“If Romney is indeed now the ‘inevitable’ nominee, it is a status he has obtained by crushing conservative opposition in an astonishingly expensive and negative campaign . . .”
— Robert Stacy McCain, “Predictably Predictable,” The American Spectator, April 4, 2012
This evening, Mark Levin led his nationally syndicated radio show by reading key excerpts from that column. It was evident that “The Great One” sees the same ominous signs that concern me, that he knows what these omens portend, and that he would like to alert his listeners to the fact that they are being propagandized and indoctrinated.
Unfortunately, judging from the reactions by Levin’s callers, there are a lot of people who don’t get it. They misunderstand what Levin is saying — what I am saying — about the obvious weaknesses of Mitt Romney’s campaign. The uncomprehending callers seemed to think that this is merely a matter of personal opinion, and that their admiration for Romney or their disdain for Rick Santorum are the most relevant facts to be discussed.
Some people can’t see the omens or lack the experience to interpret what these auguries signify. When we try to point out to them the portents of impending doom, these people respond, “Well, that’s your opinion.”
It’s a waste of breath to argue with people who think that way. If I’m wrong, I’m wrong, but we’ll have to wait and see, and there’s no point getting in arguments with people who are merely trying to belittle my intelligence, my knowledge, my experience and my judgment.
Let’s just suppose that you don’t know me from Adam’s housecat, OK? Go ahead and decide that, because I’m telling you something you don’t want to hear, something that contradicts your own opinions, then I must be wrong. Fine: No sweat off my nose and, in the present case, if Mitt Romney actually proves to be a triumphantly successful candidate who clobbers Obama in November, then I will be overjoyed that the Reign of Error is ended.
But . . . what if I’m right?
Never mind. Rule out that possibility. I’ve never been right about anything before, so far as you know. How about Richard Viguerie?
As Bloomberg’s Heidi Przybyla noted, the “defining feature of the 2012 Republican presidential primary race” has been Romney’s relentlessly negative campaign. According to Przybyla’s research, “Since the contests began, Restore Our Future has spent $35 million on commercials attacking Santorum and Newt Gingrich” and “just $1.1 million promoting Romney.” . . .
Romney’s negative ads, many of them factually questionable, have carpet bombed the conservatives in the race. . . .
However, these attacks have done nothing to build support for Mitt Romney, especially among movement conservatives, and to the extent that Romney can claim front runner status it is because he has come to be seen as the “least worst” alternative by rank-and-file Republican primary voters. . . .
Even if one accepts the fuzzy math that Romney claims puts him half way to the 1,144 delegates he needs to clinch the Republican nomination — and we don’t — his negative campaign has left him with a substantial enthusiasm deficit, and no real base upon which to mount a winning campaign against Barack Obama.
But you don’t know Richard Viguerie from Adam’s housecat, either. He’s just some dude you never heard of before. How about Stu Rothenberg?
The bottom line, of course, is that nobody — not his critics and not his allies — really believes Mitt Romney. . . .
The question is whether, in November, Romney may be in a similar position as Obama was or whether the fact that nobody actually believes Romney will destroy his presidential bid completely.
Is Romney such a mass of contradictions that voters can look at him and project their positions on him, allowing them to support him? Or is his credibility so shot that too many voters will simply conclude that they can’t trust him, making it impossible for them to support him?
But never mind that: Who is this Rothenberg guy, anyway, huh? You’re waaaayy smarter than him — and Viguerie, and me, and Mark Levin.
Now the Romney campaign is threatening to “destroy” Santorum in Pennsylvania. And Debbie Wasserman-Schultz says Mitt’s Mormonism is “off limits” (nudge, nudge, wink, wink).
Like I said, some things are predictably predictable.
UPDATE: Romney supporter Cindy Cooper is upset with me. Since I filed my column (I sent it to The American Spectator about 1:30 a.m.) there were evidently late returns that changed Romney’s margin of victory from 4 points to 7 points, and boosted Romney’s total vote to more than 340,000, whereas it had been about 300,000 with 98% of precincts reporting.
OK, so that fact is corrected. Now, what about turnout?
In 2010, in the Wisconsin GOP Senate primary — held in September — Ron Johnson got more than 500,000 votes, and then got 1.1 million votes in the general election to defeat incumbent Democratic Sen. Russ Feingold.
