Just read Kathleen Parker’s column from over the weekend about how the GOP doesn’t need focus groups to figure out why it lost the presidential election; it just needs to look in a mirror.
I liked this part:
Some Republicans stubbornly insist, of course, that the problem was that Romney wasn’t conservative enough. Really? In his heart, this may be true. I never believed Romney was passionate about social issues. He embraced them because he had to, but he had no intention of pursuing a socially conservative agenda.
But the real problem is the Republican Party, which would not be recognizable to its patron saint, Ronald Reagan. The party doesn’t need a poll or a focus group. It needs a mirror.
The truth is, Romney was better than the GOP deserved…
I agree. While Romney wouldn’t have topped my list of candidates (if I were allowed to choose the field, rather than having that crowd of undesirables that actually ran for the GOP nomination this time), he’s a relatively decent sort of guy, and no sort of nut. And the traumatized party that has been spinning off into irrelevance since the rise of the Tea Party did not deserve him.
Of course, I don’t agree with her that it was the gross missteps by a couple of GOP candidates (who were not running for president or vice president) on Culture War issues that best illustrated what was wrong. As she put it, in her most colorful passage:
Party nitwits undermined him, and the self-righteous tried to bring him down. The nitwits are well-enough known at this point — those farthest-right social conservatives who couldn’t find it in their hearts to keep their traps shut. No abortion for rape or incest? Sit down.Legitimate rape? Put on your clown suit and go play in the street.
No, the GOP has long been on the right on social issues — although perhaps not as given to such bizarre ways of expressing itself — and remained a mainstream party, for a long, long time. That’s nothing new. What’s new is the way it’s gone off the deep end on fiscal issues, and other attendant weirdness such as refusal to be reasonable on immigration (which is WAY far away from being the party of Ronald “Amnesty” Reagan) that distinguishes the spin-off into irrelevance in the last handful of years.
The pre-2010 GOP might have deserved Romney. The post-2010 party, not so much…
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If “we” Republicans get any further right, we’ll never get another president elected.
Go ahead and raise the taxes on the rich; that should shut up the liberals. People, just be careful what you wish for. Where does rich begin? $200K, $250K? While I’ve been chastised on this blog before, I’ll say it again. A lot of YOUR neighbors make $200K. Are they rich?
No one deserves to have to try to please the incoherent blob that tries to call itself the “Republican” party. On one hand they have the RINOs–so called fiscal conservatives who are actually Libertarians, but don’t like to be called that because it could upset the social conservatives. On the other hand we have the “social conservatives” who seem to want to make this country as much of a theocracy as, say Pakistan. Mixed in with these folks are people who don’t understand/like basic scientific process, and who have their own version of arithmetic, the base and logic of which they have not explained to anyone. The GOP appears to suffer from some form of multiple personality disorder. It’s unfortunate that none of its personalities know or like the others.
Brad, is Parker kidding? Romney was the most soulless, say-anything candidate I can ever recall. His ability to deny previous policy positions despite all evidence to the contrary (or vice versa, to claim new positions on the spot) flummoxed opponents in the GOP debates and clearly threw Obama for a loop in debate #1 (also telling from the NYT article about Obama’s much deeper dislike and lack of respect for Romney by comparison with McCain). In the end, the patent falseness of the Jeep ad finally sank Romney in Ohio (and thus the election).
I can only quote the latest brilliantly written analysis by Frank Rich: “Romney…does leave behind a cultural legacy of sorts. He raised Truthiness to a level of chutzpah beyond Stephen Colbert’s fertile imagination, and on the grandest scale. That a presidential hopeful so cavalierly mendacious could get so close to the White House, winning some 48 percent of the popular vote, is no small accomplishment. The American weakness that Romney both apotheosized and exploited in achieving this feat—our post-fact syndrome where anyone on the public stage can make up anything and usually get away with it—won’t disappear with him. A slicker liar could have won, and still might. All politicians lie, and some of them, as Bob Kerrey famously said of Bill Clinton in 1996, are “unusually good” at it. Every campaign (certainly including Obama’s) puts up ads that stretch or obliterate the truth. But Romney’s record was exceptional by any standard.”
So, to make sure I’m understanding you, Phillip — you’re saying he actually WAS a poopy-head?
And I’m not going to tell you what I think of Frank Rich as a political commentator.
You might see him as “the most soulless, say-anything candidate” ever, but when it comes to Republicans these days, I sort of prefer a guy who doesn’t really believe all that stuff. It’s certainly one of the things I always liked about McCain — and that was before the GOP went as far off the deep end as it has since 2008.
Yes, people who make $200K a year are rich in a state with a per capita income of $23,443 in 2010, in a country with a per capita income of $27,334.
Yeah I think he was a “P-H” but I will concede Norquist’s point that Obama by and large ran a campaign based more on “the other guy is worse” than projecting what a 2nd Obama term would be like. In this sense the GOP’s complaints about the Obama campaign are correct. But it was strategically wise, in order to attract enough moderates and independents who were less impressed by the Obama record than somebody like me, for example, but had serious misgivings about either Romney himself or the idea of turning the clock back to old policies that had gotten us into hot water in the first place.
