I have been predicting this, especially since these polls.
Even the Washington Post has second thoughts.
Romney would hold a slight lead on President Obama if the 2012 election were replayed today, according to a new Washington Post-ABC News poll.
The poll of registered voters shows Romney at 49 percent and Obama at 45 percent in the rematch, a mirror image of Romney’s four-point (51-47) popular-vote loss in 2012.
Now, we have this.
What can I say except I told you so.
Will Romney be different from these other failed nominees? Could he defy the odds and make a comeback presidential bid capturing the GOP nomination after all the doubt, second-guessing and blame that accompany such a loss? According to the latest Quinnipiac poll, many Americans seem to think so—45 percent of voters said the United States would be better off today with Romney as president.
I donated more to the Romney campaign than I have in any other election and I was a volunteer for McCain in 2000.
I told you so. I think there is a case that the 2012 election was stolen.
The knowledge that the 1960 election was probably stolen helped Nixon in 1968. That and the failure of the Johnson Administration in Vietnam. Anyway, I have been predicting this for a while at Althouse and I can’t remember if I have posted this opinion here. Obama, with the time he has left, will make this more and more attractive. I thought we were doomed after 2012. I still think so but maybe I was wrong. The Megyn Kelly interviews with Bill Ayers might even help although she never got into the Ayers-Obama relationship.
I just hope we avoid the worst of the blowback from inept foreign policy before 2016.
More. This is amazing.
All this is weird, unprecedented. The president shows no sign—none—of being overwhelmingly concerned and anxious at his predicaments or challenges. Every president before him would have been. They’d be questioning what they’re doing wrong, changing tack. They’d be ordering frantic aides to meet and come up with what to change, how to change it, how to find find common ground not only with Congress but with the electorate.
Instead he seems disinterested, disengaged almost to the point of disembodied. He is fatalistic, passive, minimalist. He talks about hitting “singles” and “doubles” in foreign policy.
“The world seems to disappoint him,” says The New Yorker’s liberal and sympathetic editor, David Remnick.
Just weird.
Mike,
I hope you are wrong. Romney ran a campaign almost as inept as McCain’s. He basically came across as the lesser of two wimps and he also failed to articulate anything more than generalities. His organization failed to mobilize the vote and failed to thwart the anticipated voter fraud. He really has no firm ideas for reversing our slide into fiscal collapse and international crisis. Close the border? I doubt it. Chamber of Commerce doesn’t want that. Balance the budget? What about all that corporate welfare, middle class bennies? Get rid of the tax code? What would the tax service industry do?
I’ll grant he would likely be a good administrator, but I doubt he would accomplish much in the way of repairing the deep damage we have suffered. I don’t have a candidate, but my inclination is to pass on the establishment, fund-raiser, manager and find a warrior. No more beauty queens that only excite the don’t-rock-the-boat” crowd. Reagan could articulate and execute, surely there is someone who can do likewise. It isn’t Mitt.
I really don’t want to see a Mitt-Hildabeast match up. That wouldn’t even be a yawner.
Mike
cruz 2016
Romney was absolutely hapless.
It says a lot about his supposed organizational competence that he reportedly believed he was going to win up until election night. That is, the campaign organization he set up and managed was plainly unable to get events right. And if the election was stolen perhaps he should have told us about it, using the accurate but unreported data generated by his superb campaign organization.
Oops, that didn’t happen.
I’ll also note that Romney was plainly unpopular with the base. It was almost comical to watch the polls as support surged from one nonentity to another during the GOP primary campaign, all to avoid having Romney as the nominee.
That situation almost certainly will not be the case in 2016. Odds are people like Scott Walker, Rand Paul, and Ted Cruz will run, plus a Rick Perry not hobbled by recent major surgery.
Plus, Romney came out after the election stating he really never wanted to run anyway. Thanks, Mitt.
My prediction: No Romney, ever again.
Xennady, you don’t like him. I get that. We’ll see how many agree. Think “President Hillary” and it might focus your mind.
I also thought he was going to win. The GOTV effort was terrible but was not his organization. The GOP has to do better. If you think Obama was in charge of the Democrat’s GOTV effort, I’d like to hear your evidence. Democrats are good at that, especially with dead voters. Ask Senator Norm Coleman about it.
Romney was definitely preferable to Zero. But he’s a status quo kinda guy. Count him to improve the deficit a bit and rearrange the deck chairs. Not much beyond that.
