Mitt and his team of elitist NE Republicans just don’t get it. The biggest thing that should alarm anyone who is considering voting for Romney for the nomination is that the Romney campaign seems to have learned nothing from 2008. They have been running virtually the same campaign as they did in 2008 only a bit time delayed. This shows they don’t understand two key things that they need to win regardless of all the other things that some of us care about like say principles.
The first thing Team Romney doesn’t get is why John McCain beat them in 2008. John McCain was dead, kaput, buried before NH. His amnesty talk had nearly destroyed his campaign but what he did was strongly and clearly say he was wrong and it wasn’t long after that he began to rise. He won NH and we all know the rest of the story. John McCain new that he wasn’t going to win being the otherwise of Romney as John Huntsman tried to play so he leveraged what conservative strengths and military record and ran on them and won not because people loved him but because we at least knew who he was even if he was and is often a pain in the *ss. The Romney team still thinks the 2008 campaign was perfect and that is why they are running it again. They simply believed they peaked too soon. That is where they are wrong. They didn’t peak too soon, they are simply targetting the wrong voters. Moderate/lib GOP amount to less than a quarter of the GOP. That leaves a lot of ways a conservative can win the nomination and only one path to it for self styled moderate reformed conservatives like Romney.
The second thing is they are failing to acknowledge the change in the electorate. The 2008 electorate is not the electorate of today. Today self identified conservatives have grown to be an even greater portion of the electorate not just in the GOP but also with Independents who are more conservative than ever. George W Bush actually picked up on this trend early and took advantage of it to win in 2000 and 2008. Obama is an abberation. He didn’t win because the electorate became more liberal as a whole but because the electorate that turned out was more liberal. The Romney camp is running a race out of time.
What Romney should’ve been doing for the past 4 years is standing alongside Palin and others and proving his worth as a harsh critic of Obama and making the case against Obama. Instead he has tried to run a stealth campaign having it both ways. One day he says Obama has made the economy worse and then when interviewed says he really didn’t say that. Romney only recently began to use words like ‘founder’ and limited government when he should’ve been doing that when the Tea Party was rising.
The Romney campaign is the stupid campaign. He should be reorganizing and firing people right now after his dismal showing in SC. He didn’t just lose he was CRUSHED. I doubt they will because the Romney crowd is an arrogant bunch. They still don’t see their mistakes as mustakes instead they are upset at the voters who dare expect them to win their vote on principle and substance not with peer pressure and talk of inevitability as if we are nominating a class president or country club president.
I think Romney is a ‘dead candidate walking’. No Republican in recent history has won the GOP nomination without SC and I doubt it is going to happen this year and certainly not with a smug bunch of elitists trying to tell conservatives how they have no choice but to vote for them if they want to win.
"the Romney crowd is an arrogant bunch. They still don’t see their mistakes as mustakes instead they are upset at the voters who dare expect them to win their vote on principle"....
You have to remember, Mitt is positive that he is foreordained to win and "save the Constitution". That arrogance you see comes from two sources..one being his wealth, and the other his upbringing as a mormon male who has risen up through the mormon ranks to a pretty high leadership position in the church.
This attitude of superiority is quite common in mormon males. They have been taught from birth that they are special and will, if they obey all the rules, become a god of their own planet.
Can't you tell by looking at Mitt's attitude that he really believes he is above all the peasants who, if they're lucky will crown him king? Just consider his refusal to account for his actions and his attempt to point at "the other guy" when he is confronted over them.
Frankly, I think he and Obama are two peas in a pod!