BTW, I included the extended FR quote above for you partly it acknowledged Bill Clinton and Obama in the category of occasional liars, since I know you think Rich is purely partisan. He’s purely liberal but that’s not the same thing.
And as for “a guy who doesn’t believe all that stuff”—by the end I don’t think very many people knew what Romney believed in or that he actually did believe in anything with great conviction other than he wanted to be President and would do or say virtually anything to get there, contradict himself, change positions, misstate others’ positions, etc.
@Phillip
Does it give you comfort to know that Obama didn’t lie as much as Romney?
How about we set the standard at not lying at all and go from there?
As I commented in the next post, the GOP didn’t field their best candidates for this year. It was as if they were expecting to lose in the primary season. I had great difficulty choosing from any of the GOP in the SC GOP Primary. I didn’t want to hold my nose and vote, so I stayed home.
Kathleen Parker is insightful with her commentary.
Romney received 2 million votes fewer than John McCain. I think people saw him for who he is – a chameleon who couldn’t be trusted. There was a segment of Republicans who could hold their noses & vote for McCain who couldn’t bring themselves to do even that for Romney.
Shorter Brad Warthen: in order to win the White House, Republicans need a candidate that can fool them, THEN manage to fool the rest of the country.
I voted for Romney in the primary because he was clearly the republican I could most live with based on his policies when governor of Massachusetts. However it was disconcerting that what he was saying at the time did not match the past version of him that I could easier live with so well. I still felt, though, there was a chance he would behave moderately no matter what crazy super conservative thing he said to get elected. I was also haunted by a statement I heard Paul Krugman make at some point in the campaign the gist of which was macro economics don’t work by the same rules that apply to corporate business finance decisions and operating under that premise would cause global economic disaster. I still think out of the republican choices he was the best hope for something kind of normal, but the inability to trust him and know which Romney was gonna be the one took the oath (should that happen) was really unsettling.
Come on, Ronald Reagan was not the patron saint of the Republican Party, Thomas Jefferson was.
And just to set the record straight, the $250,000 is on adjusted gross income after whatever deductions your accountant can come up with.
We would not be raising taxes, we would be restoring them — just not to the level they were in 1959.
There are two ways of looking at Mitt Romney. First, there is the politician Mitt Romney. I earnestly believe that Romney would have probably governed as a center-right president that would have ultimately recognized the importance of a useful safeynet for the poor and a reasonably progress tax code for all Americans. He also would not have been especially interested in either cultural issues like abortion. In foreign affairs he would have largely followed Obama’s policies. All in all he would have been far too conservative for me but not nearly so much as he portrayed in the primaries.
Then there is Mitt Romney the man. Phillip’s assessment of him as souless pretty much hits the mark. I don’t think the man had a compassionate bone in his body for anyone outside his family or rich friends. He just could not empathize with the middle class let alone the poor. Some of his remarks on the stump showed him to be a very cold, heartless individual. Not evil mind you just not particularly caring. All those years with Bain Capital probably jaded his compassionate side beyond redemption. So even if his politics would have been moderate his attitude would have likely produced a very plutocratic nation. And that is one one bullet I’m glad we dodged.
How does this:
“I earnestly believe that Romney would have probably governed as a center-right president that would have ultimately recognized the importance of a useful safeynet for the poor and a reasonably progress tax code for all Americans. He also would not have been especially interested in either cultural issues like abortion. In foreign affairs he would have largely followed Obama’s policies. All in all he would have been far too conservative for me but not nearly so much as he portrayed in the primaries.”
square with all of this… here:
“The USA under a Romney/Ryan administration:
1. Women who get pregnant as a result of rape and an inability to obtain contraception are sent to jail. The nations prisons as a result of this and the incarceration of victimless crime offenders creates a huge burden on our prison system.
2. The top 1/10 of 1% control the greatest percentage of the national wealth in our country’s history. They continue to shelter this great wealth in the Cayman Islands and elsewhere thanks to the continued tax breaks offered the super rich.
3. The national debt soars to a level that dwarfs the current level.
4. Our nation’s military becomes stretched to the breaking point as we embark on endless wars. This in spite of a $2 trillion increase in the military budget as much of this money is squandered on useless military hardware toys.
5. Unemployment rates soar to double digits as the GOP austerity programs destroy public sector jobs such as teachers, firefighters and cops. This loss of good government workers jobs ripples through the economy and once again the manufacturing and construction sectors collapse.
6. The newly de-regulated banking sector once again brings on a new financial bubble.
7. The EPA is gutted and the quality of our air and water deteriorate. This pales in comparison to the soaring temperatures and dry weather caused by accelerated global warming.
8. As a result of the poor state of the economy and failing crops the health of Americans suffers. Yet the proportion of uninsured Americans skyrockets following the repeal of Obamacare. The result is the first drop in life expectancy in the nation’s history.”
Was is trolling Republicans or perhaps just the brain of a partisan during an election?