Make no mistake about it, Mitt Romney is a lousy politician.
Whatever it is that makes Mitt who he is, it has left him unable to connect to regular people. He can claim he shops at Costco all he wants but no one’s buying it. If you can’t afford a million dollar show horse, Romney can’t relate to you. End of story.
Also, Romney refuses to stand up for the few convictions he does have. The illustration above about his ever changing views on health care is a classic example. I suspect that Romney would love to have a national health care plan similar to the one he had in Massachusetts. The man might be soulless but I don’t think he wishes to keep people away from affordable health care. Yet, he is unwilling (or unable) to fight the powers within his party that have taken conservatives to the fringe of the ideological right. It is this that makes the following statement by Laura Ingraham so laughable.
If you can’t beat Barack Obama with this record, then shut down the party. Shut it down. Start new, with new people.
Election after election, we hire people who have lost previous campaigns; who’ve run campaigns that have failed; who have message campaigns where the message fell flat, and they keep getting re-hired. I don’t understand that. I don’t know why those are the people you hire
Ingraham fails to understand that as bad as Romney might be, he’s not the problem. The Republican Party and wingers like her are the problem! Republicans lack intellectual leadership and have abdicated control to teabaggers, evangelicals and the rest of the crazies who now dictate party policy. People might not like Mitt but they dislike the Republican brand even more.
Republicans have been overdosing on the crazy pill for a while now and here they are, on the verge of losing another election, and they still don’t get it. The problem is not Mitt. The problem is a party so disconnected from reality that it mocks and ostracizes the few rational conservatives left within its ranks…which makes Ingraham right about one thing; shut down the party and start all over again.
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(The Mitt Romney source photographs are Creative Commons licensed images from photographer Gage Skidmore. )
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Ingraham fails to understand that as bad as Romney might be, he’s not the problem. The Republican Party and wingers like her are the problem! Republicans lack intellectual leadership and have abdicated control to teabaggers, evangelicals and the rest of the crazies who now dictate party policy. People might not like Mitt but they dislike the Republican brand even more.
You are right. Jon Huntsman was the best choice there and he got kicked to the curb quickly. Just wasn’t crazy enough for the party that boos gay soldiers and claps for executions. There is no posible way you can play to the rabid base and not turn off normal people.
Politics is always, to a certain extent, driven by ideology, but the degree to which the Republican party has become ideologically driven is extreme. When ideology conflicts with reality, reality wins every time. King Cnut Sweynsson, according to legend, demonstrated that the forces of nature were indifferent to the authority of kings; the Catholic church could not keep Galileo and Copernicus from eventually being proven correct; Trofim Lysenko’s theories of genetics could not be made to work no matter how much his supporters and followers wanted them to be true.
Much as I dislike to do so, I find myself agreeing with Ingraham (a mean ideologue in her own right) in her judgement on the Republicans. When I think of past presidential campaigns that I have lived through, how many times has the Republican candidate been a past loser whose “turn” was up (hint: Nixon, Reagan, Dole, McCain, Romney)? How many times has the Republican platform been a regurgitation of old, obsolete policies? I can, actually, understand how it is possible to vote for a Republican (I have voted in eight presidential elections, three times for Republican candidates), but I find it harder and harder to justify putting my mark next to any name in the ‘R’ column, and I also find it harder and harder to understand the traction that the Republican party continues to have with the voting public.
When a party can get one of its biggest cheerleaders to turn against it, it is time, at the very least, for that party to reassess its positions. While it might be satisfying to commit the Republican party to the same political dustbin into which the Whigs were swept in the 1850s.
The talking heads for the republican party acknowledge their FAILED president ( bush) and their flawed candidate (Romney ) by insisting that their problem is that they are NOT conservative enough. They would have to be brought to extinction before they would rethink their failed conservative ideology.
Another problem that the republican candidates are having. Millions of Americans are so easily spoon fed their garbage with no questions asked. There is nothing that they can’t explain away, no lie to big, no historical facts that can’t be altered, and no limit to the blame that can be dumped on democrats and the poor with no questions asked. The evangelicals, tea party members and low information rasicts have spoiled the republican party. Every hateful nonsensical thing that comes out of their pie holes is met with cheers. So the republicans big mistake is assuming that the entire electorate.is as foolish as these people. And were not. Surprise surprise.
Sydney, there has been some pushing back this year. Note that Paul Ryan was called out over his lie about taking $700+ billion out of Medicare, even his marathon time, and both Ryan and Romney have been taken to task over the “eliminating the work requirement” lie. It’s taken a long time (comparatively speaking), but things are finally reaching a point where the average voter not only has more information at hand, but is willing to look for and use it.
For years, politicians in both parties (but more egregiously among Republicans) have acted as if the outrageous things they say went unrecorded, but now every utterance is captured and on the internet within hours, even minutes. George Allens can no longer deny their Macaca moments, Rick Santorums can’t claim they meant to say “blah” people and make it stick, and it’s getting harder and harder for people to claim they were misquoted or quoted “out of context” – more than likely, the original context has been recorded somewhere abd people have access to it. Since reporters are getting too lazy to check the facts, it’s up to us to do it for them.
Cheryl,
I agree with you about Jon Huntsman. Us Democrats were actually quite lucky that the Tea Party has so taken over the Republican Party that they passed up their best and really only chance to beat Obama; Jon Huntsman. There was no one I feared more to win because he was the voice of moderation and compromise in that Republican Nomination process, which is exactly what many Americans, including many conservatives, are looking for.
Of course we all agree with Laura Ingraham because she said what many of us are thinking; Republicans need a reboot if they are to stay viable. Otherwise they will deminish to the size of a pup tent.
And the “Flop” continues to flip. No surprise there.