Calling All Romney Supporters
I'm not doing this to needle you--honestly I'm not. Romney's not my choice, but we here at Ricochet have a big tent--well, a big-ish tent, anyway--and the supporters of the former governor of Massachusetts are not only welcome but among our shrewdest contributors. Yesterday, though, Jonathan Last put up a post about Mitt Romney that's biting and funny and that strikes me as pretty largely true.
How would you rebut it?
It’s funny that Romney’s line of attack on Perry seems to be that Perry is a “career politician” because he’s been in elective office since 1984. Well, Mitt Romney would have been a career politician too, if only voters would have let him. He’s been running since 1994. His real gripe about Perry is actually, “Hey, that guy wins all the time! No fair!”...
[Ross] Douthat says [in a recent column in the New York Times] that “The greatest danger to Romney’s candidacy — the thing that could destroy him long before the voting even started — has always been that a more appealing establishment candidate would enter the race.” But that’s not right at all. The greatest danger to Romney’s candidacy is that he has no constituency because he’s not very good at campaigning and, as the electoral results of the last 17 years have shown, voters don’t like him very much. The danger to the Romney candidacy is the candidate.
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Comments:
Dec '10
Re: Calling All Romney Supporters
Agreement, not rebuttal.
May '10
Re: Calling All Romney Supporters
I assumed the "career politician" attack against Perry was an attempt to emphasize Romney's success in business. It doesn't seem to be working, though.
Aug '11
Re: Calling All Romney Supporters
Ouch. That's gotta leave a mark.
May '10
Re: Calling All Romney Supporters
I suspect that Romney will be the nominee, because there are bound to be Perry issues that have not been exposed as of yet. And I do fear Perry in the Midwest and NE; the "independents" in those states don't care much for Texas swagger. (Jeb..... I beg you)
But Last is correct that Romney is a lousy campaigner and has a political tin ear. Noamie Emery in TWS puts the timing of his San Diego vacation home remodeling right up there with Barack's Martha's Vineyard vacation.
Jun '10
Re: Calling All Romney Supporters
Americans don't like swagger anymore? When did that happen? I never got that memo.
Apr '11
Re: Calling All Romney Supporters
etoiledunord
Americans don't like swagger anymore? When did that happen? I never got that memo. · Aug 31 at 11:19am
The media and east coast elites don't like it. And a lot of conservative pundits got tired of defending it. Not sure what the average american thinks about it ever came up.
Nov '10
Re: Calling All Romney Supporters
Are there actual Romney supporters out there? I haven't met any. I haven't heard anybody talking about supporting him. All I ever here is "Romney will be the nominee because it's his turn." If it's true that none of us like him then why are we so sure he'll be the nominee?
Dec '10
Re: Calling All Romney Supporters
There are a few here including katievs and a few others. He does seem to be the default candidate until proven otherwise, and I'm not entirely thrilled by the idea (understated for emphasis.)
Sep '10
Re: Calling All Romney Supporters
There is a disturbingly boddole-esque quality to the its- Romney's- turn idea. There is a disturbingly w-esque quality to Rick Perry, tea-party rhetoric notwithstanding. I wonder if the best President next time will be the one who maintians the incentives Paul Rahe talks about in his earlier post. I have no idea who that might be.
Sep '10
Re: Calling All Romney Supporters
Peter Robinson How would you rebut it?
I'm not an enormous Romney supporter - to my thinking both he and Perry will provide strong leadership.
But, Mitt's critique rings somewhat more true than you're giving him credit for (though I don't suspect voters will much care). Romney has run for office 3 times - once for Senate (against Ted Kennedy), once for Governor, and once for President. He won once and lost twice.
He's also played a role in private sector life that many can only dream of (if they aspire to such things). Look back over the preceding 40 years and you'll find that Mitt has been far more active in the private sector (and within civil society, generally) than in politics.
The same cannot be said of Rick Perry, who is, point-in-fact, the very definition of a career politician.
Again, no idea whether voters will care, but it's best to be measured in our criticisms of the candidates.
Mar '11
Re: Calling All Romney Supporters
First, as to his success in winning elections. Give some credit for where he was running. Had he run in Utah he wouldn't have lost an election either. Let Perry run in Massachusetts and see if he would be more successful than Romney was. The same goes for Perry's economic track record. It seems important to me that the milieu where the record was made has some relevance. Let him be elected president of Uzbekistan and see how he does there. Romney was more successful in Massachusetts in creating jobs than either his predecessor or his successor.
As to his ability to campaign we'll see. If he can overcome the resistance of the tea party and anti-mormon religious right then it will have to be admitted he's a formidable candidate. I personally doubt he can penetrate that headwind but I'm hoping.
Sep '10
Re: Calling All Romney Supporters
Peter Robinson
The greatest danger to Romney’s candidacy is that he has no constituency because he’s not very good at campaigning and, as the electoral results of the last 17 years have shown, voters don’t like him very much. The danger to the Romney candidacy is the candidate.
