My theory:
Out of all the possible candidates he did the best Reagan impersonation, and he evinced a willingness to tout the Party line over his personal beliefs.
What do you think?
No one else ran that was vaguely qualified and electable. And while the base tried very hard to nominate “not-Romney” because they trusted him as much as the electorate ended up doing so - they really couldn’t get behind any one not-Romney.
Many of the other candidates only had base (Santorium, Bachmann), carried too much baggage (Gingrich) or came off as blithering idiots (Perry).
Had they managed to get Chris Christie to run, it might have been a different election.
Yep, I really can’t blame them for going with Romney given who volunteered to run. I can’t imagine any of the others doing as well except maybe Pawlenty or Huntsman. But they were both too similar to Romney to gain any traction.
Obviously crazy people (Bachmann, Cain)
Unpopular Extremists (Bachmann, Santorum)
Idiots (Perry)
Megalomaniacs (Gingrich, Trump)
Who else did they have who was reasonably intelligent AND moderate enough to attract enough votes to win the election?
They pushed Huntsman aside too easily for silly reasons. The man isn’t a Moderate, he’s a Conservative.
So despite all their propoganda about wanting/needing a “True [del]Scotsman[/del] Conservative”, they ended up with the more moderate appearing guy who won the actual vote of the PEOPLE in their primaries.
There were other potential plausible names floated (Mitch Daniels, John Thune, etc) who took themselves out of the race before it even started. Whether they didn’t think Obama was weak enough or didn’t want to subject themselves to Romney’s six year old Presidential Political Death Machine in the primaries, I couldn’t tell you.
I agree with what’s been said; the Republican Party had a very weak field of presidential candidates and they chose the best candidate from that weak field. One thing I don’t understand is why Tim Pawlenty fared so badly in the primaries. He would seem to have the positive qualities that Romney had (intelligence, political experience, good hair) while lacking Romney’s negative qualities (Mormonism, long history of firing employees and destroying American companies.)
Paw-paw is definitely kicking himself in the behind today for quitting while the quitting looked good.
The problem they have as I see it is to get the nomination you have to appeal to Crazies. Most potential non-crazy candidates either don’t run or can’t get off the ground.
Unfortunately people who appeal to Crazies are also Crazy and aren’t shy about it and as the primaries unfold the Non-Crazy element of the general voting population poll heavily against voting Crazy so the power brokers have to scrabble and fight to get a non-crazy candidate past the crazies.
That leaves by default whichever rich old white (relatively) non-crazy guy, who was able to fund his campaign from his own and his mates money is still standing.
But by then he has pandered so much to the Crazies that he starts the real campaign tied up in knots and isn’t exactly going to tick the ‘Understands People Like Me’ electoral box.
And then he has to run in a pack of baying loons, each one of which is a ticking media time-bomb likely to say something crazy about rape or otherwise alienate a considerable segment of the electorate.
And that’s if you can stop the rich old white guy speaking his true mind behind what he touchingly imagines is ‘closed doors’.
The USA will only have the sensible, electable right of centre party it needs once the Tea Party/Evangelical/Lunatic Libertarians have been emphatically shown the door.
The best thing that could happen for the Republicans now is for all those maniacs to form their own party. It might mean writing off the Presidency for another 8 years after this while the Crazy Party implodes in an orgy of electoral insanity but that might well be the price you have to pay.
Well, it’s true that there was a weak field. But that’s caused by an incumbent in the field. The players with better potential stayed out.
I agree that, of the ones in the race, Romney and Pawlenty were the two most likely to win. But it just didn’t happen.
They had two choices: someone crazy/stupid enough to believe things like cutting taxes will fix the deficit or someone smart enough to know better and able to convincingly lie about it. That left Romney.
I also disagree that it was the crazies controlling the race. Sure, there was a lot of nuttiness in the primary season but that’s due to the field. Had a really top-flight contender like Jeb Bush or Christie got in (I disagree on Mitch Daniels as he’s just not charismatic enough) the craziers would have been forced out earlier and we would have seen an earlier movement towards an adult choice. But as it was it allowed Cain and Bachmann et al. to dominate the discussion for way too long.
