Written By : John Hawkins Posted on 01/14/2012 2:37:06 PM PST by xzins
Written By : John Hawkins Mitt Romney was a moderate governor in Massachusetts with an unimpressive record of governance. He left office with an approval rating in the thirties and his signature achievement, Romneycare, was a Hurricane Katrina style disaster for the state. Since that’s the case, it’s fair to ask what a Republican who’s not conservative and can’t even carry his own state brings to the table for GOP primary voters. The answer is always the same: Mitt Romney is supposed to be “the most electable” candidate. This is a baffling argument because many people just seem to assume it’s true, despite the plethora of evidence to the contrary.
1) People just don’t like Mitt: The entire GOP primary process so far has consisted of Republican voters desperately trying to find an alternative to Mitt Romney. Doesn’t it say something that GOP primary voters have, at one time or another, preferred Donald Trump, Michele Bachmann, Rick Perry, Newt Gingrich, and now even Ron Paul (In Iowa) to Mitt Romney?
To some people, this is a plus. They think that if conservatives don’t like Mitt Romney, that means moderates will like him. This misunderstands how the process of attracting independent voters works in a presidential race. While it’s true the swayable moderates don’t want to support a candidate they view as an extremist, they also don’t just automatically gravitate towards the most “moderate” candidate. To the contrary, independent voters tend to be moved by the excitement of the candidate’s base (See John McCain vs. Barack Obama for an example of how this works). This is how a very conservative candidate like Ronald Reagan could win landslide victories. He avoided being labeled an extremist as Goldwater was; yet his supporters were incredibly enthusiastic and moderates responded to it.
Let’s be perfectly honest: Mitt Romney excites no one except for Mormons, political consultants, and Jennifer Rubin. To everybody else on the right, Mitt Romney vs. Barack Obama would be a “lesser of two evils” election where we’d grudgingly back Mitt because we wouldn’t lose as badly with him in the White House as we would with Obama. That’s not the sort of thing that gets people fired up to make phone calls, canvass neighborhoods, or even put up “I heart Mitt” signs in their yards.
2) He’s a proven political loser: There’s a reason Mitt Romney has been able to say that he’s “not a career politician.” It’s because he’s not very good at politics. He lost to Ted Kennedy in 1994. Although he did win the governorship of Massachusetts in 2002, he did it without cracking 50% of the vote. Worse yet, he left office as the 48th most popular governor in America and would have lost if he had run again in 2006. Then, to top that off, he failed to capture the GOP nomination in 2008. This time around, despite having almost every advantage over what many people consider to be a weak field of candidates, Romney is still desperately struggling. Choosing Romney as the GOP nominee after running up that sort of track record would be like promoting a first baseman hitting .225 in AAA to the majors.
3) Running weak in the southern states: Barack Obama won North Carolina, Virginia, and Florida in 2008 and you can be sure that he will be targeting all three of those states again. This is a problem for Romney because he would be much less likely than either Gingrich or Perry to carry any of those states. Moderate northern Republicans have consistently performed poorly in the south and Romney won’t be any exception. That was certainly the case in 2008 when both McCain and Huckabee dominated Romney in primaries across the south. Mitt didn’t win a single primary in a southern state and although he finished second in Florida, he wasn’t even competitive in North Carolina or Virginia. Since losing any one of those states could be enough to hand the election to Obama in a close race, Mitt’s weakness there is no small matter.
4) His advantages disappear in a general election: It’s actually amazing that Mitt Romney isn’t lapping the whole field by 50 points because he has every advantage. Mitt has been running for President longer than the other contenders. He has more money and a better organization than the other candidates. The party establishment and inside the beltway media are firmly in his corner. That’s why the other nominees have been absolutely savaged while Romney, like John McCain before him, has been allowed to skate through the primaries without receiving serious scrutiny.
Yet, every one of those advantages disappears if he becomes the nominee. Suddenly Obama will be the more experienced candidate in the race for the presidency. He will also have more money and a better organization than Mitt. Moreover, in a general election, the establishment and beltway media will be aligned against Romney, not for him. Suddenly, Romney will go from getting a free pass to being public enemy #1 for the entire mainstream media.
If you took all those advantages away from Romney in the GOP primary, he’d be fighting with Jon Huntsman to stay out of last place. So, what happens when he’s the nominee and suddenly, all the pillars that have barely kept him propped up in SECOND place so far are suddenly removed? It may not be pretty.
