There were obviously some lessons that Mitt Romney took out of his failed effort to win the Republican nomination in 2008, and we could probably go back to the beginning of this cycle and find the seeds of some of Romney’s current problems in how he interpreted his 2008 loss. But I think what really happened was that Romney correctly surmised early on that he really could not lose the nomination to any of the clowns opposing him so long as he retained a basic level of support among the base. He had too much money and too much institutional support and such a better claim to able to appeal to people in the middle for him to lose to a Santorum or a Gingrich or a Bachmann or a Cain. So, he basically formed a strategy I’ll call “Live Another Day.”
Everyone in the race (save Huntsman and Paul) had a turn at the top of the polls. The GOP base proved extremely reluctant to settle on Romney. But he didn’t panic. He said whatever he needed to say to keep himself afloat, while each of his opponents rose in turn to the top and then withered in the spotlight. The exercise involved a constant recalibration, as Romney could not let any of the sequential frontrunners get too far to his right. Romney had to move his tax policy as far as Gingrich. He had to move his Islamophobia as far as Bachmann. He had to move his homophobia as far as Santorum. He had to move to the right of Rick Perry on immigration. There was never a point where he could afford to stand up and say, “you guys are intolerant assholes and nut jobs.” When Rick Perry tried to do that on scholarship money for the children of undocumented parents, he never really recovered. So, Romney just kept saying what he felt he had to say to not disqualify himself, and he ultimately contradicted every reasonable position he had ever held.
He took a lot of heat from the right all through the process, but he never crossed them in a way that caused a meaningful backlash. Every time he had a chance to take a stand, he folded. He folded because he knew he couldn’t lose the nomination as long as he never took a stand. It was actually a very safe and cautious, but prudent strategy. Live to fight another day. It was reminiscent of Field Marshall Bernand Montgomery’s strategy against Erwin Rommel during World War Two. Knowing he had an advantage in resources, he was cautious about offering battle and just ground Rommel down.
What Romney’s team couldn’t see is the cost to the candidate’s credibility that this prolonged demonstration of lack of principle would exact. When John Judis points out the long-term costs to the GOP of having failed to consider the ramifications of this rightward drift, he isn’t even considering the costs to Romney himself.
Romney brings a campaign that is hostile to women, gays, blacks, Latinos, Muslims, the poor, and the elderly. And that’s a problem for the GOP going forward. But then there is Romney’s reputation. He has come across as completely inconsistent and unprincipled, incapable of telling the truth, nor of standing for anything.
He won the nomination, but at the cost of becoming King Weasel.
No one likes him, and I mean no one.
He should have risked losing it all. If he had, the nomination might have been worth winning. And the GOP’s future prospects wouldn’t look so bleak.
It sound like Arlen Specter is seriously ill. Kind of a big deal here in the Keystone State.
OT, but speaking of strategy, have you heard that Akin now claims that drinking human breastmilk “cures” male homosexuality?
He’s gone way farther into Krazy Kountry than Christine O’Donnell ever dreamed. If the GOP can’t find a way to force him off the ticket, then they’re really losing their grip.
Oops. Punked. Shame on me.
My snark o’meter must be broken. What is that, anyway?
Maybe Brooks is having an identity crisis. He seems to think he’s Maureen Dowd.
As near as I can tell this is David Brooks thinking he has a talent, any talent whatsoever, for satire. I hope he’s not planning on quitting any of his day jobs.
Meantime, the more urgent question: what editor let this get published? This wouldn’t pass muster at a lot of campus papers.
bobo proving… yet again… what an insufferable hack he is.
ROTFL and I heartily agree with Bruce Olsen in the comments. He sounds like a kindred spirit. I’m so sorry that he’s trapped in Houston.
Booman, I’m with you on this, but he still is tied with President Obama nationally. What gives? Yes, I know the state-by-states are different, but not that different. Maybe Romney’s calculation has some merit to it after all, and it reflects on what kind of nation we’ve become?
The man is a walking face plant.
And Willard is a walking face plant that nearly 50% of likely voters in the US say they support. WTF? Can enough marketing really sell anything, or did the surge of enthusiasm for BHO in 2008 mask the reality that there just are that many people in America who will vote for someone, anyone solely because his opponent is black?
I think it’s a couple of things:
1 – Unemployment is over 8% and the economy is barely growing.
2 – There really is a percentage of the citizenry (small but significant) who won’t vote for Obama because he’s black.
3 – $1 billion in advertising concentrated on a few states from Adelson, the Koch brothers, et al, makes a difference (limited, but it’s there).
4 – It’s been a rough 3-4 decades for white working class men (compared with the previous 3-4 decades).
5 – We’re at (or approaching) a minor racial/ethnic/generational “tipping point” where young and/or dark-skinned citizens are on the verge of becoming absolutely critical to forming an electoral majority. (There’s the resulting panic behind GOP efforts this year.)
Sadly, Geov, I must agree with you. It’s because he is a white face plant.
The TPM vote tracker thing is as close as I’ve ever seen it. The post convention bounce is going to be ugly ugly ugly.
And it’s to be expected. McCain got one with Sarah Palin. Bush I got one with Dan Quayle. Convention bounces come…and then within two weeks they go.
But yes. Don’t be surprised when/if this time next week Romney is ahead in the national polls.
Because the other half of the country isn’t voting for Romney, they’re voting against Obama. Republicans would vote for anyone on the ballot who’s running against him.
I hear a lot of Republican chatter where I work (and I bite my tongue nearly in half to keep from responding) and none of it is about how much they admire Romney. It’s all about getting rid of Obama.