Romney did, however, lack the courage of his convictions to say ‘Screw the crazy base. I’m the competent business-oriented candidate. I can ride out the craziness with my mad money.’ Had he done that instead of pandering he still might have made it through the primary season and been the candidate without all of those ugly, harmful soundbites out there. God knows he wasn’t going to drop out for lack of money.
He had to pander to beat out Gingrich. If he’d gone a shade to his left, Gingrich would have taken several primaries from him, IMO.
Jeb Bush, maybe. And I emphasize maybe, for obvious reasons.
Christie, I din’t think so. I don’t see him appealing to the crazies in the ways Bachmann or Santorum can.
As for the OP, it was a process of elimination rather than anything else. Republicans don’t really like Romney all that much, but the others either flamed out or just couldn’t appeal beyond the crazies for more than a few weeks.
As a Minnesotan, I remain mystified by the idea that Tim Pawlenty could (or should) have gone anywhere in this.
Also, I seem to remember that in the 2008 election, John McCain was chosen and Mittens was consoled with the promise that he’d be chosen for this go round. He might have seen it as his due.
He was by far the best candidate. He had a legitimate resume at a time when business experience was probably more valuable than it would be in a typical presidential election, he could make a good presentation of his views, and this one is sometimes overlooked but can’t be overstated: he wasn’t a complete fucking maniac who touted moon colonies or thought vaccines made people retarded or had an obsession with sinful gay sex. I think way too much is made of the whole concept of appearing Presidential, but Romney did know how to position himself as someone who was trying to reason with people and appeal to the country at large (even when he was not) and the others didn’t really do that. His flaws were real but he really was the only one who was even remotely acceptable as a national candidate, and that’s why you won’t see any of these rejects and losers and loons make a serious run in 2016. If it turns out I’m wrong maybe I can find a publisher for a book about the 2016 GOP primary process called “Rejects, Loons and Losers.”
So do I. I never understood why people thought Pawlenty could’ve been the guy to capitalize on the lukewarm support for Romney. He was every bit as boring as Romney, didn’t have the business experience, and to top it off I don’t think he liked campaigning very much. He coined “Obamneycare” and then ran away from it as fast as he possibly could. Compare that to the conservative group, particularly Santorum, who (rightly) said Romney was the worst person to campaign against Obama on that issue. Of course I think we can see at this point that the Republicans thought the country was still furious by the ACA in a way that it really was not.
Just to note that Pawlenty didn’t even make it that far. He ended his campaign after finishing third in the Iowa straw poll (behind Bachmann and Cain) in August of 2011. So, he was long gone before there were any actual primaries or caucuses.
I’ve never heard anything like this, and there’s no way that anyone could promise and actually deliver on such a commitment.
I think it’s pretty simple: Romney had a fair bit of national exposure going into the 2012 campaign by virtue of his (limited) success in the 2008 primaries, and he ran a fine primary campaign to capitalize on that. The two other major contenders who were nationally known (Ron Paul and Newt Gingrich) were both atrocious, unlikable candidate who were ticking time bombs. It’s clear that Rick Perry and Michelle Bachmann are in the Sarah Palin universe of politics, and Huntsman was dead in the water from the get-go. Who does that leave, Santorum? Is that “The Rent is Too Damn High” guy a Republican? Romney seems to be a fairly decent choice among that group.
I don’t fault Romney for being a terrible candidate or running a bad campaign. He did well. He was beaten soundly, but this election wasn’t a blowout. He’s no Barry Goldwater or Walter Mondale; he did better than Bob Dole and almost as well as John Kerry.
If I were to make a WAG, however, Huckabee may have put up a stiffer fight than Romney.
Agree that Romney ended up being the one that was indeed “Presidential” when all was said and done - see his performance in the first debate, coming off strong but not nuts.
A lot of the more plausible candidates sat this one out in part out of worry about the Tea Party faction coming down on them in the primary, and partly out of a normal hesitancy to run vs. a non-catastrophic incumbent, however flawed.
On paper, T-Paw isn’t that bad of a candidate. He’s got solidly working-class roots, stood his ground on taxes, and had a “Walmart conservatives, not country club conservatives” message that I think really could’ve resonated. Problem is that he’s got **zero **charisma, even for a Minnesotan. If you think Romney was white-bread…
I didn’t agree with much of what he did as governor and think that he left MN probably worse off than he found it, but I can see how on paper he looks not too shabby. The reality is something else entirely.