5) Bain Capital: Mitt Romney became rich working for Bain Capital. This has been a plus for Romney in the Republican primaries where the grassroots tend to be dominated by people who love capitalism and the free market. However, in a year when Obama will be running a populist campaign and Occupy Wall Street is demonizing the “1%,” Mitt Romney will be a TAILOR MADE villain for them. Did you know that Bain Capital gutted companies and made a lot of money, in part, by laying off a lot of poor and middle class Americans? Do you know that Bain Capital got a federal bailout and Mitt Romney made lots of money off of it?
“The way the company was rescued was with a federal bailout of $10 million,” the ad says. “The rest of us had to absorb the loss … Romney? He and others made $4 million in this deal. … Mitt Romney: Maybe he’s just against government when it helps working men and women.”
The facts of the Bain & Co. turnaround are a little more complicated, but a Boston Globe report from 1994 confirms that Bain saw several million dollars in loans forgiven by the FDIC, which had taken over Bain’s failed creditor, the Bank of New England.
Did you know Ted Kennedy beat Romney in 1994 by hammering Mitt relentlessly on his time at Bain Capital? No wonder. The ads write themselves.
Imagine pictures of dilapidated, long since closed factories. They trot out scruffy looking workers talking about how bad life has been since Mitt Romney crushed their dreams and cost them their jobs. Then they show a clip of Mitt making his $10,000 bet and posing with money in his clothes. All Mitt needs is a monocle and a sniveling Waylon Smithers type character to follow him around shining his shoes to make him into the prototypical bad guy the Democrats are trying to create.
Now, the point of this isn’t to say that what Mitt did at Bain Capital was dishonorable. It certainly wasn’t. To the contrary, as a conservative, I find his work in the private sector to be just about the only thing he has going for him. But, people should realize that in a general election, Mitt’s time at Bain Capital will probably end up being somewhere between a small asset and a large liability, depending on which side does a better job of defining it.
6) The Mormon Factor: This is a sensitive topic; so I am going to handle it much, much more gently than Hollywood and the mainstream media will if Mitt gets the nomination. Mormons do believe in Jesus Christ, the Mormon Church does a lot of good work, the ones I’ve met seem to be good people, and two of my best friends are Mormons. That being said, Mormons are not considered to be a mainstream Christian religion in large swathes of the country. There will be Protestants who will have deep reservations about voting a Mormon into the White House because they’ll be afraid it will help promote what they believe to be a false religion. There have also been a number of polls that show that significant numbers of Americans won’t vote for a Mormon as President.
Just look at a couple of the more recent polls and consider how much of an impact this issue could have in a close election.
The poll found 67 percent of Americans want the president to be Christian and 52 percent said they consider Mormons to be Christian. Twenty-two percent of those polled said they don’t think Mormons are Christians and 26 percent are unsure.
“I do believe they are moral people, but again there is a difference between being moral and being saved,” Linda Dameron, an evangelical Republican in Independence, Mo., told the Tribune.
More than 40 percent of Americans would be uncomfortable with a Mormon as president, according to a new survey that also suggests that as more white evangelical voters have learned White House hopeful Mitt Romney is Mormon, the less they like him.
A survey by the Public Religion Research Institute released late Monday also shows that nearly half of white evangelical Protestant voters — a key demographic in the Republican primary race — don’t believe that Mormonism is a Christian faith, and about two-thirds of adults say the LDS faith is somewhat or very different than their own.
You should also keep in mind that if Mitt Romney gets the nomination, Hollywood and the mainstream media will conduct a vicious, months’ long hate campaign against the Mormon Church. They will take every opportunity to make Mormons look weird, racist, kooky, scary, and different. Would this be a decisive factor? I’d like to say no, but by the time all is said and done, it’s very easy to see Romney potentially losing hundreds of thousands of votes across the country because of his religion.
7) He’s a flip-flopper. Maybe my memory is failing me, but didn’t George Bush beat John Kerry’s brains in with the “flip flopper” charge back in 2004? So now, just eight years later, the GOP is going to run someone that even our own side agrees is a flip-flopper right out of the gate? Romney doesn’t even handle the charge well. When Brett Baier at Fox pointed out the obvious, Romney’s response was to get huffy and deny that he was flip flopping, which is kind of like Lady Gaga denying that she likes to get attention. If Mitt can’t even handle run-of-the-mill questions from FOX NEWS about his flip flopping, what makes anyone think he can deal with the rest of the press in a general election?
