Associated Press
What if Romney faced real challengers, instead of these two?
Newt Gingrich chatted with National Review yesterday, and talked at some length about revelations that Mitt Romney, during his only experience in public office, liked higher gas prices. The former Speaker conceded that he "had not seen" Romney's 2006 quotes on the issue, but added that the former governor is "ill positioned" on the issue because of his former position.
Alec MacGillis, who first reported on Romney's prior support for higher gas prices, agreed with Gingrich's larger assessment, but asked a good question: why hadn't he seen Romney's 2006 quotes on the issue?
Yes, Newt, Governor Romney is ill positioned on this issue. Then why haven't you been saying so the past few weeks as you, Romney and Santorum have all tried to make an issue of high gas prices? Why was it left to a reporter working on a hunch to execute the simple Nexis search necessary to find the incriminating quotes by Romney from one of Massachusetts' larger newspapers, from just six years ago?
I realize that Gingrich and Santorum are short of cash. But really, we're not talking about a major investment here. Not to give my bosses any ideas, but a campaign intern could've done this.
At this point in professional politics, opposition research is simply a standard feature of a major campaign. It's not unusual to see "oppo" teams working in statewide contests, and they're simply a given for a national campaign.
But Gingrich's team hasn't made the effort. Neither has Santorum. Indeed, none of the other non-Romney campaigns have been organized and funded well enough to complete basic tasks like these.
MacGillis added, "It's just another reminder of how weak the opposition is that Romney is struggling to put away in the primaries." Quite right. Imagine what the 2012 Republican presidential nominating race would have looked like if Romney had one -- just one -- other credible opponent.
Regular viewers may recall we ran a segment in January, riffing off a clever observation Dave Weigel made on the similarities between the 2008 and 2012 races for the Republican nomination. From Dave's Slate piece:
I'm thinking of a Republican primary. It starts with a candidate (John McCain/Mitt Romney) who ran once before, came in second place, and won over the party's elite class without winning over its base. Other candidates, understandably unwilling to accept this, line up: An under-funded social conservative (Mike Huckabee/Rick Santorum), an elder statesman who's walked to the altar three times (Rudy Giuliani/Newt Gingrich), a libertarian who wants to bring back the gold standard (Ron Paul/Ron Paul).
The conservative base is displeased. In the year before the primary, it pines for a perfect candidate. At the end of summer, on (September 5/August 13), it gets him: (Fred Thompson/Rick Perry). The dream candidate immediately rises to the top of national polls, but collapses after lazy, distaff debate performances. When the primaries arrive, he's in single digits and reduced to attacking the front-runners.
The under-funded social conservative generates all kinds of buzz with a strong showing in Iowa, fizzles in New Hampshire, and then quietly starts to go away. The establishment guy, despite being hated by the party base, regroups after Iowa, wins big in New Hampshire, and starts his march in earnest towards the nomination. The savior candidate becomes a punch line, Ron Paul gets ignored, the thrice-married statesman, despite enjoying temporary frontrunner status a month before the voting began, drifts into irrelevance.
Yes, this all sounds familiar.
But there was one thing about the thesis that always troubled me: there's no 2008 version of Romney in 2012.
Sure, Romney is obviously Romney, but when we're drawing parallels to 2008, Romney is actually playing McCain's role, not his own. If Romney is McCain, and Santorum is Huckabee, and Gingrich is Giuliani, and Perry is Thompson, who's playing the role Romney played in 2008?
No one is; that's the problem. This year's race is missing one more candidate who could push that establishment frontrunner, expose his flaws, and conceivably even make him a better candidate.
In a way, this makes Romney very lucky -- he's on track to win his party's presidential nomination without having been subjected to much scrutiny, effectively running unopposed by underfunded, unorganized, and often-clownish intra-party rivals. But I'm not sure this is, in the long term, doing Romney any favors -- President Obama, who was much stronger in 2008 after having overcome Hillary Clinton's exceptional campaign operation, has a re-election team in place that will be far stronger than anything Romney has seen.
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Since when does a Book Tour require Opposition Research?
Or maybe, juuuust maybe, with the exception of Romney, none of the guys running for the nomination really truly wants to be the nominee. Sure, they'll take it if handed to them. But they're all in to either be better positioned in 2016 (Santorum), or use their loss of the nomination in future book tours as The Man Who Should Have Been President But Was Betrayed By His Own Party Who Now Flounders Without His Leadership (Gingrich), or has some sincerely worthwhile and some sincerely crazy long term policy goals and is willing to be the poster boy for them (Paul).
Either way it all speaks volumes to the fact that the GOP doesn't think they can win the White House in 2012. The media doesn't think the GOP can win the White House in 2012. But everyone's trying to keep it feeling like a legitimate horse race, in the media's case, in the GOP's case to save downballot races.
I definitely think Gingrich should go with that book title...
Not to mention the states they missed being on the ballot due to poor organization.
Not ready for prime time ...the lot of them
I've said it before,Romney is a pathological liar.He may sound like he's a flip flopper,but it's that he lies so much he ca'nt remember what he lied about.He lies and his wife swears to it.Would'nt they make a fine first couple?????
I'm sure many on both the left and the right are thinking "Is this the best group of candidates the GOP could come up with? Really?"
