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.
It was some online poll with 40% Republicans participating.
About as accurate as every straw poll that shows Ron Paul garnering 70% of the vote.
That someone even posted it is laughable. Every reliable poll shows Newt inches behind and surging in SC. Word on the ground is that Newt is rising faster than even being reported.
Don't be fooled by the low approval ratings he gets today. Part of it includes liberals who were disappointed at him that he's not liberal enough. In the voting booth, however, they'll cast their votes for him.
Amazing.
You are a romney supporter, aren’t you? I didn’t think we had any of those around here. Thought they were extinct.
In any case, you’re wasting your time. He’ll lose in the general if not in the primary. It’s certain.
I don’t know what “Kenny used it...” means???? Of course they’ll not win Calif, Mass, or Conn. However, you’d like your candidate to at least win his own home state. Romney won’t. Gingrich would. Santorum has a great chance of winning PA, Perry would win Texas big time, and Huntsman Utah.
Newt, my friend, won many consecutive terms to the US congress. Moreover, he WON the election to Speaker of the House, the position, which you will recall was the position our founding fathers considered so important that they placed it pre-eminently in line to the presidency after the one chose as vice president. So, Newt has been briefed, had secret service, been at the highest levels of the national discourse.
Is Newt Gingrich electable? Moreso than Romney BECAUSE Romney has given away every single issue that could be used against Obama.
Newt has balanced the budget, reformed welfare, paid down the debt, taken over the House after a 40 year absence, and on and on. He has real strengths and not the phony strengths of a guy like Romney who couldn’t even do a halfway decent job as a governor in a small state. He brought them gay marriage, government paid abortions, Romneycare, and higher taxes. I’m sure that’ll inspire the conservatives in Kentucky, Ohio, Missouri, etc.
No they will not attack Newt’s religion. He’s Catholic. Nor Santorum for the same reason. Nor Perry; he’s Methodist.
Romney’s silver-spoon background and his vulture capitalism at Bain will play right into Obama’s theme.
Romney is toast.
http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/01/14/us-usa-campaign-poll-idUSTRE80D0U420120114
Sorry, Jim, got a phone call I had to take.
The above for the republican/dem mix in the so-called poll conducted by Reuters
"“The good news is, we have a volunteer army, and we’re going to keep it that way.My sons are all adults. They’ve made their decisions about their careers and chosen not to serve in the military and I respect that decision.”
~ Mitt Romney
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The MSM works according to the principal that a lie told often enough becomes the truth.
Is this the same poll that’s posted on the side bar?
I don’t know how you have survived 4 posts on this thread, claiming you are not a Romney man, while promoting him. Really strange because Jim Rob is on this thread also.
Conservatives need to rally around Rick Santorum.
You are correct. America is fine with Catholics, Christians, and even Jews for high office, but not Mormons.
Most Americans have only a passing awareness at best of what Mormons believe; however, should Romney become the nominee the networks will immediately begin broadcasting all sorts of "in-depth" documentaries on Mormonism and the result will be devastating.
Romney’s silver-spoon background and his vulture capitalism at Bain will play right into Obama’s theme.
Yep. Up until now OWS has concentrated on a generic image of wealthy Wall Streeters, Romney will immediately become the "face" of the one percent.
Good list, and I agree with everything you said. I started out as a Perry man far before the primary even started. I viewed his record in Texas as stellar, and I deeply appreciated his Christian witness.
However, this just wasn’t his time. Perhaps it was a training ground for a future run, but in any case he came out of the gate so poorly that he simply hasn’t recovered. I acknowledged that a while back.
At that point I switched to Newt because Santorum wasn’t moving. I knew Santorum to be an excellent speaker, excellent leader, and excellent example.
Again, too little too late.
But if having Gingrich and Santorum agree on a ticket of one as Potus and the other as VP will cause them to unite, then I’m all for it. They can even offer Perry the SecDef slot.
We just need a consensus before Jan 21.
Again, not be be negative BUT the Mormon Church only allowed blacks to join in 1978!!!!!
I think it will be easy to make the Mormon church seem racist.
And that is why I think Newt and Rick attacked Romney in the way they did. Like it or not, they have made extremely clear the line of attack that will be launched at Romney.
You don’t have to believe in vulture capitalism to realize that Obama will make Romney the face of the evil, rich, heartless SOB who “loves to fire people” and close factories.
If forcing us to look at the unelectability of Romney was the result Gingrich was seeking, then he has succeeded.
Romney is the MOST UNELECTABLE of all the candidates, now that I think of it.
Is the picture of Romney on the tarmac having his shoes shined a real photo? Anyone know?
If so, that picture will be devastating.
I agree. If Mitt is by some terrible misfortune the candidate, the msm or the Dems (but I repeat myself) will immediately pull out all the stuff they have at the ready to destroy him. Even if they didn’t, many conservatives would not be able to live with themselves if they voted for him.
I think a Santorum/Gingrich ticket would be the best thing. I want S and G to somehow join forces so they can defeat Romney.
Seems to me the lamestream might be content to omit religion altogether and leave it to the SuperPACS, where Romney could come back with his own Jeremiah Wright attack ads.
The media seem content that Romney is not talking Jesus -— that unlike Newt and the other conservative, pro-life candidates, Romney doesn't want to emphasize the issue, and we know why.
I will agree with you, however, that Romney's religion will come into play with documentaries about Mormons, Polygamy and his own family, wherein his grandfather had 5 wives; relocated to Mexico when he was thrown out of Utah for Polygamy, and where Romney's father, George was born.
That’s an interesting idea. I don’t rule out that it could happen. One has questioned whether Protestant Evangelicals would be willing to support an all-Catholic ticket or a Catholic-Mormon ticket, though I don’t think it would be an issue. Your thoughts?
The major issues this election, unless things change dramatically in the next six months, will be jobs and Obamacare.
Myth's record is eliminating jobs (whether it was a good business decision or not doesn't even matter). Obama will say that Romney made money for himself and his investors only because he fired people; this wouldn't be as damaging in many elections, but this year it will be all anyone remembers.
Romney is the one candidate who can't attack Obamacare because there it is nothing more than a national Romneycare.
I will agree with you, however, that Romney's religion will come into play with documentaries about Mormons, Polygamy and his own family, wherein his grandfather had 5 wives; relocated to Mexico when he was thrown out of Utah for Polygamy, and where Romney's father, George was born.
The anti-Christian "specials" that run every Christmas and Easter will seem mild by comparison.
I will not support Romney for any reason.
He is pro-abortion, pro-gay marriage, anti-gun, pro-big government.
Has nothing to do with religion.
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