable, and disheveled, while his hyper-emotional insecurity ultimately torpedoed his presidency.
Moreover, even with his famous faults as a candidate, Nixon managed to win the White House on his second try, and many observers expect Mitt to overcome the reservations of party activists to win a similar victory against a highly unpopular Democratic administration.
But the course of the ’68 campaign should give the Romney Regiments reason for pause: despite disastrous divisions among the Democrats and a third-party candidacy by Alabama Gov. George Wallace that drew millions of typically Democratic blue-collar votes, Vice President Hubert Humphrey closed the gap dramatically in the campaign’s final weeks and came within a whisker of upsetting the heavily favored, overconfident Republicans. Nixon drew only 43.4 percent of the popular vote, besting Humphrey by seven-tenths of 1 percent.
Romney can’t rely on a similar path to victory: with the first caucuses and primaries less than three months away, there’s little chance for an internal Democratic challenge to President Obama, and no one expects a major independent candidate to drain votes from the incumbent party. This means Romney, as the presumed nominee, will need far more focused, energetic efforts to overcome his drawbacks than the frontrunning Nixon deployed in 1968.
These attempts to reinvigorate a solid but unexciting candidacy should concentrate on two names: Herman Cain and Marco Rubio. Indeed, those two popular personalities could conceivably provide Romney with the formula for landslide victory in November.
Cain, now riding high in preference polls, is already providing Romney with a huge advantage that Nixon never enjoyed: a likable, credible, energizing primary opponent. In August 1967, George Romney made a bumbling declaration to the press that included the infamous claim that he’d been “brainwashed” by generals about the Vietnam War, and his once-promising campaign collapsed, leaving Nixon with a clear path to the nomination. This situation only deepened the perception of Nixon as stiff, remote, cautious, and dull. It’s tough to look like winner without dynamic primary opponents you can beat.
Romney won’t face that problem, thanks to Cain. The Herminator clearly lacks the national organization or campaign war chest to derail the well-oiled, lavishly funded Romney juggernaut, but his folksy, sympathetic personality and compelling debate performances should allow him to continue as a candidate, and as pitchman for his bestselling book, through the convention in Tampa. Cain also displays little inclination to destroy or discredit his opponents and thereby compromise the enormous reservoir of goodwill he’s accumulated. He can, in other words, serve Romney’s interests in much the same way Mike Huckabee served John McCain’s interests in 2008: providing a challenge that allows the frontrunner to sharpen his skills and enhance his stature without damaging the anointed winner with personalized or mean-spirited attacks.
Cain offers another important assist in enabling Romney to avoid Nixonian traps: as the GOP nominee in 1968, Nixon suffered from a maddeningly vague and platitudinous platform, featuring a “secret plan” to end the Vietnam War, that made his campaign too easy to disregard or dismiss. The cautious, wary, disciplined Mitt Romney suffers from similar tendencies: So far, few voters can identify bold or dramatic proposals associated with his campaign; certainly nothing that’s captured the public imagination in the style of Cain’s “9-9-9” tax plan. Romney doesn’t need to steal or adapt that proposal, but he does need some clear-cut, comprehensible proposals for sweeping change—well beyond his soporific and overly detailed “59-Point Economic Plan”—to energize his base and enhance his bland image.
Even the fiercest Romney and Nixon critics concede formidable intelligence but raise fundamental questions about authenticity—offering descriptions like “phony,” “plastic,” or “empty suits.”
And that leads to the second name Romney must consider to enable his campaign to escape Nixon’s shadow: Marco Rubio, the compellingly charismatic junior senator from Florida. Nearly all Republican strategists place Rubio at the top of the list as a potential running mate in 2012, and the Floridian’s youth, passion, peerless communication skills, and Cuban ancestry might provide a particularly effective complement for the cool, collected, soothing aura of the Mittster. Whether it’s Rubio, New Jersey’s Chris Christie, Cain himself, or some other high-energy shining star in the conservative firmament, Romney should select a vice-presidential nominee who adds pizzazz and electricity to the ticket.
He can’t repeat Nixon’s mistake of choosing a candidate who won’t possibly upstage him: Tricky Dick selected a little-known moderate and recently elected Maryland governor named Spiro Agnew, but Agnew’s frequent stumbles during the campaign (calling an Asian-American reporter a “fat Jap,” for instance) hardly aided the GOP cause. Only later did Vice President Agnew generate real excitement: first with his Pat Buchanan-scripted attacks on liberal media, and then later with revelations of outrageous bribe-taking back in Baltimore, featuring thousands in cash in paper bags, that led to his resignation as veep.
