No more Mr. Sunshine in Florida:
Mitt Romney opened an aggressive new phase of the Republican presidential campaign as he cruised into Florida on Sunday night — casting Newt Gingrich as an unethical politician whose temperament and unreliability led to his ouster as speaker of the House in the 1990s.
After a week in which he conceded his Iowa win to Rick Santorum after a recount and lost to Gingrich by double digits in South Carolina, Romney acknowledged that the Republican contest had become a three-man race. But he took a much tougher tone toward Gingrich – directly raising the ethics investigation that Gingrich faced in the 1990s and demanding that Gingrich provide an accounting for the mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.
“We’re not choosing a talk show host,” Romney said, alluding to his rival’s strong debate performances that helped shift momentum in his favor in South Carolina. “We’re choosing the person who should be leader of the free world.”
And that’s where he’s wrong. I don’t mean wrong in substance; he’s right about what the election is supposed to be about. But if the election was really about choosing who should be leader of the free world, Obama would never have been elected in the first place, and now Romney would be running third to a couple of other governors who had much better records than his. But they failed at the game show part of the campaign, the proverbial tail that’s wagging the dog of the presidential race and has been for nearly a year. Because of that, those better governors are either out or didn’t run at all, Mitt’s still in and he is sinking against a tough-talking Newt with no real executive experience and massive personal and ethical problems in his past. The pain from Bain went from desperate to useful refrain.
Face it, Ann Coulter and other Mitt partisans: Mitt’s problem is Mitt. He has failed to connect to give undecided Republicans a reason to vote for him. Not just against the others. He ran his campaign along two tracks: Destroy his rivals, and run out the clock. That strategy seemed poised to work until Gingrich struck a nerve, and now he’s all but bulletproof to the usual political charges, and the clock has been reset as the primary heads to Florida. Romney was unprepared for Campaign 101 — release your taxes to prove you’re clean and you’ll be transparent. And now he’s on defense despite probably having a clean record, while Newt is on the offensive despite all his troubles. Florida is now Newt’s to lose: Gingrich leads there by nine.
Romney isn’t politically astute. He’s run four campaigns that I know of, and lost three of them. If they had lessons to teach him, it would seem he didn’t pay attention. Add to that his inability to prevent Massachusetts from moving further leftward during his term as its governor, and his absolute unwillingness to admit that RomneyCare was a mistake.
Voters have stopped caring about Romney’s looks. They’ve almost stopped caring about him generally. If anyone came into this race badly prepared for its realities, it was Mitt Romney.
Oh please — Newt Gingrich for president? While Newt was Speaker of the House in the 1990s he behaved so erratically and in such an “ethically challenged” manner that the House Republicans could no longer stand having him in charge — so they forced him out of office. Has he changed or mellowed since then? The evidence suggests not. At the beginning of his nomination run his entire staff quit — they couldn’t stand him as their boss either. Their replacements flubbed up the requirements for getting him on the primary ballot in his home state. That is the second sign of a bad boss — things go wrong because only incompetents are willing to work for him. Newt Gingrich has a first-rate mind (for a politician) and a third-rate temperament. Note that the greatest presidents in US history — such as FDR and Reagan — have been described by their contemporaries as just the opposite, as having first-rate temperaments and third-rate minds (probably because when a great president does in fact have a first-rate mind he is politically astute enough to hide it.) Given the evidence, we can confidently predict that Newt Gingrich would be the opposite of a great president.
Did you really mean to reply to my post? I have nothing to say about Gingrich’s fitness for the presidency. As a campaigner, though, he’s shown much more energy and verve than Romney. That lack of animation is likely to cost Romney not just this shot at the nomination, but any future in GOP politics.
This debate should interesting tonight. Mitt actually yelled at some audience members today (I suspect he might have hired them) so he could look tough as everyone is saying, including Newt, he’s timid. Only problem Newt would have schooled them and then dismissed them with a classical put down and had the audience laughing at them.
Poor mittens is trying to be like his father and he’s just not succeeding
Rasmussen had a fairly good analysis of Romney’s problem in this mornings update. He said that it really isn’t that “Romney has collapsed” as much as “Romney has reached a plateau”. Romney has polled consistently at this level of performance and that he simply hasn’t been able to go beyond it. Its worth noting the obvious that the “Romney Plateau” is far below the level needed to sustain a campaign. With the removal of the “Ron Paul Firewall”, conservatives are able to coalesce around Gingrich with impact. At the same time that Romney has reached this plateau, we are seeing Gingrich capture the late undecided voters, of which make up half of the people voting.
Personally, I find it hard to reconcile how the people that make up the core Tea Party voters has decided to go with Gingrich in this election but you cant overlook the facts that are being presented.
Sidebar:
Did everyone see how Herman Cain got considerably more votes than Perry in South Carolina? I think that’s interesting has hell. It really does show the depth of the desire to get an outsider.
End Sidebar.
Frank – those weren’t voted for Herman Cain they were really votes for Stephen Colbert. They had a rally, Herman Cain and Colbert, a few days ahead of the vote and they said vote for Cain as it’s a vote for Colbert. That’s one of the reason Huntsman dropped out and I suspect Perry. They didn’t want to be embarrassed by having Colbert get more votes than they did. In the beginning of the week Colbert was polling higher than Huntsman at close to 5%.
I think that’s right. Colbert’s event created a lot of buzz around Charleston. Cain’s appearance with him ought to discredit Cain as ever having been a serious candidate, btw, since Colbert’s entire purpose was to mock the process.
Ok, it seems its not so interesting after all.