There actually was a time, probably a year ago, when I thought to myself, if Obama doesn't get reelected, I could maybe live with a Romney presidency. He seemed like a friendly enough guy. Then he started talking. And lying. And showing that he can't handle things when it gets hot. And more lies, to the point where nothing he says can be taken seriously. Now Mitt scares me every bit as much as the others.
Not that I was ever going to vote for any of them anyway, but wow, we really need to reelect President Obama - and all the downticket Dems, so we can make progress instead of fighting gridlock.
When you don't bother to get your name on the ballot in some states or you don't qualify for delegates that you earned because you didn't file the proper paperwork. You outspend your opponents 5-7 to 1 and narrowly win states. really, this is the best the GOP could have done? Legitimate candidates simply don't do these things.
If Romney loses the election, Santorum and Gingrich are going to say "I told you so" to the Republican party. This puts them in the position of attacking the party regulars and increases their influence in the party. Those leaders like DeMint who are calling for them to withdraw from running will end up with egg on their face if Romney loses. And most likely, those leaders will get blamed for the failure. Santorum and Gingrich are not totally out of the equation when it comes to Republican politics.
Congratulations, Rachel. My husband and I were waiting for someone to say the L word. Finally, someone recognized the fact that Romney isn't a flip flopper, but an outright Liar.
Billy Bob Piety, former speaker Gasbag, and mendacious Mitt of the meandering message, are all more suited to be 'South Park' characters than presidential candidates.
The "2008 Romney" could have possibly been Huntsman or Pawlenty in 2012, taking the more moderate positions as compared to the rightward march that Romney has been on lately. While more conservative voters tend to actually show up for primaries, I think that if the GOP were smart it would encourage "more moderate" candidates to join the primary process, so the front runner ends up somewhere between the more conservative and more moderate candidates. Had Huntsman stayed in the race, I think the GOP primary may not have been pulled so much to the right by Santorum crazy not-at-all-popular-with-general-election-voters ideas. Huntsman could have acted as a counterweight, and possibly prevented this group of out-of-touch, far right nuts from pulling Romney completely off the cliff with them. However, he didn't stay in and now no matter who the GOP candidate is, this individual is going to look ridiculous when questions quoting the sound bites from primary debates that included clapping for hospitals and doctors allowing the uninsured to die and booing a former marine for being gay, are raised during the general election's debates. They're really dug themselves in such a hole that I don't think that 20% unemployment rates could save them now.
And thus, who will be the heir apparent in 2016?
Two ways to look at it: either Santorum will be next in line, or we'll have another total newbie on the national stage.
My bet is on "newbie" because the Republicans have already figured out the advantages of "no paper trail" for judicial appointees, and at least some are interpreting Obama as benefiting from a similar lack of background to be used against him.
Republicans have a long history of "next in line." And if there is more purging in the Republican party, Santorum becomes the representative of the far right. Jeb Bush, Marco Rubio, Pawlenty and a few others may challenge him, but they will not be conservative enough or have any base of popular support. The Republican establishment will want one of them, but a Romney defeat would make that impossible.
Sounds like we have a bet going then, Mike.
10,000 quatloos seem like reasonable stakes to you?
I will take that bet. That is a lot of quatloos but what the heck. I think Romney is going to lose for a multitude of reasons (not conservative, flip flops, Mormon), Republicans will lose control of the House and the Senate is flip a coin. Those losses will be blamed on party moderates and another purge at the national level.
Works for me. Now, who is going to hold the stakes and remind us in four years that we made this stupid wager?
Um si la Bum ba la qua ca la ba le he la he ala ca la ba le e............................. ....
Không gian như đang quay cuồn cùng múa theo điệu manbo,
Từng dòng nhạc hòa nhịp trong tim người.
Đôi chân ta theo tiến nhạc cùng múa theo điệu mambo,
Từng dòng nhạc hòa nhịp trong tim người.
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Cô em xinh trong mơ màng hãy múa theo cùng anh này.
Nụ cười nàng làm tình ta điên cuồn,
Trông em xinh như đóa hồng tôi ngấy ngây vì yêu nàng,
Nụ cười nàng làm tình ta điên cuồn.
Um si la Bum ba la qua ca la ba le he la he ala ca la ba le e............................. ....
In fact, every actions and promises from any candidates for GOP 2012 are just a promise, and Americans people who will elect base on their promise but no one can said that they will make their promises happens. On the other hand, whoever becomes the next President of United States have a very heavy responsibility to improve the economy of USA and reduce the ratio of unemployment or someone else will replace him/her on the next election. The most important that the American people want to see is their personal life has improvements. The election of 2012 will cannot be guess who can win but in fact, no candidates can make Americans people can be fully trusted . Moreover I think that Obama has done his job, we can’t hope that he can improve the economy of USA dramatically like Roosevelt did in past
The Republicans are probably going to lose in a landslide with Romney. But the person to watch, whom no one is watching, is Gary Johnson, the likely Libertarian nominee who was discarded by the media and the GOP establishment during the debates. Ron Paul could very well endorse him, which would probably get him from his current 7% up to the 15% mark to be on the national debate stage this fall. All bets are off if that happens. This explains it in more detail: http://www.examiner.com/libertarian-in-charlotte/gary-johnson-and-the-possible-outcomes-of-his-candidacy