There are a lot of issues with trying to run a candidate who doesn’t seem to have any core principles. It makes it impossible for his supporters to get excited about him because you can’t fall in love with a weathervane. Even worse, since politicians tend to be such liars anyway and you know Romney has no firm beliefs, it’s very easy for everyone to assume the worst. Democrats will feel that Romney will be a right wing death-beast. Republicans will think that Romney will screw them over. Independents won’t know what to believe, which will make the hundreds of millions that Obama will spend on attack ads particularly effective. Ronald Reagan famously said the GOP needed “a banner of no pale pastels, but bold colors.” That’s particularly relevant when it comes to Mitt Romney who has proven to be a pasty grey pile of formless mush.
Really? I've been here over a decade and that's news to me. I could have sworn this was a CONSERVATIVE political forum and CONSERVATIVES of various religious faiths are welcome here. I see no reference to FR being exclusively a "Christian" forum on the home page. In fact, I could sworn I saw some Jewish and Mormon freepers post here recently. Am I mistaken and we're now banning all non-Christians?
"As a conservative site, Free Republic is pro-God, pro-life, pro-family, pro-Constitution, pro-Bill of Rights, pro-gun, pro-limited government, pro-private property rights, pro-limited taxes, pro-capitalism, pro-national defense, pro-freedom, and-pro America. We oppose all forms of liberalism, socialism, fascism, pacifism, totalitarianism, anarchism, government enforced atheism, abortionism, feminism, homosexualism, racism, wacko environmentalism, judicial activism, etc. We also oppose the United Nations or any other world government body that may attempt to impose its will or rule over our sovereign nation and sovereign people. We believe in defending our BORDERS, our constitution and our national sovereignty."
Nothing about it being a Christian only forum.
There are many Jewish and non-religious (-non not -anti) conservative posters here.
I don't recall talking with any Mormons (if we are gonna call them "non-Christian") but there must be some. I'd like to hear from them.
I think it just plays into Romney's hands when people go after Mormonism. I mean it's one thing to say that theologically you don't think it's Christian, that's fine, that's an opinion, I haven't really formed one on the subject, they say they are so whatever. But comments like "Moromonism is illuminist freemasonry and that's a good reason you shouldn't vote for him". I mean come on, WTH?
His denomination does not matter. Most Mormons are good pro-life conservatives, too bad he's not one of them. His policies and lousy record are what's important and THAT's why you shouldn't vote for Romney.
It is certain that Romney is unelectable. Romney supporters don't want to hear it but its true.
Gingrich and Perry have had the guts to bring up one more of Romney glaring negatives, that of being an uber-rich job firing machine from a privileged family whose first job in his life was telling CEOs what to do.
Because "he likes to fire people" he will not appeal to working class social conservative, to working class independents, or to Reagan democrats. He will lose a significant portion of the religious conservative vote due to his liberal pro-abortion, pro-gay positions. This article has the integrity to mention that Mitt's mormonism will be an issue for a select number of religous conservatives. However small that number is, it is still someone either not voting at all or voting for a 3rd party candidate. Mitt Romney is Barack Obama's dream candidate. I think his nightmare candidate would be a fired up Rick Santorum with his populist conservatism. I do believe that Newt would rule the debates, and that gives him a good chance to get ahead of Obama, and Newt's recent populist support for "fair free markets" innoculates him (same with Perry) against Obama's attack on the 1%. Ad-Mitt Romney Will Lose.
Sharron Angle was incompetent and ran a lousy race.
That’s what it takes to lose an unlosable race. Either of the other 2 candidates she beat in the primary would have dispatched Reid. Myself and others warned that Angle was a crappy choice. Saw it coming a mile away.
The election will probably be close but the GOP will have to blow it to not come out ahead, at least slightly. This President is crap and the economy is crap under his watch.
Mind you the GOP is certainly! capable of blowing it but that’s what they’ll have to do or Obama is gone.
Choosing a losing candidate is one way the Republicans can blow it.
Romney has such glaring negatives — that the Gop media refuses to Ad-MITT — that it is extremely fair to say that Romney is that Gop candidate who could lose. I think he will lose, and that in his case, that he’s a sure loser.
He’s the one candidate, a born, silver-spooned rich guy who made his living firing people will be the ad campaign by Obama, who the working class will get very nervous about.
Trust me.
Even Rush says that Obama is “landsladable.”
Well this is a fair post. It is reasonable to have honest disagreements about a persons record and policies without attacking religion, creed, or race. So thanks there is some descent people still here on site still.
He also has 8.5% unemployment, Obamacare, a failed stimulus, and a 16 trillion dollar debt.
