RIP Mitt (that's a double entendre)
Nathan Greene
1 Comment
By Emily Geiger
The post-mortem on the Romney campaign is in full swing. I’ve had a few friends ask me if I thought Romney’s religion was the reason he ended up losing and dropping out. Then, this morning, I read this, which addressed the same question, and better yet, it came up with an answer pretty similar to mine.
Romney didn’t lose because he was a Mormon. He lost because he wasn’t even a very good Mormon. Not only did his extremely liberal positions on social issues as Massachusett's Governor go against the values of the Republican Party, they went against the values of his own church, which made him seem pretty hypocritical.
Then came the conversion. All of the sudden, Mitt was Mr. Pro-Life and Mr. Marriage Amendment (despite the fact he opposed a marriage amendment as governor of Massachusetts). It’s one thing if you’re Rudy, who is a liberal on social issues and is unapologetic for it. Rudy has never claimed to be a champion of morals… just ask wives numbers 1 and 2, as well as his kids who won’t speak to him. Mitt, on the other hand, was supposed to be this great religious family man with great morals, and yet he didn’t realize that abortion was wrong until he was about ready to run for president. Here’s where his faith plays into the equation. Mitt had no excuse for not knowing that abortion was wrong because his church had been telling him it was wrong for the first 60 years of his life. Given this fact, his prior support for abortion rights had to have been a pretty firmly held belief. This made his sudden conversion even more suspect.
The problem is that Mitt didn’t know what Mitt stood for, and he likely still doesn’t. This article talks about how Mitt and his advisors tried to craft his message in the early days of the campaign (because he didn’t seem to have a message) and how Mitt’s positions shifted as the campaign went along due to changing circumstances. Here’s a quote from the story:
But Mr. [Alex] Gage [Romney’s director of strategy] acknowledged that in Mr. Romney’s rush to beat back the attacks questioning his conservative credentials, he may have swung too far in the other direction, ultimately taking some of the most-pronounced stands against illegal immigration and social issues.
“Maybe we overcompensated,” Mr. Gage said.
That’s just the problem. Mitt’s positions on issues were open to debate amonst his staff of advisors who would tell him what he believed. He wasn’t a strong candidate with solid positions on anything. I also find it interesting his director of strategy is saying they went too far to the right on social issues. Keep that in mind when he runs in 2012. Will Mitt go from liberal governor, to conservative candidate, back to liberal (or at least moderate) candidate? If so, then he’s really flushed his credibility down the toilet.
Newsweek’s Howard Fineman has an extremely blunt and accurate piece on the subject. Here’s some of what he had to say:
Here lieth the campaign of Mitt Romney, victim of the mistaken belief that the only way to succeed in national Republican politics was to turn yourself into something you are not. Or maybe the campaign revealed what his closest friends never imaged him to be. They thought he was a decent classy guy. But maybe he really is a soulless throat-cutter who would do and say anything to win.
***
The quality of being genuine is hard to convey, and deciding who should be president based solely on that basis can lead to disaster; you need brains and an ability to go with the flow as well. But voters know a phony above all and Romney came off as one from the get-go. Over the last decade he had changed his views in a rightward direction on so many issues to suit what he thought he needed to win the GOP nomination that he ended up standing for nothing but his own ambition.
He had good staff in the early states, but as soon as the genuine article (or at least a more genuine article) came along in Iowa, in the form of Mike Huckabee, Romney was blown away. Then, having ceded the moderate ground, he lost in New Hampshire to another genuine article, John McCain (who learned his own lessons about the dangers of pandering to the right earlier in his campaign).
It's no accident that the GOP race is down to three men who are clear about who they are: McCain, Huckabee and, yes, Ron Paul.
Fineman does go on to say that Mitt’s Mormonism hurt him in the Bible Belt, but what really hurt him was his utter lack of sincerity and credibility on social issues. Without that, he didn’t have a prayer.
Reader Comments (1)
If we as Republicans, especially conservatives, don't get our act together, we won't have to worry about the Democrats defeating us; we will defeat ourselves. No candidate is going to be perfect, but a Republican candidate that scores 80+% conservative is by far better than Democrat candidates that score less than 10%. Supreme Court Justice nominations outweigh most of the other issues. Republicans need to focus on the long term effect of having liberal justices appointed by a Democratic President. Rather than fighting with each other, attacking each other, or encouraging each other to stay home and not vote, we should be thinking of ideas that will rally our side in the way Obama has rallied new voters for the Democrats. Come on folks, let's come together to support McCain since it seems apparent that he will be the Republican candidate. Who has some positive ideas that will get our party working together and that will get Republicans, Independents, and new voters excited about casting their votes for the Republican candidate who will be, without a doubt, better for our country than either of the two Democratic candidates.