"Mitt has a likability issue. If people could just get to know the real Mitt, he would really connect with voters."
It makes a lot of sense. George W. Bush was palatable to moderate voters, despite having ruinous policies, because he came across as likable and seemed genuine. Romney is not going to be that guy - but in theory that's OK. There are lots of American personalities that American's don't like but whom are well regarded. Michael Bloomberg certainly comes to mind and therein lies Mitt's problem. He cannot run as Dubya, because he is not a fun or warm person, but he could have run as an experienced businessman, family man and earnest politician. Heck - he did that for a long time both at Bain and as the Governor of Massachusetts and it worked!
Instead he decided that Mitt had to become a brand, and a very conservative one, in order to win the primary. If he had held his fucking horses he might just be winning this thing now.
Now, let's take a little trip back in time to last year when the Primaries were a total zoo. Bachmann was a presence. Perry was a favorite. Herman Cain was low profile, but intriguing. Santorum was on the periphery due to his "google problem". Ron Paul was Ron Paul. Newt Gingrich was having a late career comeback. There were more clowns in the car, but only Perry, Gingrich and Romney appeared to have any kind of credible shot at winning.
Sure, everybody got to be in front in the polls for a little while. Even this ^ guy, but nobody else really stood a chance over Romney. Let's remember who these people where!
-Cain was a serial groper who had to drop out on his own. Prior to that, "9-9-9" was his only message that made it through (for all of 72 hours).
-Perry shot himself in the foot when it turned out he couldn't get out a complete sentence at a debate. Remember the "oop" moment?
-Newt Gingrich had the terminal handicap of being an unlikable blow hard who had already proven at every turn to not be able to get out his own way. For fucks sake, he was cheating on his wife while impeaching Clinton.
Did Team Romney have the foresight and the balls to wait these idiots out? Did he have the patience watch them self destruct? Did he say, "hey, I have a $100 million cash advantage, let's wait for America to get sick of this."?
Nope.
He took the "safe" route out of all of this and beat a path clear to the right of all of them. He out Bachmanned Bachmann, he out anti-immigranted the Texan, he outcrazied Newt. He won and he won quickly. At what cost though?
Erik Fehrnstrom, a senior campaign adviser infamously said after the primary was won that the general election would provide an "Etch-a-Sketch" from the primaries hard line positions. Americans aren't that dumb though.
Point being: Team Mitt wants so badly for America to get to know there guy and how great he is, but they spent more than a year keeping that "real Mitt" buried deep underground for when he was needed. The problem is, that now that they do need the moderate friendly Massachusetts Republican so badly, the first impression has already been made.
I always found this funny in retrospect about the 2000 elections: while Al Gore didn't do much to differentiate himself from Bush politically, personally he came off as robotic and impersonal. When, in reality, he was the stronger intellect and better politician. A Gore presidency might not have looked too much different than a Bush one (we'd still be in Afghanistan at the least), it would probably have lacked many of the stickier, unconstitutional quagmires that dogged the late Bush years (Patriot Act, wiretapping, waterboarding, secret prisons).
ReplyDeleteBut then again, John Kerry. It's not like the Dems don't churn guys out like Romney on a regular basis.
I don't give Willard too much credit, but the one thing the man is is shrewd. I just don't think pandering to what he saw as a strongly Tea Party base was a good idea. The TP was reactionary. It feels even now that the GOP is trying desperately to shrink from that movement and regain the center (who woulda thunk it?!). I really think that's what lost Bachmann her spot in the race. Her "reaction to the reaction to the state of the union" was so unhinged from reality, so absurd that all but the most die hard Tea Partiers had to have been turned off.
Mitt is dying the same slow death Kerry did in 2004. He has an okay track record and he's muddling it by (ugh) flip-flopping. Ironically, I think Mitt could have pulled some center-left Dems if he'd championed his Mass HealthCare reforms and played more to the middle than he did at first.
He's doing that now, but it's WAY too late. We know who he really is after that 47% comment (which would have sunk him either way, honestly). Anyone voting Romney is, excluding Nader/Paul-bots, voting against Obama and not FOR Romney, which is obviously a huge flag that Obama -- excluding a huge career-ending gaffe -- is on-track for a reelection in 2012.
I'm really enjoying these "Today in Mittens shooting himself in the foot" posts. I apologize for my consistent, late-night, semi-drunk comments.