Mitt Romney, the man who wasn’t there
And here’s the big problem for Romney. When a candidate doesn’t seem to stand for anything, when he doesn’t seem to be motivated by big ideas or a cause, that invites voters to speculate about what really motivates him. In John Kerry’s case, for example, a lot of voters concluded (correctly) that he was motivated by preening personal vanity.
In Romney’s case, his ideological emptiness left him open to the Obama campaign’s attack ads portraying him as a predatory “vulture capitalist” who was campaigning to represent the interests of the rich at the expense of the common man. Of course this is a leftist fantasy and an exercise in character assassination. And of course it was foolish and shortsighted for “low information” voters to let themselves be manipulated by a smear campaign rather than thinking through the issues independently. But what made this possible, what opened the window, was the fact that Romney did not clearly stand for anything.
This ties together all of the different threads of the election. This is why it wasn’t about abortion or immigration or any of these side issues (regardless of the merits of reforming the Republican position on those issues). It wasn’t about the positions Romney took, but about the positions he didn’t take. It wasn’t about a high-tech turnout operation by the Obama campaign. It was about all of the potential Romney supporters who didn’t turn out because he didn’t give them enough reason to do so. He was the man who wasn’t there.
Blowback
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Give. It. Up.
WeekendAtBernankes on December 9, 2012 at 7:32 PM
You’re late. All the good meat has been picked off the bones.
kim roy on December 9, 2012 at 7:39 PM
True, if not the only issue ( and a bit late to the bandwagon).
Irritable Pundit on December 9, 2012 at 7:40 PM
Yup.
John the Libertarian on December 9, 2012 at 7:49 PM
Let it go geez.
gophergirl on December 9, 2012 at 7:49 PM
Two points.
1. Shut.
2. Up.
Mimzey on December 9, 2012 at 7:50 PM
It was a narrow loss with the entire Media Machine and DNC sliming Romney for a year.
Only someone willing to slime back as hard had a chance.
Romney did it in the primaries against his GOP opponents, but failed to continue this winning tactic in the general.
Dumb move.
Slime works.
profitsbeard on December 9, 2012 at 7:51 PM
Did Romney lose?
davidk on December 9, 2012 at 7:54 PM
Damned skippy. I did not bring out my family to vote for Romney. The reason is that it was not worth my time to do so. Romney just was not worth the effort. It is also far harder to sell a product when you have virtue and you do not believe in the product. For me, it is impossible to do so.
astonerii on December 9, 2012 at 7:56 PM
Red meat for the gloaters.
thebrokenrattle on December 9, 2012 at 7:57 PM
Too bad the Sycophants will not learn anything from this election. Instead of looking in the mirror for the failure, they are all about blaming the failure on the known in advance opposition.
astonerii on December 9, 2012 at 8:01 PM
And a month later, still wrong.
It wasn’t “flip-flop”, that implies an issue of character. That if he was consistent on message, people would accept him.
It was trust. Some thought he would sell the populous out to high finance, others thought he would cave to the Dems on prog cuases dressed up as middle-class.
By not providing details, he let Barry and the media fill in the blanks with doubts.
Just like Newt said would happen.
budfox on December 9, 2012 at 8:04 PM
I will never understand the logic behind not giving your support to the ‘not-Obama,’ whoever it wound up being. I guess I just see what the Obama is doing and would infinitely prefer the not-Obama even if he were a RINO squish, an ideologue I disagreed with, or…God help me…Ron Paul.
James on December 9, 2012 at 8:20 PM
People “agonizing” over “what a bad candidate” Romney was are just cynically trying to jockey for position in the GOP. Romney lost because the Democrats learned how to munchkin the system with non-voter turnout. All of the nuances that people are picking at don’t matter, because the Dems will just pay to ship enough non-voters to the polls to counter any informed voter advantage your message generates. The only thing that matters from here on out is going into the cities and getting to the non-voters before the Dems do, with individual campaign workers from their own neighborhoods. Forget about the commercials — they are just to raise funds and energize your ground game workers.
Count to 10 on December 9, 2012 at 8:23 PM
Expired equine not sufficiently flogged.
Left Coast Right Mind on December 9, 2012 at 8:29 PM
but we’re still waiting for the romney death star…….right?…….i mean thats what i was told. wait till after the convention…….waiting……i’m waiting……..rofl
renalin on December 9, 2012 at 8:29 PM
Conservative Reagan gave us a great boost, where many Democrats chose conservatism over progressivism.
Progressive Bush Sr. pretty much tossed that good will goodbye.
Conservative Newt Gingrich brought us the Majority in the House of Representatives.
Progressive Bush and company threw away majority Senate, majority House and the Presidency giving us Obama, Pelosi and Reid with a filibuster proof majority.
Obamacare gave us an opportunity, majority House. But the people are still not happy with the progressive Republican party.
