Quote of the Day: Conservative Bill Kristol on Romney’s Campaign
Our political Quote of the Day comes from The Weekly Standard’s Bill Kristol, one of many conservative voices expressing doubts about how all-but-certain-Republican Presidential nominee Mitt Romney is conducting his campaign. Some chunks of his piece:
Remember Michael Dukakis (1988) and John Kerry (2004)? It’s possible to lose a winnable presidential election to a vulnerable incumbent in the White House (or in the case of 1988, a sitting vice president). So, speaking of losing candidates from Massachusetts: Is it too much to ask Mitt Romney to get off autopilot and actually think about the race he’s running?
Adopting a prevent defense when it’s only the second quarter and you’re not even ahead is dubious enough as a strategy. But his campaign’s monomaniacal belief that it’s about the economy and only the economy, and that they need to keep telling us stupid voters that it’s only about the economy, has gone from being an annoying tick to a dangerous self-delusion.
AND:
The economy is of course important. But voters want to hear what Romney is going to do about the economy. He can “speak about” how bad the economy is all he wants—though Americans are already well aware of the economy’s problems—but doesn’t the content of what Romney has to say matter? What is his economic growth agenda? His deficit reform agenda? His health care reform agenda? His tax reform agenda? His replacement for Dodd-Frank? No need for any of that, I suppose the Romney campaign believes. Just need to keep on “speaking about the economy.”
Kristol is here — I am absolutely convinced — is also reflecting some of the doubts about Romney that independent voters are starting to have…doubts that will fester and blossom into a larger portion of independent voters voting against Romney.
And note that I said “against Romney” and not for Obama. A suit that looks a bit tattered and worn is preferable to wear than a suit you can’t find. And Romney is proving to be less than an empty suit. MORE:
The Romney campaign will answer that they’re imitating Bill Clinton in 1992, who famously focused on “the economy, stupid.” But Bill Clinton was a full spectrum presidential candidate, with detailed policy proposals on welfare reform, health care, education, and foreign policy. He also made real efforts to convince the voters he was different from the losing Democratic candidates who preceded him (“a new kind of Democrat,” “ending welfare as we know it,” a hawkish-sounding foreign policy, Sister Souljah, etc.). So far, the Romney campaign doesn’t resemble the Clinton campaign. It seems to be following more comfortably in the tradition of the five post-Cold War Republican presidential candidates who preceded Romney. They received 37.5 percent, 40.7 percent, 47.9 percent, 50.7 percent, and 45.7 percent of the vote, respectively. The average GOP presidential vote in these last five elections was 44.5 percent. In the last three, it was 48.1 percent. Give Romney an extra point for voter disillusionment with Obama, and a half-point for being better financed than his predecessors. It still strikes me as a path to (narrow) defeat.
And, indeed, Romney doesn’t seem to be channeling the political spirits of Dukakis or Kerry.
He seems to be channeling the spirit of Thomas E. Dewey.
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It’s easier to criticize Romney than to come up with a plan of action that works for him.
Any position he takes will likely result in charges of flip-flopping from some prior position. On the other hand he doesn’t have the charisma to pull off a successful campaign based on generic concepts like, say, “hope and change.”
There truly is an interest deficit where Romney is concerned – as evidenced by the Buzzfeed study that found people 10 times more likely to read or view stories about Obama than Romney. Could be Romney just doesn’t the IT factor necessary for the American electorate.
I don’t think there is a “plan of action that works” for Romney. Someone who ran on the GOP ticket last time around burned out the metaphor about cosmetics and swine, so I won’t go there directly, but the fact of the matter is that Mittens is an also-ran from the last election.
He’s not any more exciting or compelling as a candidate than he was in 2008 when he lost the GOP nomination to a guy who had lost the nomination to George W. Bush in 2000.
He’s like a 3rd string quarterback who wound up as the starter – not because he was better, but because the other two guys got knocked out of the game.
Romney’s answers to the questions Kristol poses are basically the same ones the GOP has been putting forth for a while now: tax cuts, tax credits, deregulation and then leaving it to the market. Are there any Republicans actually proposing anything else?
So am I to take it that Bill Kristol is figuring out that substance is more important than propaganda? No way!!!