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.
The only real choices for conservatives are Gingrich and Santorum. The South Carolina primary is the fire wall. If Romney wins there, then the Romney GOP Media will drive his campaign all the way to the nomination.
We all know this is true.
Right now Gingrich 23 + Santorum 16 + Perry 4 = ~43% of the vote.
Romney has about 27%.
If we stay divided, then Romney wins. If we make a hard choice, even if we don't really want to, to unite behind one candidate, then Romney will be defeated.
Can you do that to advance conservatism?
The logical person to unite behind at this point is the poll front-runner. The next most logical is Santorum.
Perry's people going to Santorum still leaves Romney a victor. Perry's people going to Gingrich will lead to a Romney defeat. Perry + Santorum going to Gingrich equal an overwhelming rejection of Romney.
Read the above article. IT is PROOF that Romney cannot win the general election.
Then pray about the right thing to do.
For all you Romney supporters lurking out there, this article is hard, realistic truth. You are backing a general election loser.
You, too, better do some praying.
The only thing I can figure out is he has nice hair and he smiles and laughs a lot after eveything he says?
Ping to article
I've campaigned for him as far back as the 90’s and I've donated to him and will continue to do so as long as he runs.
We may not like Romney, he's only above Paul and Huntsman on my list, but we're not the ones who are going to make the call on who wins the election. It's the mushy, uninformed middle.
Unless we end up with Jerry Sandusky as our nominee, we're going to win going away.
Again, the danger isn't losing the Presidency, we've got that covered, it's that we could lose the chance to get a REAL SOLID CONSERVATIVE in that office.
But for the massive attack ads by Romney and the one by RuPaul against Newt Gingrich in Iowa, Newt Gingrich was running away with the nomination, -— there would be no Santorum in the race -— and now Gingrich is rebounding in the South since he’s fighting back against Romney, but with great cost to him, given the piling on by talking heads, like Rush, and Faux News pundits in the tank for Romney.
Newt is the fighter and the one to best fight the Marxist in the ugly 2012 arena.
Romney is trying to buy the nomination, but he won’t be able to buy the presidency.
STOP ROMNEY. VOTE FOR GINGRICH!
Good post.
I disagree on the part about winning this election.
Romney is not electable. He WILL lose.
The 8th reason not listed by Hawkins is that a sizeable portion of the conservative base will desert him. He is Obama lite.
Anyone voting for Romney in the primary because they think he will win in the general is totally fooling himself.
Romney’s track record is as a loser. He will continue those losing ways.
I’m not sure if the hair is even real...but the laugh certainly isn’t. It is the nervous laugh of someone trying to be “sincere” and knowing that they are failing miserably. He may well be a very nice man in private but he just reminds me too much of a used car saleman.
The MSM is pushing him, just as they did in 2008 with McCain, as the “only” Republican who can win. They were lying then (and knew it) and they’re lying now. If Romney is the nominee, then Obama gets a second term!
Is that Mitt Romney's name in a past life?
Romney will take a shellacking from the better liberal, 0bama.
Haven't we learned the lessons of '08 yet?
You know, mama, freeping the reader comments sections of S Carolina papers probably makes sense. I hadn’t thought of that. Thanks.
If we were to attack the electability myth in those letters, and the abortion, gays, and guns angles, then we could hope that S Carolinians would see those letters.
Wait till CBS/NBC/ABC explain how Mormons consider the rest of us "gentiles" and look down their noses at the un-initiated.
People in Salt Lake live in a little bubble. They have no idea how the rest of the country perceives them.
Romney is about to find out about that.
I support Rick Santorum because, while Newt Gingrich is smart, tough and a great debater, he is also a Washington insider through and through with a mercurial temperament that can be dangerous in a president. I simply don't trust him. I also believe that Newt's sometimes cranky, even surly demeanor when his ego has been bruised is dangerous. As the GOP presidential candidate, one unthinking outburst from Gingrich - which is quite possible - could de-rail his campaign and allow Obama to defeat him. I don't care to take that risk.
Santorum may not be as forceful as Gingrich or debate quite as well but he does not give the impression of a crabby old guy who knows he's smarter than everyone else. Santorum is bright and affable and, more important, a solid conservative (not a 'perfect' one) and has strong 'family values', which some on FR dismiss as hardly relevant when the economy is the main concern of most voters - but those social mores play well with most non-liberals. Most of all, Santorum can defeat Obama.
They worked together before and Rick would know how to work congress to get the clean up job done. Rick's a good man. Too nice to deal with the devil=BhO. OTOH Newt has experience dealing with evil. He'll fight fire with fire.
Whatever the consensus might be, I am personally convinced that January 21, the day of the S Carolina primary, is the most important date of this 2012 election.
That day the conservatives will have come to a consensus, or they will again allow themselves to be divided by the intentional strategy of the GOP establishment.
That will usher in the next GOP BobDole/JohnMcCain candidate who WILL lose...Mitt Romney.
CONSERVATIVES: Ad-MITT Romney Is Unelectable!
They worked together before and Rick would know how to work congress to get the clean up job done. Rick's a good man. Too nice to deal with the devil=BhO. OTOH Newt has experience dealing with evil. He'll fight fire with fire.
I could only support a Gingrich-Santorum ticket if that were the only possible way to defeat Romney but I remain convinced that Gingrich has more liabilities than Santorum. As for Obama, I think a potted plant could defeat him and we don't need Romney. The media may be in his pocket but most Americans are not happy and (rightly) blame Obama. The (White House) door is open for the Republican nominee.
7 Reasons John Hawkins Opinion Has No Merit
1) “Romney can’t win” he won in Massechusetts as a Republican. That in itself is a tough feat. Gingrich has never won a state race, Santorum lost his senate seat, Perry is just a plain incoherent speaker, and Paul (I like him) can’t get past his base and has no charisma.
2) “Romey Mormon” Attack on his religion will turn off Independents and curry favor with women who will sympathize.
3) New Gingrich couldn’t win a General election in any circumstance, neither could Santorum, nor any other candidate in the field.
4) Romney aside from Ron Paul is the only candidate thus far to poll in dead heat or ahead of Obama
5) Ginrich can’t even win a Republican primary how is he going to win a general where he is hated by independents and democrats
6) Romney is only candidate shown to be able to raise large money which will be required to overcome bias media and Obama’s fund raising machine.
7) “Bain” this leftist attack by Newt and Perry (glad be sucked in debates, otherwise he could have done well, a true leftist) is good to have now. Allows Romney to prepare defense for this baseless anti-capitalist attack for the General. Will be old news.
The Reuters/Ipsos poll was conducted online from January 10-13 with a sample of 995 South Carolina registered voters. It included 398 Republicans and 380 Democrats.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.
