I keep meaning to update and summarize my 2007 opus on Mitt Romney, but for now, here’s a bookmark post that collects the links.
The five part 2007 series on Romney:
Part I: If We Nominate Him, We’re Gonna Lose
Part II: The Experience Factor and The War
Part III: What, Precisely, Does This Man Stand For?
Part IV: Campaigning Like A Democrat
Part V: The “M” Word
From 2008: Why I backed McCain over Romney
Romney’s hostility to the suburbs.
From 2011: David Brooks Likes The Crease of Mitt Romney’s Pants
From 2012: On Romney, Bain and Keeping Your Integrity
An Open Letter to Jim DeMint
8 thoughts on “The Romney Reader”
Comments are closed.
Thanks Crank – should have posted this at the start of the season. This series it what shifted me from Romney supporter to tepid.
I do think the McCain over Romney support has been shown wrong in retrospect, and that for example Hugh Hewitt’s analysis that McCain’s military strength would be eroded by the general and McCain would be unable to hit BHO on his weak spot w/r/t executive experience.
On the other hand Romney may end up in similar spot this general – if the economy has any momentum his fix it argument will be weaker and Romney basically weakens the ability to attack Obama for Obamacare. (Instead of full out attack on it, all we’re left with is: FEDERALISM. Which I think is a Tea Party attack, but not a broad populist attack.)
I had hoped for a better showing from Perry – if he could have gotten traction when his poll numbers went up, he would have been fine. But a series of unforced errors (and a poor campaign infrastructure) have exposed him as not ready for a national campaign. Sad. Even if Romney and Perry had gone head to head and Romney been able to win, I think it would have been good for Romney and the anti-Romney vote would not have felt arm twisted. That’s not really Romney’s fault, but it will hurt him.
Hopefully he can consolidate his pitch as a deficit hawk/budget balancing guy, which will work even if the economy has some green shoots.
As I wrote frequently at the time, the political environment was always challenging for the GOP in 2008, and turned poisonous after the credit crisis. I really don’t think anyone could have won under those circumstances. McCain made some major errors in the campaign, but on the whole he was not a terrible candidate, given the parameters. He was ahead in the polls the first week or two of September, which was more than anyone expected. I still don’t think Romney would have done any better.
The Mitt problem is one of the GOP own making. After Obama was elected the GOP plan was to double down on railing against anything Obama. A more prudent plan would have been to iron out the GOP internal issues and develop some real candidates. Instead this Primary season the GOP has trotted a menagerie of Carnival Barkers and low and behold Mitt has come out ahead by a simple strategy of staying under the radar and spending gobs of cash.
Hilarious! The Presidential election after vulture capitalists caused the financial crisis, which led to a recession with close to 20% real unemployment/ underemployment, the GOP is nominating Mitt Romney. I assume Alan Greenspan wasn’t available.
It is amusing to see a creature of pure Republican policy and business ethics be criticized by other GOP candidates for being exactly that: A scrupulous, consciousless, opportunistic bastard.
Republican and Democrat are parties not philosophies. It’s fine to say Romney is a creation of Republican policy and business (hardly seems the case – more like he’s a creation of HBS), but your opinion is yours to have.
On the other hand, makes perfect sense for someone like Crank to try and get a candidate that aligns with his conservative philosophy.
Finally its hard to be both scrupulous and “consciousless” at the same time.
It’s not just Jim. Scrupulous has joined “literally” as one of the most misused words in modern vernacular.
It’s called a Blackberry. It is difficult, at least with this site, to read what you have typed. I think we have covered this topic in the past. We gave up killing each other over typos, incorrect syntax and what not a long time ago.
Clearly Mitt is inscrupulous along with a whole host of other things that imply he is utterly unqualified to be POTUS.