The liberals will vote for him, Conservatives will vote against him. It's the folks in the middle, the least informed amongst us, are going to see that things are bad and getting worse. There won't be the "excitement" of "the first black president" and these folks will be very much in the mood for the "safe" pick.
>> “Am I mistaken and we’re now banning all non-Christians?” <<
.
No, only the trolls.
1) “Romney can’t win” he won in Massechusetts as a Republican. That in itself is a tough feat.Liar. Massechusetts had been governed by Republicans since 1991 when Romney took the state house in 2003 by a far thinner margin and in a far better year for Republicans than his predecessors'. Romney was the third Republican governor of Massechusetts after Governors Weld, and Celluci. Romney ranked 49th out of 50 among US governors for favourability when he left office in disgrace to begin his 6 year run for the presidency. Because of Romney the MA GOP would lose the state house for the next 2 cycles if not many more.
>> “Sharron Angle was incompetent and ran a lousy race.” <<
.
Completely false.
Angle was defeated by massive ‘Vegas union vote fraud. Dingy Harry simply called in his chits.
There’s a reason why Romney didn’t run for gov. again in MA.
As I mentioned, we obviously have numerous Jewish freepers. I wouldn't be surprised if other non-Christian faiths are on here as well. I'd be fine with a conservative Hindu, Buddhist, Sikh (I actually know a conservative Republican Sikh), or any other type of faith posting on here. There's some really bizarre cults out there that are even stranger than Mormonism. For example, I suppose we could have a conservative Republican scientologist out there. I think their "religious" beliefs (if you can call L. Rob Hubbard's books that) to be completely batty. But I wouldn't mind letting them post here about conservative issues, as long as their purpose isn't to troll and spam the message boards trying to convert people to Scientology.
FreeRepublic is an unabashedly "pro-God" conservative website. That doesn't make it exclusively a "Christian forum". All people are faith are welcome, and even nonreligious people who are tolerant of people of faith.
I have to agree with GoMonster and Impy, religious bigotry has no place on FR and certainly prominent conservative speakers like Rush Limbaugh and Mark Levin would condemn it. (Glenn Beck would too -- heck, he's a Mormon!) Katherine Harris was wrong when she said people should only vote for Christian candidates and freepers who made similar statements are also wrong. There are plenty of "Christians" out whose personal lives and beliefs are completely repugnant to what Christianity teaches, and plenty of non-Christians who are model citizens and great examples of faith and morality. The example I typically use on FR if you had an election between the non-Christian Benjamin Netayahu or the "Christian" Nancy Pelosi. I'd crawl over broken glass to vote for Netanyahu if those were the choices. If any of the freepers who say they would "never vote for a non-Christian" HONESTLY feel they would skip that election and allow Pelosi to win rather than elect a non-Christian who agrees with you on 95% of the issues, then I feel sorry for you. Your voting habits are actually very unChristian and I think Jesus would be appalled that you reject people simply because of their faith. Any "bible belivin'" Evangelical protestant who feels that way should re-read the parts of the Bible about the Good Samaritan because you clearly didn't get the message.
If I had to venture a guess, I'd say most of the people playing right into the media's hands and the Romney camp by saying they reject Romney because of his religion are just looking for an ADDITIONAL reason to stigmatize him from conservative voters. It's similar to the people who kept ranting that they would vote against Mark Kirk because they believed he was a closet homosexual. In both cases, the fact Romney and Kirk's record has been extremely hostile to conservatism is enough for me, I don't need additional excuses to put him on my "do not vote for" list. In spite of what the mainstream media is saying about Mormon "bigotry", I strongly suspect if the Mormon candidate was a staunch conservative that everyone liked -- such as Jason Chaffetz -- you wouldn't see these discussions if he was running for higher office in a largely non-Mormon voting area. In fact, if someone came on a thread about the election and "Screw Chaffetz, I'm voting for Obama just because we can't let a Mormon win", you'd probably get banned on a forum a like this.
As another freeper noted, on social issues Romney is completely at odds with mainstream Mormonism. The problem isn't that he's Mormon -- if anything he's not Mormon enough. One evangelical voter said it best -- most Mormons may not accept the traditional Jesus but they tend to be the most moral, pro-life, and pro-traditional family people you'll meet. Sadly, Romney is an exception to that rule.