I also think it’s phenomenal that 45% of the population support Zero. Half wits. Quarter wits. And maybe that’s being generous.
>>That situation almost certainly will not be the case in 2016. Odds are people like Scott Walker, Rand Paul, and Ted Cruz will run, plus a Rick Perry not hobbled by recent major surgery.
I’d be more enthusiastic about a Walker candidacy. He seems like he’s got the backbone and vision to make some useful improvements over the status quo.
How did Obama ever pass with anyone for transparent? My affection for Romney grew – made up of respect for his quiet, his breadth, and honesty. Romney isn’t the hot date, the slick swinger. He’s the solid guy you can count on.
Perhaps it was always true, but I suspect our society favors glitz more than it used to. (Would people like Ike today?)
A Republican who can charm & argue, has wit and depth, most of all is in touch with the public & has imagination can outline, sell the kind of changes Romney and Ryan are clearly smart enough and big picture enough to execute. And they aren’t the only ones – in state after state the Republicans have kept this economy going.
I wonder, or worry, if the public has heard so much ad hominem, so many Goldstein moments, have become so sure that something not paid for by the government is denied them – I’m not sure if they can distinguish clear and real arguments.
Actually, I respect him greatly in every way except for the reason I know his name- that he ran for president of, you know.
I can’t imagine a better man will ever run for the Presidency of the United States- but we don’t really need the best man as president.
We need someone more and less than human, to ripoff a book I read long ago about Frederick the Great of Prussia.
Mittens-nope.
He ain’t that guy or gal.
Alas.
Comparing Mitt (“I invented Obamacare”) Romney to Richard (“Wage & Price Controls”) Nixon doesn’t make Romney palatable.
If Wisconsin continues to show dramatic improvements under Walker’s courageous leadership, we may have found our warrior. He has walked the walk under violent opposition and if he can continue to prevail, I think he deserves serious consideration. I sense the same sort of honesty and decency I admired in Mitt, but more bottom. I want to know more.
Mike
“Half wits. Quarter wits. And maybe that’s being generous.”
Yes, Michael Hiteshew, that’s a big part of the constituency that led us to this cluster-f, but we must always include the philistines (unions, gov’t. bureaucrats of all stripes, and corporate entities and main-street concerned only with their bottom line).
The philistines essentially believe that what benefits them (money, benefits, or power, essentially) is good. Justice, balance, and operable Republic be damned.
It’s been said before but the Tea Party types and Occupy Wall Street types have outlooks that largely overlap and this might be utilized by the right candidate.
“Comparing Mitt (“I invented Obamacare”) Romney”
This was probably the most damaging slur and Romney, for reasons that escape me, never objected. It may have been an unwillingness to disown a distorted law passed under his administration or it may have been a decision that the explanation was too complicated for the average voter.
The original idea, and this is a DNC talking point, came from Heritage on the theory that the “free rider” was a big part of the health care cost problem. Heritage has since decided that was incorrect but it has survived as a Democrat excuse. The original proposal was to mandate minimal, catastrophic health insurance for everyone so they would not be a burden on emergency rooms. Believe me, I have spent hundreds, if not thousands, of hours with these people. The original proposal in Massachusetts was quickly expanded by the Democrat legislature into an employer mandate, something not in the Heritage concept. Romney vetoed the bill and it was passed over his veto.
The results in Mass have shown an increase in ER visits as well as an increase in costs. I would not object to a minimal catastrophic care mandate but Obamacare has shown what happens when Democrat staffers get ahold of such an idea. A catastrophic care mandate could be subsidized with little or no increased cost. That will never happen.
This was probably the most damaging slur and Romney, for reasons that escape me, never objected.
He is incapable of defending his position in the public sphere and arguing against the opposition’s position effectively. That’s a prime requirement for the bully pulpit. That’s why he will not be a particularly effective president or leader.
I would not object to a minimal catastrophic care mandate but Obamacare has shown what happens when Democrat staffers get ahold of such an idea.
That’s because Democrats really are Marxists and socialists. They really do believe, despite all evidence to the contrary, that central planning, in both societies and economies, actually works. Or SHOULD work. No amount of fail, no matter how disastrous the outcome, dissuades them from this idea. It’s a religious/ideological belief.