That was a mid-term campaign, and you see that Romney got a substantially lower total in this year’s presidential primary than did Johnson in 2010. In the 2008 presidential election — turnout is always higher in presidential elections than in mid-terms — John McCain got 1.26 million votes in Wisconsin, but that was only 43 percent of the vote; Barack Obama won with 1.68 million (56%).
Now, a point: WISCONSIN IS AN OPEN PRIMARY STATE.
This means that any voter — Democrat, Republican, independent — can vote in any primary. In 2008, “Super Tuesday” was Feb. 5, and Mitt Romney quit the race on Thursday, Feb. 7 (I was reporting it live at CPAC when the news broke), effectively ceding the nomination to John McCain. However, the Democratic race between Obama and Hillary Clinton that year continued to be hotly contested into the spring.
So, when Wisconsin held its open primary on Feb. 19 — two weeks after McCain sealed the deal for the GOP nomination — 1.1 million people voted in the Democratic primary, while only 395,000 people voted in the GOP primary, which McCain won with 55% (225,000) to Mike Huckabee’s 37% (151,000).
All of this I note, because Cindy Cooper is angry at me for saying that turnout in this year’s Republican primary was “phenomenally low,” when Eric Ostermier of the Humphrey Institute writes:
Wisconsin Republican primary voter turnout surged more than 91 percent in 2012 from 410,607 voters in 2008 to over 785,000 on Tuesday. . . .
In terms of the raw number of votes, the 2012 GOP primary was the second largest on record in Wisconsin behind only 1980 when the three-way battle between Reagan, Bush, and Anderson brought 907,853 individuals out to vote that April.
So, clearly the phrase “phenomenally low” was an inaccurate description of the turnout but — but — these numbers are still important, if you keep in mind that Wisconsin is an open primary state. The cycle-to-cycle “surge” from 2008 to 2012 is explained entirely by the fact that the 2008 GOP campaign was effectively over, while the Democrats were still going tooth-and-nail.
The best recent comparison (insofar as any such comparison doesn’t suffer from an apples-to-oranges problem) is to 1980, when there was a Democrat incumbent (Jimmy Carter) in the White House, and the GOP primary was still competitive. Turnout in 2012 thus represents a 14% drop from 1980. And keep in mind that Wisconsin’s population has grown 21 percent (from 4.7 to 5.7 million) since 1980.
Despite all that, I clearly got some facts wrong, and I’m correcting the record here. Far be it from me to attempt a “fake but accurate” defense. But the data still indicate that Mitt Romney is a much weaker GOP candidate than Ron Johnson or even John McCain.
We will have to wait and see what happens to know whether the omens and portents accurately foretold events.
House and senate, house and senate.
Meg Whitman. Romney could murder the downticket.
Romney is a worse candidate than Bob Dole.
Hopefully, Santorum can wrap this thing up.
@rsmccain So, with two on-air quotations from Levin, can we get past that sad, haunting habitha tale?
AS Mitt runs so would he govern…
We just can’t let the downticket use the same database as Mitt Whitman or get sucked into hisher campaign.
Going negative on his opponents is the only way Romney can win. He has no vision for America and no one knows where he stands on issues that effect our lives. This is the most important election in our lifetime and we have the establishment pushing a robotic, flip-flopper, liberal down our throats. If he becomes the nominee, I just don’t see a future for America.
There are profound weaknesses in Mitt Romney’s campaign. I have no idea how conservative he will be if elected (although I am pretty sure he will be more so than Barack Obama). But I agree with Levin and you, if his campaign doesn’t change, Romney loses to Obama. I hope we can put pressure on him to be a viable candidate…because we have to get Obama out of office.
But Santorum is not going to be the nominee. You can disagree with Vodkapundit, but the numbers are the numbers. http://pjmedia.com/vodkapundit/2012/04/04/santorum-has-lost-and-i-can-prove-it/
Please tell me, what specific conservative issues did Santorum advocate that Romney neglected? We can argue all day about someone’s past (including that Santorum also started his career as a pro-choice legislator and called himself a progressive) but both men are now advocating conservative principles.
I know you and Smitty are really big on contraception issues, is that was this is really all about? Theology that has nothing to do with public policy?
BTW, Stacy, it’s worth noting that you now have an insight as to why Palin didn’t enter the race.
The game was fixed. The proportional representation primaries were almost all in states that would have favored her, Santorum, or Gingrich. The WTA states would have been in states favoring the Rombots. Palin wouldn’t have wanted for money; I have it on good authority that Koch Industries would have seen to that. However, she could not have competed with Romney’s sewer attack, which is laying the groundwork for his inevitable defeat.