Finally, I think all this hype from the mainstream media about how the "Evangelicals" will stay home in droves because of anti-Mormon "bigotry" is just pre-emptive B.S. to claim Romney lost to Obama because Republicans are "bigots", rather than fact Romney was a bad candidate who didn't connect with conservatives. I have little doubt the states with the biggest share of evangelicals will go GOP as they always have... can't picture any scenario where the election night returns show "In a shocking upset, it appears both Alabama and South Carolina will go to Barack Obama tonight, as exit polls show a massive exodus of white evangelicals" It's similar to the oft-repeated story about how Al Smith lost in 1928 because of anti-Catholic bigotry and that the KKK delivered the Protestant states to Hoover. Unfortunately for this version of history, if you look at the 1928 election results, the MOST protestant-heavy states and the ones with an active KKK presence were in the "south solid" and the RATs won handily there like they always had before. Hoover won a couple of border and swing states like Florida and Tennessee, but that was because the economy was great after 8 years of Harding/Coolidge and the electorate was very happy with the Republicans in power. The constant media talk about how Romney is in trouble in the south because "Evangelicals don't believe Mormons are Christian" makes no sense since all the mainline protestants, Orthodox, and Catholic denominations "don't believe Mormons are Christian", either (if you can find any Catholic Church in America that believes Mormons are "fellow Christians", let me know). In this case, I would have to agree with southern freepers that the media just seems to want to beat up on the south and portray them all as narrow-minded bigots.
The only two scenarios where I can see a candidate's religious background REALLY hurting him or her in a general election is if a Presidential nominee was an outspoken atheist or a Muslim. Then it wouldn't matter how strongly conservative the candidate is or how impressive their resume is, there would be a ton of voters would simply could not bring themselves to vote for that person. As for Mormons, studies have shown the only group where large numbers of voters won't support them is liberal Democrats. For Romney that's a non-factor, they'll vote RAT whether or not he's the nominee. Basically the only way it could kill a candidate's chances is if the RAT party nominated a centrist Mormon for a major office in a non-Mormon area (let's say a swing state like Ohio). There's a good chance the Republican would win because liberal RATs would refuse to support a pro-life, pro-family Mormon RAT.
I'm going to go with my gut and say a Mormon/Catholic ticket -- or a Catholic/Catholic ticket -- would have little trouble in the Bible belt and win those states over Obama easily. I've personally endorsed Rick Santorum/Susana Martinez as my ideal scenario, and that's a Catholic/Catholic ticket. Having a protestant on the ticket with Santorum would make more sense from a practical standpoint of reaching out to more types of voters, but the problem is there's just not a lot of prominent protestant Republicans who would be an asset to the ticket. Besides, we had a Protestant/Protestant ticket for almost 2 centuries in this country, having a Catholic/Catholic ticket makes up for that. ;-)
I think a Gingrich/Santorum or Santorum/Gingrich ticket would fare poorly in a general election -- not because there's both Catholics but because voters don't like Newt and he has endless skeletons in his closet. (Rick Perry/Katherine Harris would give similar baggage to an all-protestant ticket) The entire GOP presidential field this time around is weak, it makes little sense to get another weak candidate as your running mate when you can pick a strong running mate from outside the field of also-rans that brings many more positives to a ticket. Romney may indeed prove to be a weak and inspiring candidate in the general election who struggles to bring GOP voters to the polls, but again -- that' due to Romney's non-conservative record, NOT due to his religion.
Statistical margins of error are not applicable to online surveys but this poll has a credibility interval of plus or minus 5 percentage points for Republicans and 3.4 percentage points for all voters.
Democrats are getting polled for Romney in SC. Democrats are voting for Romney in SC. Democrats are reporting the poll results.
Where is the Republican Primary?
Neither I nor anyone else read your ridiculous spam post, but to the point, Jim did declare open season on mormonism here, and it is still in force.
That, of course has no reflection on the FReepers whose names you used for cover in your absurd tirade.
I voted absentee due to the fact I am attendiang the SRLC in Charleston this weekend. Talking with my friends the vote is split between these two.......I think that we are dangerously close to losing to Obama if someone doesn't step aside *Perry,Paul, and Huntsman* I want Santorum and Gingrich to join forces. Maybe Newt can make Santorum VP...that would kill OBAMA. As a disclaimer I voted for Newt
While it might be true that some democrats will cross over in the Repub primary since SC is a cross-over state, there is no way that the split will be nearly 50-50 as Reuters is weighting this.
I don't follow Rush like he's the reverend one. Having said that, even him said 0bama is landsladable, which I agree, given the right candidate and campaigns. What I'm opposing is the attitude of '0bama is guaranteed to lose'. He's not.
Nope. What's completely false is not anticipating that the Dhims would do anything they could to defeat Angle or any Republican candidate. Had she been good enough to win, not only she prepared such actions, she would also be far ahead in getting votes. She was not.
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