Here’s a story about a presidential election in America.
The sitting president had broad support from his party. Some folks were less than enthusiastic, but his own party stood behind him and there was no challenge from within his party. The other party was outraged, wanted nothing more than to evict him from the White House.
Some of the best folks in the party decided it wasn’t a good year to run, but there were candidates who found the passion to make the race. They found lots of love and enthusiasm, but they went to Iowa and the folks at the caucus filtered them out. They wanted electable.
No, the passionate, soul-stirring candidates were set aside for the cool, maybe bland, seemingly competent guy who was viewed as most electable. He placed his record outside elective office into the debate, cited it as a qualification, and the Iowa caucuses liked that. Okay, he was a little bland, a little stiff, certainly not the guy with whom you would share a beer or two. He was also quite wealthy, maybe a little out of touch, but he was smooth. He lacked the sharp edges, he looked like the most electable candidate, which is why Iowans flocked to him.
Next stop: New Hampshire. It wasn’t even close, because it was close-by, as in the neighboring state. The Iowa winner was from Massachusetts, so New Hampshire was home turf. Sure, there were people who didn’t like him, who looked at his record with disdain, but they were in the other party. Because of the home court advantage, he scored a big win in the New Hampshire primary and that was the end of it. The nomination was a virtual lock.
Sound familiar?
I think Kerry was used to easy campaigns; his toughest was the Weld challenge, and wasn’t really ready for prime time by summer 2004.
I would not expect this to be true of Romney; I think he is better prepared for the long campaign. Though if he says he likes firing people again, I might change that opinion. WTF was he thinking?
is how gaffe-prone he is given that he has a lot of experience running for president from the ’08 campaign. The firing people comment you note, the “$10,000 bet”, “corporations are people, my friend” — all of these off-the-cuff gaffes simply play in to the negative narrative about Romney that has been building for a while.
I’m just surprised that he’s not able to contain himself after a lot of time on the presidential campaign trail and his generally cautious approach. That’s what makes me think that he’ll ultimately be an average candidate just like Kerry (though still quite likely better than the other GOP’ers who ran this year).
Those others weren’t as bad in my view, but yeah.
He needs to crack a joke once in awhile in order to seem something other than totally artificial, but can’t do it very well.
The point he was trying to make in the firing people thing is one that should have independents nodding vigorously in agreement, instead they’re saying “Huh?”
Yeah, that was a big boo-boo. The DNC is having a field day with it – and you can bet that will continue.
Even for gaffe-prone Mitt Romney, that’s an AMAZING comment.
How on Earth does any working man or woman conclude that this guy represents their interests?
A really bad gaffe and one that could cost him the election. I also like that the GOP establishment attacked Gingrich and Santorum as ‘assailing free market principles’ aka the right to fire. Seems like a deal breaker to me, and Obama could likely owe winning the election to Kasich and Walker (it sure as well won’t be because of him, Plouffe and Axelrod are morons and think they can win VA and NC and ignore OH and WI but I digress).
Of course this quote is telling:
Sadly the answer might be because at least still clings to his gun and religion. This will be a culture war election, nastier than we’ve ever seen.
The culture war angle may indeed become a more prominent part of the campaign, especially if the economy keeps improving to the point that Obama is less vulnerable on that score. However, assuming Romney is the nominee, is he really going to be able to spearhead the conservative argument on cultural issues? I can’t think of many people less qualified to do so.
I doubt that Plouffe/Axelrod have ignoring OH and WI in their game-plan. However, I do think Obama winning VA is more likely than winning OH in this election, as strange as that would have seemed only a few years ago (and NC may not be far behind, especially since the convention is there).
When Mitt Romney said, “I like firing people” I immediately thought of John Kerry saying, “I actually did vot for the $87 billion before I voted against it.” Both sound better in context than out of context, especially if also explained. However, both played right to a negative part of the reputation that each candidate already developed, leaving one to wonder why the candidate would ever utter such a thing.