Contrast what Mitt Romney is doing with what Reagan did. Yes, he fought his opponents, but he built a campaign around reasons to vote FOR Ronald Reagan. Palin did the same thing in Alaska in 2006. All Romney and the Beltway GOP know about is scorched earth.
Unfortunately for Mittens, Obama has just as much money as he does. Romney is toast.
Oh dear God, could we PLEASE?
You’ll appreciate that negative campaigning when he runs against Obama. Unless you want him to treat our “President” with deference and respect, which I would worry far more about. Frankly, I want him to tear into the little leftist piece of shit just like I would want any GOP nominee to do. So what’s the problem?
Are you the guy who stole my damn car antenna?
I think the problem is that he’s given lots of indications that he won’t run negative against Obama. Didn’t want to call him a socialist, just “ex-president” or something like that.
Let’s just HOPE he uses that extremely negative bent to go after and finally #VetThePrez and let’s HOPE that it works, as negative campaigning tends to do.
HOPE being a four-letter word these days, but yes, we (still) CAN – HOPE.
Barring the white knight on the silver steed – we’re going to have to learn to love the Romney. As Brietbart said, “Ask now what our candidate can do for us, ask what can we do for our candidate.” The fate of the world depends on unseating Obama.
see legal insurrection too:
http://legalinsurrection.com/2012/04/if-romney-loses-to-obama-it-will-be-because-of-his-supporters-not-his-opponents/
Excellent point.
freedom
We simply don’t believe Romney.
What you just said, RSM. The problem is that the Republican field, led by Romney, have spent their time violating Reagan’s 11th Commandment. The worst offender is Romney, because he couldn’t defend his record; so all he had was attack mode — and that was pretty much all he did.
Now we have people screaming that the rest of the candidates need to clear the field for Romney. Why? Why reward someone who’s done nothing constructive in this race?
So now he’s the frontrunner and likely nominee, but at what cost? He’s burned conservatives. He’s burned his credibility, because he’s never come out and denounced Romneycare. So why should anyone believe he’ll throw out Obamacare, when he still defends his own catastrophic healthcare “reform.”
If Romney gets the nod, the party’s doomed, and that’s not me just saying it… it’s because there’s just no way — no matter how bad Obama is — Romney can defeat this incumbent. IT. WON’T. HAPPEN.
The Paulbots and some lefties like Laurence O’Donnell are already attacking Romney’s Mormonism. The big salvos will be saved until after he gets the nod. Doesn’t matter if Wasserman-Schultz says his faith is off-limits. What she means is NOW. But later, not so much.
Romney can’t (as in isn’t capable of) being as negative against Obamsky as he has been against his Republican opponents. For one when he went scurrilous against Newt and Santorum through his super PAC they wouldn’t fight the assertion that he had no control or even influence over the PAC, Obamsky and his minions won’t be shy about assigning responsibility to Romney. Even if it were true (it’s not) that Romney has maintained a hands off posture toward his super PAC most Americans won’t believe it.
Secondly when Mitt went negative against his GOP rivals he benefited from some support or at least benign neglect from the Winston Smith Media, when he goes negative against Obamsky it’ll be very different.
Third he simply doesn’t have the killer instinct when it comes to Bolshevism. He says squishy and patently false things about Obamsky such as he’s a nice guy he’s just in over his head. That notion is preposterous and a conservative would know that.
I was going to post something….but then…I figure RSM already knows he is just a few more breaks away from getting a Fox News panelists spot (at least one on Red Eye) for being the kooky Oracle from the blogs.
Almost famous!
Romneybot to Stacy: “La La La La {fingers in ears} I CAN’T HEEAARRR YOUUUUUU”
I despise Obama and what he represents with a white hot despisement and yet I find myself unable to generate any enthusiasm for this golden boy, presidential wannabe, corporate shark.
He did what sharks do when approaching a new “
victimclient company”; kill off the threats to management within the company (those who are respected by the employees and who would alert them to any shenanigans or lies) after the initial takeover by the “new” management. This aids down the road in being able to slowly convince the employees that there’s nothing you could do to save the company and it has to be sold/liquidated.Without anyone around to tell them they’re being lied to, they acquiesce in the demise of their life’s work.
Yeah, yeah some company’s deserve to liquidated but a lot do not but that’s not what folks like Romney do/did. They had only one goal: sell off what can be, fire employees till the company can’t make any money then liquidate it and take the profits from the stock manipulations and deals.
