Posted on 01/11/2012 7:18:59 AM PST by SeekAndFind
Mitt Romney is the most improbable of presidential candidates: a weak juggernaut.
He is poised to sweep every primary contest — a first for a non-incumbent. And yet, in Republican ranks there’s an abiding sense that he should be beatable — and beaten.
It’s not that Romney doesn’t have fans. His events in New Hampshire were packed to the rafters and felt like general-election rallies. He’s surging in polls in South Carolina and Florida.
And yet the non-Mitt mood just won’t go away. Indeed, it’s intensifying. One reason for that is people are starting to doubt whether he is in fact the best candidate to beat President Obama. For instance, you hear conservatives wondering more and more whether all of the attention from the White House is a head fake. Romney certainly makes a convenient foil for a presidential campaign already in populist overdrive. The desperate attacks from Newt Gingrich and Rick Perry on his career in the private sector are indefensible, but Romney certainly has a gift for inviting them. You can be sure President Obama is grateful to Gingrich and Perry for making them bipartisan critiques.
Still, I suspect there’s no head fake. Romney has his faults, but his 2 percent milk personality makes him hard to demonize. He seems more like a super-helpful manager at a rental car company than a fire-and-brimstone preacher. The White House would dearly love the opportunity to run against a culture warrior. It seems many in the media would like the same thing. Hence the absurd grilling of the candidates in Saturday night’s ABC-Yahoo-WMUR-TV debate.
(For reasons that remain mysterious, the moderators wasted vast swaths of time quizzing the candidates on gay marriage, whether they thought states could ban condoms, and on how Rick Santorum would respond if one of his sons declared his homosexuality. Because, as we all know, how a president would treat his hypothetically gay son is the defining issue of our times.)
Romney was at his best swatting away the swarm on inanities at the debate — birth control is “working just fine.” He’s weakest, however, when discussing himself. In this he is the anti-Obama. The president is never more eloquent and heartfelt than when he is talking about himself; it’s his ideas he can’t move.
Romney, meanwhile, has the opposite problem. Voters can buy his policies; it’s the salesman that leaves them unsure. For instance, in the Sunday Meet the Press debate, Romney suggested that he didn’t run for re-election as governor of Massachusetts because to do so would be vain or selfish somehow. “That would be about me.”
Newt Gingrich ridiculed that as “pious baloney.”
And he was right. Romney’s claim that he’s just a businessman called to serve — Cincinnatus laying down his PowerPoint — is nonsense. Romney, the son of a politician, has been running for office, holding office, or thinking about running for office for more than two decades. “Just level with the American people,” Gingrich growled. “You’ve been running . . . at least since the 1990s.”
For some reason Romney can’t do that. Or at least it seems like he can’t. His authentic inauthenticity problem isn’t going away. And it’s sapping enthusiasm from the rank and file. The turnout in Iowa was disastrously low, barely higher than the turnout in 2008 — and if Ron Paul hadn’t brought thousands of non-Republicans to the caucus sites, it would have been decidedly lower than in 2008. That’s an ominous sign given how much enthusiasm there should be for making Obama a one-term president. It’s almost as if Romney’s banality is infectious.
Santorum’s tie in Iowa is widely attributed to his diligent door-to-door campaigning. The Iowa political hacktocracy is deeply invested in the idea that the retail politicking in Iowa pays off. But it wasn’t paying off three weeks before the voting, when Santorum was in single digits. No, Santorum’s Iowa success was attributable almost entirely to Gingrich’s Newtacular implosion. Santorum was simply the last non-Romney standing who hadn’t been torn apart by the press or Romney’s super-PACs.
The most persuasive case for Romney has always been that if he’s the nominee, the election will be a referendum on Obama. But that calculation always assumed that rank-and-file Republicans will vote for their nominee in huge numbers no matter what. That may well still be the case, but it feels less guaranteed every day.
Every four years, pundits and activists talk about how cool it would be to have a brokered convention. This is the first time I can remember where people say it may be necessary.
— Jonah Goldberg is editor-at-large of National Review Online and a visiting fellow at the American Enterprise Institute.
I know I’m just one of N (where N is an increasingly large number), but I’ll say it anyway.
I’ll vote for all the Repubs on the ticket in Nov....except RINOmney.
To summarize: He’s a vapid weathervane dork.
Period.
We know this as fact.
We need it verified by a credible news source which is not afraid to spill it, and when it does come out we can really viralize it.
Jonah says no, and Lawrence O’Donnell says Mitt is the one they fear. Go figure. Strictly tactically speaking, I don’t see the head fake. Can you fake enthusiastic crowds beyond a certain size? We found that out the hard way in ‘08. Those morons filling stadiums for Bobo dutifully voted twice for him that fall.
