You remember Hillary? She had the money, organization and political support to make her nomination all but inevitable. Except for one thing–an intense personal dislike of the voting public.
Seems to me Romney is in the same boat. He has the money & organization, but seems to lack some impoartant political backing and an uncertain voting public. I am sure his Mormonism will turn off a lot of voters–especially the christian fundamentalists who would consider him a worshiper of a false prophet.
It’s true that Romney has had trouble winning over parts of the conversative establishment (because he’s not a hardline conservative) and parts of the religious right (same, and the Mormon thing). I don’t see how this was true of Hillary Clinton in 2008. She had the Democratic establishment firmly behind her.
I’m wondering, based on the recent NY state by-election, whether or not the Republican establishment hasn’t gone overboard on the red meat here. Romney is the only major Republican candidate who hasn’t signed on to the kill-Medicare idea and he created what was at the time a perfectly acceptible to Republicans health care program in Massachusets.
In the by-election, steadfast Republicans made pretty clear what they think of killing Medicare. Is it possible that the Republican voters are not as extreme as the ditto-head/Palin/tea part wing are trying to make them?
The way the Republican establishment is going, they are marginalizing themselves pretty badly. I won’t shed any tears; I’m a Democrat. But you’d think the money guys would be kind of concerned. Has the beast they unleashed trying to win in 2008 gotten out of control?
That’s basically the problem the party has right now. They need the Tea Party’s enthusiasm, but the more they adopt its positions, the more problems they have with moderate and independent voters.
Romney does have one problem in common with Hillary Clinton in that a lot of people see them both as pure politicians who will say anything to get elected. Maybe that’s what the OP meant about contempt for the public.
Here’s an article which runs a fact check on Mitt’s recent statements attacking Obama.
I thought Romney was actually the reasonable version of a Republican. Turns out he’s just about as full of crap as the rest of them.
Hillary? I don’t know how GOPers saw her, maybe she was just another dem to them. To me, she was respectable but has an annoying voice and is a little wooden/robotic.
In addition, Hillary never could quite get away from her Iraq war vote, and it’s possible Romney won’t be able to get away from Romney/ObamaCare.
I have issues with trying to put Hillary and Mitt in the same boat. To me their campaign issues seem more opposite then alike.
Hillary was very liked by her Democratic base but was not seen as viable for general election so many Democrats chose Obama as a safer candidate to win in the general. Hillary won most of the bluer states.
Mitt is not liked by the Republican party base but is more seen as more viable in the general election. Mitt lost most the reddest states.
So Hilary was to blue to win in her primary, while Mitt wasn’t red enough to win in
his. To me those are very different animals but both get knocked off the evolutionary ladder.
I remember people being concerned she just had too much baggage, but I’m not sure how many people voted for Obama for that reason.
Romney will likely be the same in 2012 as McCain was in 2008.
They’re both shitty years with a terrible field of candidates. McCain got it due to a combination of “Well, it IS kind of his turn this time” and simply being the default candidate.
Same thing that will happen to Romney this year, unless someone really primaries the hell out out of his magic underwear and death panels.
-Joe
McCain got the nomination because the people who got ahead of him early fucked it up. Romney couldn’t win over the far right, Huckabee couldn’t win over the economic conservatives, Thompson didn’t really want the job, and when people got to know Giuliani, they couldn’t help noticing what an odious shitheel he is. It’s not because everyone decided it was McCain’s turn. He’d been left for dead earlier in the campaign.
OK, so the voters aren’t too fond of Romney, but whom do they like better? I mean, someone’s got to win the Republican nomination.
Mitt Romney is the new Ed Muskie.
And after all that he was the default candidate. He didn’t win the nomination. He was just all that was left. You know. “Default”.
-Joe
One might consider that if Hillary was running in the GOP primary (that is, in a series of predominantly winner-take-all primaries) she would have won easily.
I believe I heard that the GOP is doing more proportional primaries this time, but I don’t have a cite for that. If not, Mitt might not mind being the “new Hillary” since that would be good enough to win easily.
The difference between Hillary 2008 and Mitt 2012 is that you could find enthusiastic Hillary supporters, and Hillary didn’t have to disavow her previous experience. Not to mention, you never had to guess whether Hillary was believing the words coming out of her mouth.
The reason Clinton lost is that Obama’s staff did a superb job of using an Internet to create a fund-raising and organizational effort that was as large as the establishment’s. My memory tells me he earned a lot more money than she did, though he had to do it with much smaller average contributions. The Clinton campaign didn’t get the internet in the same way and it cost her. (I didn’t get it either, because I thought her mainstream organization would overcome his lack of one.)
The question I have - and asked in other threads to no response - is who on the Republican side is doing this? Someone will emerge as the major opponent to Romney. I’ve said before that ideology doesn’t matter in a presidential campaign; that is, it can take you out but not make you a viable candidate. There are several ideological candidates with strong approval, but I don’t see Palin or Bachmann or Paul leveraging those into mainstream runs.
Who’s left? Who’s raising the most money? Who has the state and county leaders? Who has the phone banks?
If the answer is no one, then it’s Romney. But he isn’t popular enough to avoid having the opposition coalesce around one candidate. I just can’t figure out who that’s going to be. None of the usual indicators work. But the principle stands. Whoever has the best organization and the most money wins.
While Hillary had all the obvious advantages, her campaign was way too confident of success, and there was a lot more dissension than in Obama’s campaign. I don’t think Romney is going to be disorganized in that way. I think they’ll be similar in the sense that they are clear frontrunners who are going to lose, though. Trump’s numbers clearly indicate that the Republican base doesn’t really like anyone - or that they are complete idiots, also possible.
The McCain campaign was in major debt during the early primaries in 2008, and was something of a mess even when the financial situation started to pick up (probably because it had to rehire a bunch of staff and start partially from scratch once it started to win primaries and the money started flowing again). So I think the identity of the candidate is actually more important then the quality of their campaign, at least in some cases.
I recall watching him during a Republican debate on Fox in early 2008. He supports torture, but at least he’s not a creationist. Or so he said at the time.
I don’t really disagree with this, but my point isn’t getting across.
The campaign only starts to matter after the primaries start. You know who lead all the polls in 2007? Rudy Giuliani. By a large margin. But he was never a viable candidate. Huckabee took the Iowa caucuses, as expected, but McCain won New Hampshire. The big money was waiting to see which way things were going to fall. Sure McCain had debt, but who didn’t? Who was pulling in the big money previously? New Hampshire was Feb. 5. Was there really any doubt after that?
The year before the election is silly season. Unless they all decide to get behind one candidate, none of this posturing matters to big money. They will back a winner. The wild card is the small donor. But that only works if you can organize them and concentrate their effect.
With everybody just getting into the race I suppose it’s too early for any campaign finance reporting to be available. I think it’s done by quarters so early October is the date to circle.