I don't think two of the first three arguments here are accurate. Mitt does have a constituency - just not in the Republican primaries. His is the great, squishy, (and oddly enough) secular middle. Going back to the previous comment, it's difficult to draw conclusions re: how well voters like the guy - he's only run three times, twice at the state level and as a Mormon GOPer in Massachusetts. Think about that for a sec.
I agree he hasn't learned how to run an effective national campaign, though many accounts of his run against Ted in '94 pointed to a rising star (a billing to which, one could argue, he has lived up to), and he won in 2002.
...
May '10
Re: Calling All Romney Supporters
Guys, Romney is not going to be popular at a red-meat-Right site such as Ricochet. This place is populated by activists and political junkies for whom Rick Santorum is the middle-of-the-road competitor to True Right Michele Bachmann, and where Paul Ryan's voting record is considered suspect because of TARP and voting to raise the debt ceiling.
90% of Republicans outside of Iowa, let alone independents, never think seriously about candidates until at least next March. Ken Owsley's statement about not knowing any Romney supporters (BTW, Frozen Chosen is a big Romney guy- I believe the religious angle is a big part of it) is the rough equivalent of the apocryphal Pauline Kael-Nixon voters- Upper West Manhattan story from 1972.
Etoile, show me evidence that Americans vote for swagger. Duke in the movies, yes, Schwarzenegger as Terminator, yes. As president, I can't think of any. John Connally sure didn't better RR in 1980, and RR was confident, genuine, and calm, not swaggering. The Left's biggest weapon against Bush was to try to paint him as a Texas cowboy unfit for tea with the French president.
Sep '10
Re: Calling All Romney Supporters
Peter Robinson
... The last point here - that Mitt is his own worst enemy in all of this - I agree with, but not for reasons that could be considered pejorative (as was the intention with the comment). Mitt is good at turnarounds, at driving efficiency into inefficient operations, at restructuring finances, and at consensus-building. Look at his professional career. Look at the Salt Lake Olympics. Look at Romneycare.
Mitt doesn't drive dislocation. He either cleans up after it, or he builds enough consensus around just what's wrong in order to patch enough holes to keep things afloat.
The problem is that dislocation is what we all want. We want not just change, but DRAMATIC change. We don't want hope, we want revolution. And that ain't Mitt.
Sep '10
Re: Calling All Romney Supporters
In this, they (the Left) largely succeeded, no?
Aug '11
Re: Calling All Romney Supporters
Although perhaps it's worth noting that W got elected to two terms. Bob Dole didn't get even one. So if given the choice between another Dole or another Bush . . . which option gives us a better chance of making sure President Obama doesn't get another four years?
Dec '10
Re: Calling All Romney Supporters
Not a supporter, but he strikes me as dogged and I respect that. This long campaign is going to wear on both candidates and voters. I just have a sneaky suspicion he playing the game of "Devil Take the Hindmost", wherein he only needs to stay just ahead of last place to eventually have his shot at the front-runners.
I assume he is capable of learning and that he will get better, before next summer. BTW, he's opening an office locally, choosing Tampa. That's a pretty forward-looking strategy, especially as Tampa is very blue, but it will also host the convention.
Jun '10
Re: Calling All Romney Supporters
I just can't vote for someone vain enough to dye his hair like that.
Re: Calling All Romney Supporters
At a certain point in 1860 one could have argued convincingly that Abraham Lincoln had "no constituency" either. Seward (or maybe Chase among the most extreme) was the preferred choice of the antislavery bloc in the North; Douglas was clearly the leader of the compromisers; and as for the South -- well, enough said. Circumstances change, election to election. Sometimes a winning coalition can be built by the preferred choice of one major bloc; sometimes, when antagonisms among the blocs run especially high, it takes someone who is merely "acceptable" to a number of blocs. With the current occupant in the White House, the overriding imperative is to win. Romney appears to have a plausible path to achieving this. It is not yet clear to me that any of the other announced candidates does.
Sep '10
Re: Calling All Romney Supporters
DrewInWisconsin
Although perhaps it's worth noting that W got elected to two terms. Bob Dole didn't get even one. So if given the choice between another Dole or another Bush . . . which option gives us a better chance of making sure President Obama doesn't get another four years?
Important to remember that W also got us $4 trillion in mal-financed debt, Nancy Pelosi as a national political figure (from repeated exposure to the visage of whom, I may never recover), a (still!) Harry Reid-led congress, and a tremendous continued exposure to a catastrophic collapse of the financial system (it's coming - don't you worry).
Oh yea, and W got us Barack Obama, Obamacare, a rogue Justice Department led by the worst kind of man possible, an NLRB determined to remake America in the image of some hybrid 1970's Anglo- / 2000's Venezuelan nightmare, Justices Sotomayor and Kagan (KAGAN!)...need we continue?
I supported President Bush. But let's remember that when he left office, we were hoping history would take a Trumanesque view of the man. To say that was an overly-optimistic hope would be to understate matters quite considerably.