Maybe Obama would have been better going Left instead of Right. People are accepting the claim that he is Socialist and because the economy has not improved where it counts, jobs and mortgages. Besides Obama being pulled down, the whole Left, that Obama despised, is being pulled down with him. People are accepting that stimulus is ineffective and a balanced budget will save the economy. I fear the Republican wave that will result in the Great Recession plunging deeper and result in the USA becoming Guatemala.
Obama might as well have tried what he is blamed for anyway.
What would have been different? Barely got the stimulus we got; barely got health care passed; barely got Dodd-Frank passed; barely got DADT repealed; etc. etc… since Congress controls the purse there was no going further left. Given the Congress we had, and have this session, I’m glad we got what we got, it was pretty impressive.
If he is going to be blamed for being a Socialist, then he might as well be one. Better to be hanged for being a ram than a lamb.
So what are you proposing he should have done, disband Congress?
No, of course not, Jim. He should have layed a proposal for single-payer to Congress. He should have proposed sweeping legislation to restore Glass-Steagal and generally reform the banking system. He should have proposed $1.5T to refinance mortgages and stop the wave of foreclosures instead of propping up bank investors and executives.
I’m sure your point is that he couldn’t have succeeded. You are probably right. But he could have tried. Then voters would not feel that he didn’t care about their problems. Republicans are accusing him of doing these things anyway.
my point is there is no way he would have succeeded and we would have ended up with nothing
On top of that the economy would have been worse off and the election this time around wouldn’t nearly be going as well as it is
You could be right, however, the ACA should have been his crown jewel. Instead people have to wait another year to find out what in it for them, good, or bad. We may never know if the Republicans take all three branches and repeal it which is looking more possible. I think that if he had shot for single=payer and lost, he could have used that in 2010 to fire up the young people to vote in primaries for Liberals, especially if he had thrown Student Loan forgiveness into the mix. It’s still not too late for that. Good times are the time for cautious middle-of-the-road don’t-rock-the-boat Presidents. Bad times call for bold in-your-face Presidents.
I don’t think that would have happened, given what we know did happen.
He goes to further to left on myriad of issues (stimulus, ACA, etc.), nothing passes because we know both minority leaders decided on inauguration day not to play ball and have their caucus vote as a group.
So, the Republicans go the American people (with a willing assist from the MSM) and say that the President isn’t compromising and in fact is trying to impose socialist policies (like they are now). He tried to pass this stimulus and healthcare law but the American people were heard and stood up and said “No” to all of it. We stopped the President’s statist policies cold like the American people wanted.
So, no stimulus; no ACA ; no other stimulus efforts that happened later on (payroll tax cuts, UI ext).
2010 comes and they can say the President isn’t doing anything to improve the economy. They would be right because we never stop the flood of lost jobs so unemployment is close to Depression era rates and all the badness that comes with that.
The GOP retakes the House (like they did but even more) and retakes the Senate with 55-60 Senators.
Nothing still gets done since the President is using the “bully pulpit” to drive for his policies. He’s not in any position of strength to negotiate anything with the Republicans and the economy continues to get worse.
Now we come to present day, does the President even run for reelection? Possibly not and we get swept out of the White House too.
We can keep doing these what ifs but I think we squeezed the most we could out of both of these Congresses and put the President in a strong position this year to do more.
Heck, even if he’d pursued an “Etch-A-Sketch” strategy after securing the nomination he’d probably be in better shape.
He could have spent May, June & July “introducing” the “New Romney” (a la Nixon) to the nation while simultaneously orchestrating a short, targeted series of “Sister Souljah” moments with the Crazy Caucus. Wouldn’t he be better off now if he had?
He probably feared (rightly IMHO) that delegates would bolt at the convention and toss him out. Bold and Romney do not go together.
elevates your war criminal/foe of civil liberties/destroyer of social safety nets…blah blah.
Congrats!
And you folks will continue to suck in the following ways:
a:
b:
c:
d:
e: all of the above!
f: we’re still not yet worse than Daily Kos!
You’d really rather have Romney with Ryan presiding over the Senate?
I never looked at it that way before. The nutjobs who ran against Romney lost individually, but collectively they won: they forced Romney to adopt the worst of all of their positions.
Also George Washington and Nathanael Greene.
It is true that Mitt never crossed the right enough to cause a meaningful backlash but by being King Weasel, Mitt has managed to undo the coalitions Rove and the GOP had put together by deeply offending each part of that coalition. Unlike the past coalitions Rove put together, real differences can no longer be ignored. These differences are amplified even beyond Mitt because the really crazy part of the right moved into the mainstream. Those real differences now trump the phony wedge issues that made the Rove coalition possible in the first place. Now we have Medicare being ruined, birth control taken away, extreme abortion issues, emergency manager laws, unions attacked, hard line immigration issues and extreme racial hatred of Obama driving all the black people away. The country is full of a lot of stupid people but are they that stupid for the GOP not to lose everything, even with that mountain of shadow money? Think about that safe upstate NY special house election the GOP lost because of just the Ryan budget.
Romney doesn’t care. Romney only cares about Romney.
Yes, I think you’re right. From this morning’s TPM:
TAMPA, Fla. — Mitt Romney’s campaign team believes the election will be determined by women. But it says the suburban moms they’re most focused on winning over don’t care much about Todd Akin and the GOP’s rightward lurch on abortion rights.
“I think to these women, the women’s issues they’re really concerned about are the survival of their family and making ends meet in their household. They’re worried about providing for their kids and what kind of future their kids’ are going to have,” Romney pollster Neil Newhouse said on a panel here sponsored by ABC News and Yahoo Tuesday.
“Those are the issues they’re concerned about,” he said. “And you know what? They’re not really paying that much attention to the nightly news.”