There are consequences for things. At least on the Republican side of the coin. I like it like that. Romney would have caused significant damage to an already damaged brand.
astonerii on December 9, 2012 at 8:30 PM
Let’s see…
Even though he was about third on my list of preferred nominees Romney was and is an American success story. A known scholar whose 3.97 non-synthetic Harvard GPA for Law and Business combined program, successful at business not just at Bain but practically his entire career path, successful in his community, a popular governor in a politically crooked Democrat union hell-hole, a person of class and manners, of a faith where people aren’t sure exactly what it is so in fashion typical of ignorant they trash it, parent of three successful sons, in a normal marriage to a wife of finesse, grace and politeness.
versus
A Marxist Affirmative-action egomaniacal trainwreck of a set-aside advanced hidden-grades Harvard tourist and ACORN reject of dubious parentage, low manners, pathological lying, hostility to Western Civilization while bowing to whacko Islamist causes and fanatical dictator wannabes (Morsi etc.) married to a frumpy, dysfunctional, portly, entitled, taxpayer lobster-fancying, taxpayer vacationing, dreadful, angry, entitled mess of a Marie Antoinette University of Chicago quota hire…
Tough choice for anyone whom would want Jocelyn “what’s a spleen?” Elders to be their heart surgeon, Bernie Madoff to be their financial advisor, Just-Us Roberts to be their insurance adviser, Tonya Harding to be their babysitter, Lucrezia Borgia to be their wife et cetera.
Despite the vast obviousness of Romney being the superior choice versus the Chicago puppet… it wasn’t Romney who diluted and betrayed the momentum coming out of the 2010 elections. Boehner and McConnell had two whole years to stand for something but did not. The “Fiscal Cliff” isn’t anything new! Zero has been on this course for four years already. Yet coming out of the 2010 shakeup the GOP puts the same old same old go along to get along clowns in leadership positions so as to not rock the boat with any Tea Party winners aiming to cut spending, cut taxes, defund bloated cancers on government such as PBS, NPR, EPA, Dept of Edukayshun, so many useless departments, so much graft yet Boehner and McConnell did nothing. Even Darryl Issa with his never ending “we’ve almost got him now” … “no seriously, we’ve almost got him now” Fast & Furious postponement of sleazy Eric Holder devolved into something approximating an “Are you really sure John Wilkes Booth did it?” let’s wait until after the election circus.
So, the Beltway establishment GOP decided until after the election to stand for something thus the November result.
Boehner and McConnell, the rest of the Beltway elistist ilk, the dreadful hand-wringing Billy “Stepahnopoulos wuss of the GOP” Kristol, and similar RINO establishment fossils keep trying to blame Romney as, shall we say, diversionary accountability because Boehner, McConnell, Lindsey Graham, Collins, and other RINOs want more than anything else…. business as usual.
Theater instead of results despite strong gains in 2010 thus making it relatively easy for the Chicago messiah bearing more handouts to the parasites to waltz back in to heap four more years of incompetent malice, bureaucratic bloat and freakish judicial degeneracy (Roberts, Kagan, Sotomayor) upon our republic,
viking01 on December 9, 2012 at 8:33 PM
Good luck convincing actual progressives that George W. Bush is fellow progressive.
thebrokenrattle on December 9, 2012 at 8:37 PM
We knew going into the primaries about everything, we even knew going in that Romney would lose.
Romney applied for a job he was not qualified for. No, he was qualified to be president, he was not qualified to be the Republican candidate for president. No more so than Hillary Clinton would be.
astonerii on December 9, 2012 at 8:39 PM
But Obamuh the chameleon is to be commended. Never there and has never been a man.
stukinIL4now on December 9, 2012 at 8:47 PM
For better or worse, Mitt Romney and John McCain were both Republican Party’s versions of John Kerry. Nobody really voted FOR those guys; all they did was vote AGAINST whoever was on the other sign. Of course that almost never works.
The Democrats learned their lesson well after their John Kerry fiasco. And that’s why they worked so hard to make sure that the Republicans nominated their own — twice now, and counting.
logis on December 9, 2012 at 8:51 PM
Pretty much covered it all. I am amazed at the love the repubs in congress have shown conservatives who gave them the reins in 2010 and continued in 2012.
“This is the best we can do” Boehner.
arnold ziffel on December 9, 2012 at 8:52 PM
Part of Romney’s problem is that Obama strongly appeals to failures while Romney does not appeal to failures. We have an economic and poltical quandary in DC which cannot and will not accept that spending will have to be cut for the economy to recover. George Washington could relate to Romney’s 2012 as being similar to Valley Forge where both were wealthy, brilliant, overqualified men who didn’t really have to be there but could see where their nation was headed, and decided to sacrifice hopeful that temporary starvation (while the royalists partied) could lead to a better form of government.
