[Vision2020] It's Mitt! Oh No

[Nicholas Gier]

 April 4, 2012, *9:33 pm  The New York Times*It’s Mitt! Oh No. By CHARLES
M. BLOW <http://campaignstops.blogs.nytimes.com/author/charles-m-blow/>

The dream is dying. There will be no dynamic, charismatic, Reaganesque
Republican presidential nominee this cycle. There won’t even be a
consistent conservative. There will only be Mitt Romney.

With his wins on Tuesday in Wisconsin, Maryland and the District of
Columbia, Romney has virtually guaranteed his lock on the Republican
nomination and has practically thrown a bucket of ice water on his party’s
desire for a transformative right-wing figure who could convincingly sell
its draconian budget priorities and regressive social agenda to an
increasingly weary middle.

Rick Santorum may continue his quixotic crusade to be the regional
candidate of the deeply reticent Deep South, but with each contest the math
becomes increasingly more difficult, even impossible, to deny. Romney will
win. We’re just waiting for “The Rooster” to crow, and for the real contest
to begin.

As the Washington Post pointed out Wednesday:

Mitt Romney won some elusive demographics. Exit polls from the Wisconsin
primary Tuesday showed Romney expanding his appeal to groups that have
consistently voted against him this year, including evangelical Christians,
voters who describe themselves as “very conservative,” strong supporters of
the Tea Party movement and voters making less than $50,000 per year.

But this is likely the result of resignation, not enthusiasm. Those very
conservative holdouts could hold back Mitt’s money and momentum for only so
long. Eventually, wishful thinking gives way to pragmatism. The reckoning
always comes.

It’s Mitt — the flavorless force who is willing to flow in any direction to
get a vote.

For many Republicans, Romney’s greatest virtue is that he is not President
Obama. But that may also be his greatest weakness. Being A.B.O. (anyone but
Obama) doesn’t necessarily make you able. The protest vote will carry a
candidate only so far. It ensures the support of the base, but not the
middle. And in a general election, the middle must be won. Candidates must
connect with the people there and passionately sell a vision of America
that resonates with them.

This may well be Romney’s biggest challenge. Obama can be scintillating on
the campaign trail. Romney has shown himself to be nearly catatonic. Obama
is such an impressive speaker that it sometimes feels as if he’s trying too
hard to prove something; Romney is such an awkward speaker that it often
feels as if he’s hiding something.  But when framing a vision, even
magniloquence beats ineloquence.

Furthermore, Romney let the primary season push him dangerously far to the
right, in an effort to capture that elusive “severely conservative” vote.
That’s good for now, but bad for later. Modern elections are fought over a
thin margin in the middle. No amount of Etch A Sketch,
shake-it-up-and-start-all-over resets will be able to expunge the rhetoric
of a hyper-partisan primary. YouTube, ever heard of it?

According to an ABC/Washington Post
poll<http://abcnews.go.com/blogs/politics/2012/03/record-number-see-romney-negatively-obama-outpaces-him-in-popularity/>released
last week:

Mitt Romney trails Barack Obama by 19 points in basic popularity as the
2012 presidential contest inches closer to the main event, with a record 50
percent of Americans in the latest ABC News/Washington Post poll now rating
Romney unfavorably over all.

Perhaps more ominously, USA Today
reported<http://www.usatoday.com/news/politics/story/2012-04-01/swing-states-poll/53930684/1#.T3jAbMmy4go.twitter>this
week that:

President Obama has opened the first significant lead of the 2012 campaign
in the nation’s dozen top battleground states, a USA TODAY/Gallup Poll
finds, boosted by a huge shift of women to his side.

That sound you hear is the sound of despair —  the hard swallowing and deep
breathing by reluctant Republicans crossing their fingers and praying for
the best.

Maybe Romney will pick a game-changing running mate. Remember how well that
worked last time?
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