Such steps can help transform a somewhat drab and methodical campaign into a spirited crusade that might ultimately sweep the country, allowing all conservatives to embrace a new version of Nixon’s slogan in ’68, proudly proclaiming: “Romney’s the One!”
For other Cain supporters the RINOS are moving the primaries up which means we need signatures for Cain in all the other states.
I've been collecting signatures in Illinois. I think we can run away with this. We should win in Iowa, SC, Florida and Nevada if we can steal NH from Myth, Cain will take the table and send Barry packing!!!
Romney could put Cain, Rubio, Palin, or even a reanimated Reagan on his ticket and I still wouldn’t vote for him.
I’d rather lose with Cain, Perry, Bachmann, Gingrich, or Santorum, than win with Romney.
Romney would destroy the country and the republican party, Obama would just destroy the country.
Romney has a Romney problem.
Romney has a BIG GOVERNMENT/STATIST problem.
He is the darling of the very Liberal GOP Establishment Elites.
Hence, he is a NO GO.
I will not vote for Romney. If push comes to shove, I will write in my mother-in-law’s name. If she is elected, the liberals will have hell to pay.
The only candidate with a “Nixon Problem” is Barack Obama - who takes Nixonian skullduggery to new depths.
Yet Cain leads in every poll that comes out. Votes are what it's all about. Voters like Cain, he will win the nomination and the general, despite Romney's millions and Zero's billion dollar campaign fund.
News flash to Michael Medved. You are delusional.
Should allow him to keep shilling for a book, eh Mike? It is hard to imagine a more crass or disrespectful dig at a candidate who has brought so much energy to the debate and forced others to take positions (just look what 9-9-9 has wrought with the others). I would argue that the influence of the press is waning, particularly as it relates to primaries, and a "well-oiled, lavishly funded Romney juggernaut" is not enough to persuade primary voters that Romney isn't McCain redux. In case you haven't noticed, Michael, this time it is different, and whoever the nominee is going to be is going to have to get by the Tea Party, which is more about ideas than bankrolled juggernauts.
“I will not vote for Romney. If push comes to shove, I will write in my mother-in-law’s name. If she is elected, the liberals will have hell to pay.”
LMAO. Funniest post all month.
I don’t care as long as we don’t have a Romney problem.
With Obama, Uncle Sam is plummeting without a parachute. With Romney, Uncle Sam would be plummeting with a defective parachute.
Going to the same place, speed slower but equally deadly.
The next administration and Congress MUST initiate drastic tax and regulation reform/reduction. There will not be another chance to fix it in 2016.
LAS VEGAS — Nevada Republicans have shifted their presidential caucuses to early February, a move that ends an increasingly bitter standoff among rival states and for the first time clarifies the path to the Republican presidential nomination.
There will be no voting before Christmas. That's despite warnings from New Hampshire's top election official that Nevada's initial insistence to host its contest in mid-January could force the Granite State to schedule the nation's first Republican primary election in roughly six weeks.
Romney has a Romney problem. He’s a statist like Nixon, like Johnson, like Ford, Like Obama, like Carter, like Clinton, like...
What he’s not is like Reagan. Behind the telegenic smile there’s not a single conservative bone in his body. If the GOP picks him as their candidate, then that really will signal the end of the Reagan Revolution.
I disagree. The new Republican and conservative Congress will oppose most or all kenyan initiatives. They will be more amenable to a "Republican" president's socialism. Romney will have a defective chute and a jetpack strapped on upside down.
And I thought it was just liberals who didn’t learn.
4 years ago, I read all the posts saying, no Juan McCain, no way. Posters vowing to stay home if McCain was the nominee. He was, they did.
2 years ago, I read the posts saying, we were wrong, McCain would have been much better than the commie who is in the White House now.
Today, I read that if it’s Romney, we’ll stay home, and get 4 more years of Obama.
Wow.
Due, I believe, to pendulum politics. Americans had had enough of Democrats, and in 1968 the Dems ran out of energy.
Don’t look now, but Obama has taken to going around Congress, along with stonewalling and other devices. They’re not going to impeach the FBP and nothing less will stop him.
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