While the author was gone on vacation in Washington, DC, the Republican race finally came to an end.
Now, some of you might say that Ron Paul is still in the race, but let’s be serious: Mitt Romney is the GOP Presidential nominee, with both Newt Gingrich and Rick Santorum having stopped campaigning.
This does not mean that Mitt Romney has an easy road to the nomination, as he still needs several hundred delegates, and has not received the endorsement of either Gingrich or Santorum.
Newt Gingrich left the race primarily for economic issues, and Rick Santorum left due to the illness of his youngest daughter, Bella, and his realization that he might very well lose the Pennsylvania Primary two weeks from now.
By both leaving the race, they remain eligible for consideration in 2016, if Romney does not win the White House, even though one would have to say that for either to believe in their hearts that they have a real chance to be President in the future is purely delusional!
But Mitt Romney now has to face the reality, that in seeking the GOP nomination and selling his soul to the right wing of his party, he has lost credibility completely among middle of the road Americans, and yet is not trusted by the right wing or the evangelical Christians who look on his Mormon faith as a cult.
So Romney cannot be sure that evangelicals and conservatives will actually vote for him in November, and therefore, could lose some of the South and Midwest.
But he also trails terribly behind Barack Obama with women, Hispanics and Latinos, and Independents, and it will be hard to recoup.
And in polls, Romney is not well liked or trusted, and comes across as distant, aloof, and not able to relate to us.
And with Tax Day coming at the end of this week, the Democrats will do their best to remind us that Romney has not released his tax returns, except for the year 2010, while providing John McCain with 23 years of returns when he was considered a possible running mate by McCain in 2008. Why not release all of these tax returns?
The answer is that it is clear that Romney has something to hide, including the reports that he has loads of his $250 million fortune in the Cayman Islands and in Swiss banks!
That makes Romney look very unpatriotic, and unwilling to do his fair share to help the nation, seeing paying higher taxes due to his good fortune, as something that a rich person should feel for the blessing that he was able to accomplish his wealth, and owes it to the country to help its future, rather than just go by the legal limitation of the minimum he needs to pay, due to accounting tricks!
Romney is now said to be “mischievous and naughty” by his wife Anne, often acting like one of their sons, but that does not ring true, and even if so, it does not make up for his unwillingness to understand the plight of the average American, and his stiffness and aloofness and reserve around people he cannot easily relate to.
Americans like to feel that they like their President, and Romney is, unfortunately, simply not a warm and pleasant personality.
That, above all, is his ultimate doom, as it was for Thomas E. Dewey in 1948, who Romney looks more like by the day–an intelligent, qualified person who simply could not relate to the American people he wished to govern.
And get this: both Dewey and Romney grew up in Michigan! Dewey’s campaign against Harry Truman in 1948 went from a landslide lead to a total collapse, against a President who gave the Republican Party “hell”. In the case of Romney, he is way behind with little prospect of recovery, but also running against an incumbent President who is copying the Truman method of giving the Republicans “hell”!
Hello Professor,
I am glad to see the President has quit playing the part of victim to the “Indignant Ranting Right†and turned his bully pulpit “BIG GUNS†towards them. Citizens will have much more respect for him. When the light of day scrutiny is directed towards their misinformation rhetoric, they run and hide like the rats and cockroaches they really are.
Like the advice that President Harry Truman told the Democrats in the late 1940’s, if the citizens of the United States have a choice of a Republican or a Democratic sounding like a Republican, they will vote for the Republican every time.
The lesson here is as the slated representatives to the Working Middle Class, the Democrats need to stand up on their hind legs and confront, attack, and correct the misleading lies that the Republicans have been propagating for too long. Hit them HARD, Hit them FAST, and Hit them OFTEN. The time is to start NOW!!!
When I heard the Special Report Break In News on CBS announcing that Religious Wing Nut Santorum had dropped out, I was doing the Happy Dance.
