The Headline of the Day comes from David Frum, on The Daily Beast. It refers to former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney and the GOP: “Is This What An Arranged Marriage Feels Like?”
I lived in India from January 1972-May 1976 during my senior year in college, and from September 1973 through May 1975, as a freelance journalist. Many marriages in India were (and are) arranged marriages and when people explained it to me they often noted that their parents set it up and it worked out great because they learned to love each other. Non-arranged marriages were referred to as “love marriages.”
So Frum’s headline makes sense when it comes to Romney, by most accounts a more moderate Republican who’s more at ease governing and managing then begging — and pandering — for votes.
Given Mitt Romney’s primary performances so far, any day now the state of Pennsylvania will declare him an honorary pretzel.
Here’s a chunk of what Frum writes:
I’ll go out on a limb here: I don’t think we’re heading to a brokered convention.
On the old FrumForum site, my very conservative friend John Vecchione joked about the impending Romney nomination: “I feel like the bride in an arranged marriage I cannot escape.” After Tuesday’s votes, escape will become that much harder. The resistance remains. But it becomes more futile.
If Romney’s party opponents could not stop him in Michigan, you have to wonder: where do they stop him? Perhaps he’ll lose a state out of 10 on Super Tuesday. But with no money available for Santorum; few votes available to Gingrich; and no party elites available to Paul—it’s hard to see how this Republican nomination does not rapidly converge upon the 2012 version of The Next Guy in Line.
The trouble is that the primary process has made, is making, and will continue to make The Next Guy in Line a weaker rather than a stronger candidate in the general contest come November.
He then lists a variety of the stands Romney has been forced to take, or change and say’s it’s too late to change them now.
But the arranged marriage comparison could also be applied to the general electorate.
If Romney has moved too far to the right to capture the center and if he continues to be the foot-in-mouth, awkward candidate who has an unfortunate imageg suggesting that he’d be better off running for President of the Dorks, then many Americans may sigh and feel they’ll take an arranged marriage with a slicker, more optimistic Barack Obam…unless the economy gets worse.
Then they may decide not to resist an marriage with Romney and hope that, in time, they will grow to love him.
Joe Gandelman is a former fulltime journalist who freelanced in India, Spain, Bangladesh and Cypress writing for publications such as the Christian Science Monitor and Newsweek. He also did radio reports from Madrid for NPR’s All Things Considered. He has worked on two U.S. newspapers and quit the news biz in 1990 to go into entertainment. He also has written for The Week and several online publications, did a column for Cagle Cartoons Syndicate and has appeared on CNN.