The one that has the best chance to lose to 0bama and that is who the GOP establishment backs.....
There is something not very appealing about that at all.
I will vote for any of the GOP candidates except Romney or Paul, in the highly unlikely to impossible event.
I can’t picture myself having an everyday conversation with Romney, he is almost an alien trying to pass as human.
Romney is the MSM’s choice for the GOP nomination. CNN wants him. MSNBC wants him. CBS, NBC and ABC want him.
Even the New Fox News (now a certified MSM member) wants him.
And Obama wants him.
But 75% of Republican voters don’t want him.
What’s wrong with this picture?
Not Mitt indeed!....We need a candidate who will look Obango straight in the face and tell him he is destroying America, damn it! I don’t think Mitt can pull it off. He’s not mad enough as we are!!!
The most persuasive case for Romney has always been that if he’s the nominee, the election will be a referendum on Obama. But that calculation always assumed that rank-and-file Republicans will vote for their nominee in huge numbers no matter what. That may well still be the case, but it feels less guaranteed every day.This is my intuition too. I base this on an N of 1, me. I will never, ever vote for, or support in any way, Willard Romney, the former governor who defended gay rights, abortion rights, and who gave us RomneyCare with all its new rules, new taxes, its exchanges, and its mandates, a botch of policy functionally identical to ObamaCare.
Right. Event the so-called conservative media is getting behind Mitt (Hannity, Ingrham, etc)
The next few days will be telling. Will RUSH hold out and continue to expose Romney or will he fall in line behind the media spin that he is inevitable and “the only electable” candidate.
hmmm
Goldberg: “The most persuasive case for Romney has always been that if he’s the nominee, the election will be a referendum on Obama. But that calculation always assumed that rank-and-file Republicans will vote for their nominee in huge numbers no matter what. That may well still be the case, but it feels less guaranteed every day. Every four years, pundits and activists talk about how cool it would be to have a brokered convention. This is the first time I can remember where people say it may be necessary.”
Malkin: “Michael Corleone said to “keep your friends close, but your enemies closer.” But what, pray tell, do we do with our frenemies? This is the awful election-year quandary of movement conservatives. And everything you need to know about our heartache can be summed up in one image: 2008 presidential election loser John McCain and Mitt Romney together on the campaign trail. [.....] A career politician for the past 30 years, McCain set the stage for the suicidal anti-capitalist rhetoric now polluting the GOP primary. Four years ago this month, during a GOP primary debate held at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library, it was McCain up on stage denigrating Romney’s private-sector experience. Asked whether he thought Romney’s record as CEO made him qualified to lead, McCain snarked: “I know how to lead. I led the largest squadron in the United States Navy. And I did it out of patriotism, not for profit.”
bttt
Oops! I forgot to add the link for Malkin’s commentary to my post #13:
Romney and McCain: The GOP Frenemies’ Club
Townhall.com ^ | January 11, 2012 | Michelle Malkin
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2831407/posts
The three stooges on Faux News this morning were all over Perry for daring to criticize their candidate Mitt. 
This time, Conservatives need to make sure Romney loses. America is already lost to the left. Even if Romney were to somehow emerge the winner he is merely Obama-light. Reed and Pelosi and the RINO morons of the GOP surrender team will eat him alive with his Reach-Across-the-Aisle strategy.
At least by losing we may be able to eventually plunge the country into armed insurrection against the communist takeover. Yes, I know it's a fantasy, but at this stage it's all we have left. The economy is gone, socialism has taken hold, the borders are lost, were being swamped by illegals from the south, the muslims are bent on murder of all Christians and Jews and the Jews keep voting in the very people who will eventually exterminate them. Go figure.
Our children's futures are NONE. They don't exist. It's over for them. Consider yourself lucky if your dead and don't half to see their suffering. I'm sure we'd all like to get in a few licks against the leftists before we depart this smoldering ash heap they're creating. Maybe by staying home on election day we can hasten that dream!
RE: Here’s your problem. It’s going to be Romney so you can forget about being able to vote for any other candidate.
Iowa and NH are SMALL STATES. Let’s get to Florida and then we’ll make that conclusion but not until.
The primary season is becoming crazy, talk about circular firing squads is correct.
I used to like Newt but to hear him denouncing a GOP candidate for success in business, sounding like some class warfare (D) is totally lunatic.
I’ll vote for whoever runs against BHO, simple as that.
I think rush is personally for someone and it’s not mitt. Yesterday a caller claimed rush was pro Romney and rush said he was not. Then he said that he didn’t think anyone could tell wmom he’s supporting. He may ave asked the question of snerdley. I don’t think it’s newt either, because of his disgust with newts tactics.
Anything but Obama...and Romney!
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