{spit} Romney gives capitalism a bad name. His daddy helped set up Michigan and Detroit for the mess they’re in today.
That’s what I’m worried about, that he’ll continue saying things like “he’s a nice guy, he’s just in over his head”.
For one thing, how could he possibly know whether he was a nice guy even if he is. Not that I think he might be, I think he’s a piece of shit who sees himself as a modern day god-king, or as close to that as he’s allowed to get.
But for Romney to say that seems to be more pandering than anything, and we don’t need that. That’s why I take comfort in him taking the negative route in the primaries. For one thing, it works, no matter what anybody says, and everybody knows it works. Hopefully he’ll see that now and open up with both barrels against our little fascist dictator-in-chief.
@rsmccain on Red Eye? Sporting a speedo and a smile? Gutfeld might never recover.
Will the VP have any effect? Is it possible that somebody (Ryan/West/Rubio/?) could whip up some real enthusiasm. Of course, this is why Mitt would pick somebody like Lindsey Graham, just to steamroller the threat of any conservative vigor being injected into the race.
http://legalinsurrection.com/2012/04/if-romney-loses-to-obama-it-will-be-because-of-his-supporters-not-his-opponents/ Professor Jacobson has a point, Romney and his supporters trounced the GOP field. That will come back to haunt him. I do not disagree.
Santorum did not do that anywhere nearly as bad as Newt and Mitt did. But Santorum had this weird thing about attacking potential allies. And that is why he will not be the nominee.
Stacy? In the leg Chair?
Hmmmmm!!
Let’s watch the revisionist history, chum. American Motors was the smallest and weakest of the American automakers and least able to withstand a strike by the UAW. If George Romney caved in to the union, it’s because the alternative was bankruptcy. As Governor of Michigan, he did a fairly good job by the standards of the times and drew a phenomenal amount of the black vote. He would probably be condemned as a RINO these days, but those were different times.
Unfortunately, I think Rothenberg has it right: Neither liberal republicans nor conservative pundits believe that Romney really means what he says. This had always been Romney’s problem: He isn’t particularly charismatic, and doesn’t have the gift of making people listen and believe him. His rivals and opponents aren’t going to let go of his more liberal past and keep holding it against him, while they utterly ignore his stated intentions.
It appears to me that Romney has decided to counter this by running his campaign with a consistent message and staying there, appealing to moderate, well-educated, executive type Republicans from the start, first defeating Gingrich and Santorum to keep them from outshouting him, and then counting on Obama to help drive the fire-eating right wing conservatives into his camp.
Obviously the money is on Rubio….but Rubio’s Conservative shine is slowly being worn away….and to the general public….wouldn’t “it” be obvious what Romney would be trying to do (see: John McCain/Sarah Palin)?
I don’t want Paul Ryan anywhere near Mittens as I think he would try to corrupt the poor lad. I think West would probably punch Romney at some point.
I know it would never happen, but somebody like McCotter might get me interested in the campaign…but that isn’t going to happen.
I love West. At least then I would have somebody to vote FOR. Rubio & Ryan just ticked me off so they would not do it for me and neither would Jeb or Lindsey. In fact, my contempt for Mitt, the establishment, and his rabid supporters runs so deep that anyone backing him at this point in time (before I have had a chance to vote) is off my happy list.
And I don’t trust Specter-endorsing, Big Labor lovin’ Santorum.
Except Mitt won’t “go there” against Obama. Fear of not being adored by the MSM, you see…
Don’t worry, once Mitt taps Rubio or Ryan as VP, all will be forgiven, and conservatives will just LOVE him like they did ol’ John McCain. Or something like that.
How’d that work out for the McCain campaign again? Oh, yeah… he still lost. Not by nearly as much as he would’ve had he chosen some effete tool to be his running mate, though.
The Obama machine tried to destroy Palin. They’ll do the same to any conservative who’s the VP on the ticket.
Insanity is doing the same thing and expecting different results.
You don’t get it do you? What does the guy stand for? He could have used the millions of dollar to promote himself instead of tearing down his rival. He has no vision and no principle to stand on. If he becomes the nominee, how will he be able to unite the party? I don’t think so. As he said before, it will take an act of God. By the way, Romney said O is “just in over his head”. He’s not a fighter, just a corrupt liberal politician. That’s the problem!
And just because he used to be President of American Motors didn’t have anything to do with his decision? (those stocks given instead of salary wouldn’t be worth much if AMC Bk’d.
