After New Hampshire

 

I don't know what to think. The results in New Hampshire were not all that surprising but the controversy over Bain Capital is so confusing it makes my head spin. For a serious discussion, see Dan McLaughlin: On Romney, Bain and Keeping Your Integrity and the comments there.

Here's what worries me - or at least, one of the things that worries me: Romney's authenticity problem (by Jonah Goldberg).

.... Romney has his faults, but he's non-threatening. He seems more like the super-helpful manager at a rental car company than a Bible thumper. The White House would love the opportunity to run against a culture warrior. It seems many in the media would like the same thing. Hence the absurd grilling of the candidates in Saturday night's ABC/Yahoo/WMUR-TV debate.

(For reasons that remain mysterious, the moderators wasted vast swaths of time quizzing the candidates on gay marriage, whether states could ban condoms and on how Rick Santorum would respond if one of his sons declared his homosexuality. Because as we all know, how the president would treat his hypothetically gay son is issue No. 1 for so many voters.)

Romney was at his best swatting away the swarm of inanities at the debate — "birth control is working just fine." He's weakest when discussing his own motives and career. Romney can sell ideas, and he can criticize Obama well. But he has a very hard time selling himself. When he talks about what he likes and what drives him, he reminds people that there's just something off about him.

For instance, in Sunday's "Meet the Press" debate, Romney suggested that he didn't run for reelection as governor of Massachusetts because to have done so would have been vain or selfish somehow. "That would be about me."

Newt Gingrich ridiculed that as "pious baloney."

And he was right. Romney's claim that he's just a businessman called to serve — Cincinnatus laying down his PowerPoint — is nonsense. Romney, the son of a politician, has been running for office, holding office or thinking about running for office for more than two decades. "Just level with the American people," Gingrich growled. "You've been running … at least since the 1990s."

For some reason, Romney can't do that. Or at least it seems like he can't. His authentic inauthenticity problem isn't going away. And it's sapping enthusiasm from the rank and file. The turnout in Iowa was disastrously low, barely higher than the turnout in 2008 — and if Ron Paul hadn't brought thousands of non-Republicans to the caucus sites, it would have been decidedly lower than in 2008. That's an ominous sign given how much enthusiasm there should be for making Obama a one-term president. It's almost as if Romney's banality is infectious....

 

 

Can you believe this? Here we have The Worst President Ever, who has made our country more unstable and insecure, has demolished our economy, divided and demoralized our people, and thrown much of the Muslim Middle East to the wolves of jihad -- and our allies, under the bus. Domestically he is stunningly elitist, dismissive of Constitutional limits to the powers of his office, and when he's not obfuscating, he lies... flat out. He is an uncompromising leftist ideologue presiding over a center-right country with contempt. He has expanded the size and scope of government beyond recognition, spent our money like a drunken sailor and forced us into pervasive debt and dependency. He has suffocated growth, repressed opportunity and paralyzed us with over-regulation. One in three Americans FEAR his re-election.

And 300 days out, we don't have anyone with a clear path to his defeat?  What a staggering mess this is, with no discernible escape.  

I fear we are infected with something much worse than banality.

 

Comments

[Independent Patriot]

Disingenuous headline from the HufPo. If Huntsman, Perry et al who have absolutely no chance of garnering the nomination, would put their weight behind Romney he would have won alot more than 37%. For the HufPo to also denigrate Romney considering their hero is Prez Zero, is real chutzpah. Furthermore, if the the no-chance candidates would put their weight behind Romney, they could marginalize the Paulbots instead of giving the DNC a really good "fear" garnering issue. The fact that there are whispers that the Paulbots need to be placated is going to doom the Republican nominee not the fact that he may have changed his mind on abortion, made money as a venture capitalist or "oh my word" tried to solve the healthcare crisis. My concern is that the conservatives in order to punish the Republicans for not falling in line about one of the candidates,will stay home like they did in 2008 and we end up with four more years of Obama. Sometimes the conservatives really need to think of the good of the country and not their own self-righteousness.

[Mannie Sherberg]

Money and mediocrity have always carried weight in American politics -- and Romney is the candidate of both money and mediocrity. That's why he's the candidate of the GOP elite: Mediocrities are, by definition, moderate, commonplace, standard-issue people -- which means they're non-threatening. There's a comfortable, middling, run-of-the-mill quality about mediocre people that virtually ensures they won't rock the boat. This appeals to the Republican establishment -- the wing of the party that lines up behind the Bushes, the wing of the party that distrusted and feared Barry Goldwater, the wing of the party whose patron ghost -- if not patron saint -- is Nelson Rockefeller. Mitt Romney is very much in that mode -- a man who, from the elite's viewpoint, will do a decent job of managing the country without letting "the vision thing" (an establishment term of derision) get in the way. I, for one, think America needs something more at this time; we need someone of uncommon strength, character, and vision -- someone who's decidedly not a mediocrity. But I suspect we're not going to get such a candidate. The elite's invested too much in this guy (witness Karl Rove's incessant drum-beating on FOX News) to let him lose. The reluctance -- or timidity -- of more conservative candidates who might have given Romney a real run for his money (e.g., Palin, Ryan, Jindal) has made Romney's task easy, If -- as appears increasingly likely -- he wins the nomination, what comes next won't be easy. Will an apparently decent and honorable mediocrity be able to withstand the onslaught now being readied for him by a crafty, ruthless, and not-so-honorable Left-wing machine? I wouldn't bet on it.

[Joel]

I am glad to know that two states whom nobody really cares about (no disrespect to Iowa or NH) have already picked our candidate for us before the overwhelming majority of registered Republicans have been heard.

[scp]

"(For reasons that remain mysterious, the moderators wasted vast swaths of time quizzing the candidates on gay marriage, whether states could ban condoms and on how Rick Santorum would respond if one of his sons declared his homosexuality. " The quote-unquote "news media" (read: the democrats) are PHISHING for soundbites to use against them in the general election (or mabye even civil lawsuits during the campaign). Nothing more, nothing less. With a some careful cutting and splicing of the debate video, they can make them seem to appear to be saying whatever they want. Any goodness displayed by ANY of the Republican candidates will be presented as somehow bad. Watch and see...