This is worth a look.
http://www.lrb.co.uk/v36/n13/david-bromwich/the-worlds-most-important-spectator
Just from that title you know who it’s about, don’t you?
Bingo.
I also note that he refused to respond when he was accused of offshoring US jobs, or when he was accused of tax-evasion, or when he was called a murderer by a lying ex-steelworker, or…
In fact I can’t recall an occasion when Romney responded effectively to any attack by the left, ever.
That’s a picture of failure, and I expect it would have continued if he’d won the election.
I share the enthusiasm for Walker.
Obviously, it remains to be seen how well he will play nationally, even assuming he runs. But it sure would be nice to have a GOP candidate who would actually fight back against the left instead of curling up into a little ball and waiting for them to get tired of kicking.
“Santelli promised to deliver a new insurgent group in the coming weeks, modelled on the Boston Tea Party. It was a clever speech, but morally ugly on the face of it, and could have been parried. ”
This odd statement suggests the London Review of Books is similar to its New York cousin. Hard left. Why is it immoral to object to the destruction of the home mortgage market ? Millions of people bought and paid for homes since the 1930s. Only when the Democrats saw an advantage in destroying the system was it at risk. Fernand St Germain was the first Democrat to wreck it with the S&Ls. Then came the Clinton crowd plus Barney Frank.
I see your point about Romney and his reluctance to enter bare knuckle brawls with liars. All these candidates are over managed by staff and there were probably poll and focus group numbers suggesting he stay above the fray. The problem is the MSM which has a heavy thumb on the scale. Candy Crowley, for example. I do believe Romney was nonplussed by her action which was totally outside the rules of debates.
Another bizarre description of OBama’s presidency.
Jarrett, who serves the same role in this White House that Colonel House served in Woodrow Wilson’s, is the key figure in Obama’s premature post-presidency. She organizes the dinner parties in Washington and abroad, none of which appear on the president’s official schedule. For all the secrecy, the guest lists are entirely predictable. They include the sort of celebrities one sees on the red carpet at Cannes or on panels at Davos: Will Smith and Samuel L. Jackson, Colin Powell and Warren Buffett, Gayle King and Anna Wintour, the CEO of Apple and the head of the World Bank. Like the liberals who attend them, the parties are demographically diverse but intellectually uniform. Of all the boldfaced names mentioned in Budoff Brown and Epstein’s story, the only one that seems remotely capable of independent thought is, of all people, Bono, who is friendly with George W. Bush and got along with the late Jesse Helms.
As unlikely as it seems, the US voters might be ready for a serious person if the world looks like it is blowing up in 2016. I cannot think of a similar age in our history since Grant’s presidency.
I’d support Romney over Christie. Not my first choice but then my first choices rarely seem to get the nomination. On the WSJ linked article all they showed was the headline – and you had to pay. But from what they inferred what do you expect from a narcissist?
An interesting sidelight on the Republican thinking from this article by Sam Tanenhouse.
“The result of the 2012 election was more disorienting than the ’08 election,” Ponnuru said. He described his futile attempt to educate House members at their annual retreat in January 2013, when Ponnuru worked through data showing that the loss couldn’t be pinned on Romney alone. “As much as people say Romney was a weak candidate, he ran ahead of Senate candidates in almost every state” — a crucial point that Ponnuru mentioned to the Republican caucus. “I would have expected these guys, being political professionals, to know that,” he said. “They didn’t know it. They knew that Romney lost, and they knew that they won, and that was about all they knew.”
Romney won’t win the primaries in 2016 for the same reason he lost the General election in 2012…he won;’t come out and say he will repeal Obamacare.
He will lose to the any reasonable Republican primary opponent that does so.
He was a failure. Anyone having to run with hope n’ change would have to have been willing to “go there”. Romney was not. None of them were. With so much low-hanging fruit it seems it would have been very interesting with a real opponent. After this Cochran/McDaniel fiasco I have zero confidence that what needs to happen will. It’s as though the GOP is playing ball with the bastards.
@Trent – who will be the nominee? The GOP base is aching for a new Reagan but there are none on the horizon.
>>It’s as though the GOP is playing ball with the bastards.
Surprised? I’m not. That’s why there’s a Tea Party.
Surprised? I’m not. That’s why there’s a Tea Party
That refuses to die even as the MSM and republican establishment keeps proclaiming it’s demise.