I knew that the true litmus test was going to be his own State of Pennsylvania because I had a strong thought that they threw him out of office years ago and that they would have no use for him now. Bottom line he had no support in his own State. I guess that speaks volumes.
I always had respect for McCain in the past, and in keeping an open mind, I could have supported him; but when he was paired up with Caribou Barbie that was the deal breaker for me.
So now the question is if Romney has learned from the mistakes made by McCain, I think that the Republican Strategist, Karl Rove, will take the prospective that they need an extreme right wing VP candidate to placate that strong segment so dominate within the Republican Party.
Bottom like I have to vote for the person that will represent my “Working Middle Class” interests….and that sure in the hell ain’t Romney and VP Whom Ever. Our only hope is the total purging of every Republican Candidate for every office all the way down to “Dinky Podunk Town Representative.â€
I agree that Obama needs to give the GOP “Hell” like Truman did, and that he should continue his attack on the privileged class that FDR utilized against the GOP in the 1930s.
And Romney’s only hope to give any substance to his candidacy is to pick a person such as Senator Rob Portman of Ohio, or Senator John Thune of South Dakota, or former Minnesota Governor Tim Pawlenty, all qualified to be President, but none of them “exciting”! If he picks Marco Rubio or the Hispanic Governor of New Mexico or Nevada, or Chris Christie, Bob McDonnell, or god forbid Rick Santorum, he has no chance to win in the slightest. He needs a competent and noncontroversial person, and the Vice Presidency is his first major decision. It will be interesting to see what he does, but in any case, his chances of winning, with the alienation of women, Independents, Hispanics and Latinos, and moderate Republicans, are very low, and his lack of any principles, his ability to be a chameleon, is going to make it impossible to win the White House!
I was interviewed about this by the Washington Times on Monday, in a front page article about the Vice Presidency, so you might want to look at it. The person who interviewed me, Stephen Dinan, said he would be interviewing me often over this year, and I look forward to it!
Thanks for your commentary on this blog entry!
Hello Professor,
Another thought being bounced around and keeping with the Palin mindset, Romney could go with Niki Haley.
She’s female and similarly telegenic to Palin, without being uneducatedly stupid and back woods ignorant. Like Palin, she is sufficiently ambitious to go with Romney because he’ll have her, plus she holds the same fairly far right views as the hard core base extremists, and she hasn’t had time to for any history of “flip flopping†on issues.
She converted to Protestantism from being raised Hindu, which appeals to the evangelical right as they do “Loves Them Their Converts To Jesus!†She’s from a southern state, which Romney will need a BIG turnout in those demographics for the General Election.
The trick would be for Haley to con the independents and working middle class that she is not a right wing nut job too, while not persuading this large segment base that she really is.
With the current mandates subjugating women proposed legislations from the Republican Party, she can be the surrogate for Romney to counter this, and she will have the “Karl Rove-ian†establishment’s blessings, plus maintaining some Tea Party support.
I will see if I can look up and source your Washington Times interview as I would love to read it for myself. Keep me informed when you are interviewed this year. I truly am interested.
I just finished a posting warning what could be expected should the Extreme Conservative Right gain anymore political power. The link is below.
http://engineerofknowledge.wordpress.com/2012/04/11/how-close-is-the-united-states-to-total-political-abuse-from-the-extreme-conservative-right-wing-republicans/
I appreciate your posting, and it is indeed scary!
Nikki Haley would be a terrible choice in my opinion, and I do not think she would be able to turn the tide with women to favor Romney.
She has shown great insensitivity on many issues in South Carolina, and does not come across to me as very bright, when one watches her in an interview. I would fear her being a heartbeat away, while not feeling the same about Portman, Thune, and Pawlenty.
Being born a Hindu, being therefore “different”, and running with a Mormon, is NOT a good combination for the right wing, which already is suspicious of anyone who is not a “good Christian” as they see it. Conversion is “good”, but not enough!
Just type in Washington Times, Stephen Dinan, and you will easily find the article on the Vice Presidency from Monday, April 9.
Thanks again!