He also aided and abetted an income tax (which usually signals the beginning of legislators having too much money to spend and they overspend to boot. Look at most every state that enacted one. They went on to fiscal irresponsibility.)
He also was a tax and spend RINO; then now and forever {like son like father} and who had some white guilt rolling around in his head also which led him to be a little less critical of the civil rights/social worker/union worker/government worker complex that has sunk Michigan since the Big 3 lost out to foreign manufacturers in quality and durability and usability.
And let’s not forget his brainwashing comments trying to walk back his original support for ‘Nam {gee another Romney who wants to “EtchaSketch his political positions!} his close association with Democrats and his big government ways.
And lastly Romney oversaw the beginning of the politicization of HUD into a manipulator of property sales and purchases that eventually led us to the toxic mortgage implosion and the still out of control Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.
When is said what I said, I was referring to the devastation that was reeked upon Detroit in the name of Housing Renewal, Urban Development and assorted affirmative and desegragation schemes that have netted the insiders millions while making Detroit look like Beirut of the ’80’s.
So hows THAT for history? Revisionist? I don’t think so.
Obama won by nearly 10 million votes. We’ll have to capture around half of those this year to have a chance.
Calling Obama a socialist, an idiot, a terrorist sympathizer might all be true, but it’s telling those voters they were stupid. People tend to be willing to change their minds about politicians, but if you call them stupid they get harder to convert.
You can slam the heck out of failures without getting so personal that you turn off the mushy swing voters.
Yeah, the Bilderbergers did it!
I have to laugh at the constant stream of whining about Romney being “negative” from a blogger who accused Romney of being involved in conspiracies to: move up Florida’s primary, spread slanderous handouts about opponents in Iowa, rig the Virginia ballot rules, and probably the Kennedy Assassination and a dozen other charges I can’t recall right off the top of my head, all with nothing but rumors from unnamed original sources, or based on pure paranoid speculation.
Like your sissy-boy candidate, you can dish it out by the shovelful, but cry foul when it comes your way.
Both of the lobbyists you backed failed. Get over it. Romney used his money advantage to break down opponents, sure. But fully SIX of those opponents had national polls leads at one point or another – what was the point of raising the extra money if you can’t spend it to point out your opponents’ weaknesses and bring them back to earth?
Some of the barbs thrown at Romney sounded like they came from Marxists, both Newt and Santorum have called him a liar and compared him to Obama, but it is Romney who is “astonishingly” negative?
“Politics ain’t beanbag,” as Finley Peter Dunne noted in 1895. Winners take the shots without whining.
The long and short of it is the VP only matters if the president dies. If Romney’s nominated I’ll vote for him then go home and scrub with a wire brush, but it won’t make me feel any better if West or Rubio on the ticket as I’m reasonably confident Mitt won’t kill himself for the good of the country. Having Graham or Jeb Bush as his running mate would make it worse.
That didn’t work in 08 and it won’t be enough now. Further, for the cowardly moderates Palin made it worse. I talked to a few people who intended to vote for Obamsky because they were convinced McCain was going to drop dead any second and thought Palin was wholly unqualified to be president. Apparently none of them questioned Obamsky’s utter lack of any qualities a president should have. Romney has loser tattooed on his forehead, putting a popular conservative on the ticket with will help some but it won’t be enough. It’s time for a new party.
Calling Romney a liar and comparing him to Obamsky isn’t negative campaigning. If by negative campaigning you mean in the sense we mean.
I have two words for why some pundits have no credibility when it comes to this primary race: Herman. Cain.
Sorry, but don’t whine now about not being taken seriously after falling for his con job.
Bullshit! He at least don’t have to talk about him being a “nice guy” because there’s nothing fucking nice about him, he’s a piece of shit who in my honest opinion is trying to destroy this country so he can rebuild it in a socialist format. If Romney can’t tell it like it fucking is he needs to get the fuck off the stage and hand it over to somebody who can. Just not Ricky Poo Santorum.
In other words, people can’t handle the truth? That’s a load of shit, Adj, what if somebody came out with proof that Obama was a card-carrying communist, would you call it like it is, or would you say “well, he means well, he’s just wrong?”
That may be our biggest problem.
Don’t blame me, I’m not the one who made it possible for him to win the nomination by supporting some ignorant asshole that didn’t have a snowball’s chance in hell. But there it is, he’s going to be the nominee and I’m going to support him.