Gov. Chris Christie’s 14,000th announcement that he won’t run for president seems to have shaken some quarters loose.
Following Governor Christie’s announcement on Tuesday top GOP official and bundler Gerogette Mosbacher told reporters, “We do not consider Perry a factor… We know who will be our nominee.”
Race for 2012 reported:Those words were spoken today by Georgette Mosbacher, RNC Finance Co-Chair and huge GOP fundraiser, after Chris Christie’s announcement. The “we” is all the big bundlers, fundraisers, and money folks who have been sitting on the sidelines waiting for the field to be set — and that quote represents the coalescing around Mitt Romney that is expected to happen rather quickly now. Mosbacher went on to say:
“I think tomorrow, we’ll be contacting one another and probably put something together with Romney… And I would say that the race is now Romney and Obama. Quite frankly, the enthusiasm wasn’t there at the outset. He’s less conservative than a lot of us would like. However, our first and foremost goal is to defeat Obama. And we do believe Romney, in terms of independents, will be a strong candidate. We will coalesce behind him now… the time has come to get behind him… Tomorrow I’ll be on the phone all day. Quite frankly, it’ll be easier, because now we know who it is who will be our nominee. So we will pull our Rolodexes out and get to work.”
With all due respect to Mrs. Mosbacher, as the co-chair of the RNC finance committee, you have no business making such a public statement. At this point in 1991, Bill Clinton was only two days into his run for the presidency. At this point in 2007, Rudy Giuliani led in the polls and the money race. Mosbacher knows the latter, surely, because she backed Giuliani at the time. The 2012 race is quite fluid and will be until the South Carolina primary next year. For an RNC official of Mosbacher’s stature to allow herself to become a public partisan in the primary is unwise, to the point that she should consider stepping down if she is going to publicly campaign for any single candidate. Her statement destroys the RNC’s image of impartiality, and exposes the party to legitimate charges that it is trying to force its will on the primary. That won’t sit well with the grassroots and the Tea Party, at all. Chairman Priebus should have a word with her, and remind her of the party’s legitimate role in the primaries, and where that role ends.
That said, these comments provide an opportunity for Perry and Cain, who at this point* are the only viable alternatives to Romney. If Mitt Romney is now the establishment, David Brooks-approved candidate, he is the John McCain of 2012 — a moderate who superficially appeals to establishment patricians like Mosbacher because they think he can win, but who will probably lose. Mosbacher has provided an opening for them to both paint Romney as the east coast moderate, not-of-the-conservative-movement candidate. And there’s a debate coming up next week.
*“at this point” =/= set in stone.
No surprise, they have no where else to go. On the Conservative side of the street we have no where to go at the moment. We can hope that Perry gets his act together. Other than that, we can’t seriously consider an unemployed pizza CEO as a viable candidate.
We really need to avoid running a GOP version of John Kerry.
/sarcasm on/Can’t wait to vote for another GOP Candidate shoved down my throat by the “Establishment.”/sarcasm off/
Doesn’t it scare anybody Romney has been running for POTUS for the past 9 years?
Let the TEA Party know this and that’ll be the death knell of Romney’s campaign. “Establishment” is the worst thing you can be right now.
I’ll second comments 1, 2 and 3 (all that here at the moment). Mitt Romney is a flip-flopper and you don’t know what you’re buying when you vote for him. (Another Nixon, as in OSHA, EPA and wage/price controls, perhaps?) Perry does indeed need to get his act together, but there may be another yet who will enter the race should Perry falter.
When?
Registration for the New Hampshire primary ends on October 28. That’s only a little bit more than 3 weeks from today.
These quasi-candidates that have been flirting with “will I run or won’t I” have their backs against the wall now. They either have to put up or confirm my own suspicion that they never meant to get into the race and were just using it as a way of increasing their public exposure.
Oh, by the way, Jack… Sarah isn’t running this year.
I suspect the RNC picked Romney a good two years ago.
The selection has been settled.
Go ahead and nominate Romney. You’ll just be saving me a trip to the polls next November. Last election, I reluctantly voted for McCain, but only because Palin was on the ticket. I wouldn’t vote for Romney even IF Palin was his running mate. ROMNEY ISN’T JUST A RINO, HE’S A LIBERAL!
Seriously, I absolutely detest Romney.
Congrats on your vote for Obama in 2012.
How’s that Palin vote working out for you??