Even had Romney won he still would have had to deal with finger pointing Boehner and McConnell determined to spend, determined to keep things the same. With that tax and spend mentality running the GOP even someone with the financial wizardry of Bernard Baruch and JP Morgan would have thrown up his hands and advised to let the gravy train go ahead and run off the tracks because the system steadfastly refuses to live within its means.
viking01 on December 9, 2012 at 9:05 PM
The dead horse says please stop
JPeterman on December 9, 2012 at 9:09 PM
Shhhh…. Such truths are not appreciated by the Anti-Newt crowd.
Irritable Pundit on December 9, 2012 at 9:11 PM
Yep. But the ‘bots just can’t handle that.
It’s nowhere near dead as long as we keep hearing crap like this:
Sorry, but that kind of delusion is hard to stomach, after reading for months from you same people about how Mitt was going to coast to victory. And how anyone who disagreed was a filthy commie bastard or some such.
ddrintn on December 9, 2012 at 9:25 PM
Ryan was at least a breath of seriousness about reforming entitlements. Romney should have put out and defended some serious changes there. Instead, he played me-too in the second and third debates and left reform vague and unbelievable.
AshleyTKing on December 9, 2012 at 9:28 PM
You think people would not vote for and politicians would not offer more money with his reforms? In fact, it makes it that much easier to see the benefit in his reform.
astonerii on December 9, 2012 at 9:38 PM
I think you can touch the third rail and survive. Ryan is an example, and that was the tantalizing appeal of Romney’s pick.
AshleyTKing on December 9, 2012 at 9:44 PM
Gravy trained voters would get a real rush.
For a few airborne seconds.
profitsbeard on December 9, 2012 at 9:51 PM
Kinda goes without saying…
Ladysmith CulchaVulcha on December 9, 2012 at 10:03 PM
I can hear the stoners in Washington state already:
“Like wow, maaaaan.”… splat.
viking01 on December 9, 2012 at 10:13 PM
A lot of value in your post
The DC RINO crowd fought more against the various GOP primary contenders, than they did in their day jobs, thus pushing the fiscal confrontation, intentionally, until after the election, when it became the lame duck president’s muscle
Had they listened to the Tea Party, instead of quashing it, Romney would have had to run a very different campaign. As it was, status quo didn’t look half bad compared to making a change.
Now that status quo is fiscal cliff, it all looks different, and now, the GOP become the villians, since 50 percent of the country voted for the status quo, false tho it was.
The RINOs got their status quo too, and they worked very hard indeed to crush the soc cons. Now they get to eat what they sowed. Too bad they didnt want to face the music when it counted
entagor on December 9, 2012 at 11:03 PM
One more comment
Is there such a thing as too stupid
not speaking of Romney here
entagor on December 9, 2012 at 11:06 PM
There once was a chap named Mitt Romney
Who’s said since he sat at his mom’s knee
“With prospects so bright,
And trees the right height,
I’ll win in a lousy econ’my.”
Ladysmith CulchaVulcha on December 10, 2012 at 12:04 AM
It’s time for the bone eaters.
faraway on December 10, 2012 at 12:11 AM
After the bones are gone, he’ll truly be ‘the man who wasn’t there’
faraway on December 10, 2012 at 12:12 AM
Not Romney’s fault. It could’ve been Jesus himself. This nation has been overtaken by illiterates and pop culture addicts, both of whom want free stuff and have no concern about their liberties.
Kakalak Pundit on December 10, 2012 at 1:07 AM
I doubt many of the primary voters who went with Romney were illiterate or pop culture addicts.
Romney was a terrible candidate. Fin.
V-rod on December 10, 2012 at 1:43 AM
1) I never forgot why I didn’t support Mitt (That’s the House, I’m running for the Senate) Romney.
2) Once I was Saddled with Romney I made the best of a Bad Situation.
3) I never expected Romney to stand up and say anything definitive in the campaign, and I wasn’t disapointed.
4) I did believe that Obama was bad enough that people would have voted for Goofey before re-electing him.
5) Had Romney been elected I held no Illusions that he would not Sell us out the minute he was presented with a ‘Deal’ by the Democrats.
jaydee_007 on December 10, 2012 at 4:57 AM
Romney won Independents by 5% but still lost. Everything the anti-Romney people here wanted him to do would have cost him more votes than it would have won him. The Somalia swarm in Columbus yesterday is instructive. Democrat moochers outnumber Republican workers.
57% now say they will vote for Hillary Clinton for president in 2016. Romney may well have maximized the Republican vote. He was unbelievably qualified and would have made an excellent President. America is not yet ready for a turnaround.
Basilsbest on December 10, 2012 at 7:07 AM
mittens was/is an empty suit who was NOT even a RINO Republican let alone a conservative one….the GOP ran a scam with a grifter who spent $0 of his own millions and many millions of the money of others to lose badly to a very bad President….that’s how bad mittens was…a truly pathetic candidate and a fraud…an embarrassment to the American people…may he leave politics forever!
Pragmatic on December 10, 2012 at 7:33 AM