I think Romney was the anti Tea Party candidate, he sold himself as the safe and sane one. If Romney could connect to voters and had sold himself to the Tea Party he’d be where Gingrich is. If he’d spent the last few years in a pickup truck driving around the states and talking to people rather than earning favors from the influential folks at the top, he’d be in better shape. But he wouldn’t be Romney either.
Romney is the prototypical organization man. He’s spent the better part of the last four years putting together his organization and raising money. In this time he’s been mostly out of public view, and even where he has appeared, functioning as if he were the head of unversity advancement office.
He doesn’t appear to be comfortable in the role of retail politician and his political career has been tailored around this. He got his card punched for eligibility to run for the presidency by being elected governor of Massachussetts – he did as much as he thought necessary, and no more. Contrast that those he’s running against, but in particular, Gingrich.
For all his faults and failings, Gingrich nevertheless held office for 20 years and rose to become Speaker of the House. It’s harder to become Speaker than to be elected governor of a state and particularly when being elected governor is a one off: there have been a total of 61 Speakers in the nation’s history. It requires an above average political IQ to achieve that office; that should be obvious. It’s not just a flaming personality that has allowed Gingrich to be left for dead only to rise again against the expectations of so many experts. Give the man his due: he’s a damn good retail politician. Anyone who ignores that in competition with him runs a great risk of having their head handed to them (see South Carolina).
This is not to say that Gingrich is the one the GOP should nominate. It is however to say, that by focusing on his all too glaring weaknesses, its easy to overlook the strengths that he has beyond being able to give a good speech and overlook Romney’s all too obvious weakness as a retail politician in what is afterall a race for political office.
“Mitt’s problem is Mitt.” Precisely. Mitt has been running for 6+/- years and has yet to gain sustainable traction.
For a politician and businessman to be caught so flat-footed on an issue as obvious and predictable as taxes is beyond puzzling, it’s mind-boggling.
Perhaps he hoped to wait and use them to do a Reagan on Obama: “Mr. Obama, tear down that firewall – and release your records!”
McRomney’s promise: “I will manage the economy better than my fellow nice guy Harvard grad, barack obama. I would have done that in Massachusetts if I hadn’t been stymied by people who didn’t me do it. This time, my buddies in Congress agree with me, so I’ll fight like a caged tiger to protect them.”
Newt’s promise: “I will overthrow obama, the alinsky radical who is on the verge of turning America into a slowly sinking Eurpean socialist state. I did it in the 90′s and I’ll do it again. If the Republicn elites resist, they won’t be enjoying their sinecures for long.”
Exactly right.
Romney has been playing to the country-club establishment Republican rules as he knows them from Massaschusetts. Karl Rove probably thinks they worked for Dubya, and heck, maybe they did, but Dubya had a clown for an opponent, Algore, who was under deep shadow from his association with Bubba, and it was still close. And just perhaps those days are over and gone now, it’s a new millenium after two disasters, 9/11 and the Obamanation.
So who votes for Romney? Country club white shoe types. Guys with oil in their hair. Mormons. RINOs. Citizens with *no* issues to judge on. People named Mitt. Bain Capital interns and administrative staff. And those on the payroll.
…and now Romney would be running third to a couple of other governors who had much better records than his.
Which governors, Rick Perry and Sarah Palin?
Perry blew his chance by being too drugged up on stage, or too senile.
Sarah didn’t run, she just made money off our new politics-for-cash Citizens United supreme court scam. And good governor or not, she’s no where near bright enough to be President of the United States of America.
Remember, the best presidents in the recent past — Reagan and FDR, for example — have typically been described by contemporaries as having first-rate temperaments and third-rate minds. A little thought shows that truly smart politicians would try to conceal rather than flaunt their IQ’s, which may explain why Reagan and FDR were thought to lack intelligence.
Can you imagine Coach Romney at halftime of a football game in which his team is behind in the locker room? “Well listen guys, I know you are the better team and if we only stick to fundamentals we will be successful in our endeavor”. This guy may be a good manager but he couldn’t lead a pack of sailors to a half price whore house! For the big issues that will have to take place in the next presidential term of our country we will need a leader who can make even the hoochie mamas want to sacrifice for the good of their nation and it ain’t Mitt!
I get your point, but I think McRomney would do something different at halftime.
He would break the knees of the halfback who would give the team the only chance to win….because if the halfback did so, he would get the credit.
http://legalinsurrection.com/2012/01/people-who-destroy-hard-drives-shouldnt-demand-records-from-others/#comments
Mittens is a Ken doll; he’s cold, detached, & has no fire. He still has no vision for America; he remains one of the most liberal Republicans in modern history. He rhetorically walks himself into dead-ends in debates while he ignores his own stark weaknesses. Romney is dead man walking because the Conservative base is coalescing around Newt Gingrich–something Romney could never receive in all his years running for POTUS.
If you’re right, then the conservative base is also coalescing around four more years of Obama. Sometimes, like the Royal Navy, you’ve got to choose the “lesser weevil.”
You’re coming to wrong conclusion. Romney does not address Obama correct by framing his as Marxist, Food Stamp President; Mittens refuses to call Obama a Socialist. Therefore, Mittens will be steamrolled by the Obama Chicago machine. Gingrich will take the fight directly to Obama & Obama won’t know what hit him.
I don’t think calling Obama a socialist is nearly as damaging as saying that he has failed. Everbody can see his failures; just look at Keystone. People are more likely to agree with you if you point out specific failures than if you attack him with more abstract labels. The list of Obama’s specific screw-ups is so long that you’ll find lots of people who will agree with you on a couple of items. And you’ll never run out of material.