Every time I hear someone say *I voted for PALIN* I see STUPID all over them.. McCain would have been POTUS, Palin would have been what ALL VPOTUS’ are and have always been, a backup, waiting in the wings, hopefully able to fill in if The BIG Guy falls out…
I voted for Palin? Really? Dear God man.. Seek HELP….
Well thank goodness.
I thought we were going to have a messy primary election or something silly like that. Thankfully our “betters” will simply be making that decision for us, which is a load off my mind.
I hate having choices, options, and freedoms of my own; and I prefer nothing more than someone else taking full control of everything and taking choices way so I don’t have to (or get to) make them.
Anyone else with me? Hate freedom, love entitled self-absorbed wanna-be dictators taking control of things without asking?
Oh… maybe I’m the only one then…
I want to hear from George Will one more time that there is no Republican establishment, that it died at the Cow Palace in August, 1964. Screw you, George. We can clearly delineate who they are: the people who coalesced around Ronald Reagan in 1980 much to their financial, professional and social betterment.
They exercised greater and greater power within Republican circles as the years passed.
They became richer and richer, more and more influential, often living off a brush with the Reagan administration or even mere legacy — Peggy Noonan, I’m looking straight at you as I write this.
They filled the editorial pages and the opinion mags with their drivel.
They plumped for positions among GOP congressmen and with think tanks and in the Bush administration.
They swelled the ranks of K Street law firms and lobby shops. They bundled cash for squishes and RINOs everywhere.
They gave us Dole & H.W. & McCain. They embraced W. and then urinated all over him throughout his second term. They dumped Gingrich at the first sign of trouble.
They sold us out for pie-in-the-sky governing majorities marketed by hucksters like Tom Delay and Karl Rove.
They gave us National Greatness garbage and Compassionate Conservative crud. Medicare Part D and steel tariffs and TARP and Climate Change consensus and Faith Based hooey.
Now they want to give us Romney. I hope to God grassroots conservatives tell them “NO!” by finding a real conservative standard bearer for the nomination.
I second your “Screw you, George” and suggest that we extend it to Georgette and her ilk at the RNC, as well. Rick Perry has raised $17 million in 49 days, and I’ll bet a lot of it is from folks who will never again let the RNC distribute their political contributions to the Establishment RINOs they support! For Churchill, “The Gathering Storm” was his view of the precursors to WWII. For Georgette, it should be about the rise of the Tea Party patriots!
Oh how wonderful it would be if Sarah Palin waited until the RNC went all-in for Romney, and then joined the fray. I think she really could pull enough grassroots support to fund a serious campaign. And what a tremendous lesson that would be for the RNC, to have all their money go for naught.
I’m beginning to understand why Newt has hung around.
He’s gaining by attrition. If Perry stumbles again in the next debate, Newt will be in the top 3, and will almost surely climb past Cain within a few weeks. Cain won’t enjoy a free pass for being a conservative black guy for long, particularly if he continues to latch onto random mbm memes to call the competition racist. At some point, people will begin to think about what Cain says instead of how he says it.
If it comes down to Romney and Newt, the mbm will go after Romney earlier than they planned, because they don’t think Newt has a chance…in which case Newt might pull of a McLame, and win by being the last guy standing.
I’m not predicting it, but it looks possible. It might even be the mbm’s strategy.
Assuming conservatives would suck it up and vote for Newt, I wonder how he would play with independents. My hunch is that he would do better than conventional wisdom says. It will be hard for the mbm to fan the white-hot hatred of 16 years ago. And Newt would turn every question about infidelity into a forum on Obama’s associates. He would simply say that he has made his share of mistakes in his personal life, but never marched with Mahik Killwhitey or sat 20 years listening to Rev Wright spew hatred from a pulpit. After the first time, the mbm would quit bringing the topic up.
I would like to learn more about Perry and Cain before making a decision. At this point, any candidate who makes a habit of attacking other Republicans from the left is off my list. Thus, Romney = no.
Somehow the GOP leadership always manages to put the “pher” in GOPher.
Romney: The 7-year campaign that has yielded what? A 25% approval rate?
If the GOPhers follow through with their blind sclerotic love affair with Romney, I hope Perry or Palin pulls a Reagan and challenges him at the convention.
just say no to romney. he’s a cameleon.
just say YES to CAIN. read his bio. he will make an excellent president !!!!
Georgette Mosbacher is NOT a Finance co-chair, is not even a member of the Finance committee.