Romney has spoken out against Trump in a highly publicized speech this morning.
I did not see it live, but based on the quotes in the article, I think he is preaching to the choir. The Trump voters are not going to respond to statements like
Half of those words are going to be unrecognizable to the majority of Trump supporters. Let’s face it, Trump has unified the “dumb” Republican vote and if the GOP wants to right this ship, they need to speak in a way that’s going to reach these people. Another example:
I don’t think any of those phrases mean much to Trump’s supporters. It’s all over their heads.
I think the “con man” strategy is not a bad tact to use, but they have to stay on message in order for people to understand what they mean. They don’t need specifics, they just need to say, “Trump has fooled you. He is a rich man who has bought and sold politicians his entire life. Now he wants to be the boss. But he is not a leader. He is a loud mouthed bully. As president, he will be an embarrassing joke to the rest of the world. Don’t let our country become a joke.”
A chorus of people saying things like Romney and Christie (before last week) have said will keep a lot of middle of the road types from jumping on the bandwagon. That’s the plan, at least.
As much as I hate to applaud Romney, I give him credit for having the courage to speak out against the unspeakable Trump. I fear that it is too little, too late, and that Trump will sweep Florida and Ohio and make the dump Trump movement impotent. Kudos to his writer for this gem:
I posted about this in the Trump campaign thread, but I think it will have the exact same effect as it would if he were preaching abstinence to a room full of drunk horny teenaged boys and their prom dates. The tone-deafness was amazing.
When Trump announced his press conference on Super Tuesday, part of me was expecting him to announce that he was renouncing the GOP and running 3rd party, instead he tried to solidify a position as the standard bearer of the Republican party.
And all of the original candidates DID pledge to support the eventual winner of the nomination. If they break that pledge I don’t think Trump’s going to let it slide.
You seriously think those who all voted for Trump are “dumb”? Face it, Rubio, Cruz and Kasich are not winning most of the votes, Romney and the Republican establishment are playing with fire.
Why would the front runner who is getting most of the Republican vote go for independent bid? That is as stupid as Hillary Clinton going for a independent bid?! Trump will not walk away from his delegates and launch a third party bid.
Not all of them. Some of them have deluded themselves into thinking he’ll fall into line, and others are just hateful little shits who think Trump will give “those other folk” a good going over with a baseball bat.
Suck for the likes of Rubio. He keeps losing and only managed a a last minute win in Minnesota. Marco rubio is no Ronald Reagan, he is Walter Mondale.
Oh and Republican turnout is at all time high, whereas democratic turnout is low. Sucks for Hillary Clinton. Although Bernie Sanders’ message is the best of all, but truth is democrats are turning out as much. Votes matter you know.:D;)
Republican turnout is also due to people motivated to vote against Trump. Many are now concluding that if Trump is the nominee, they won’t even vote. Sucks to be Trump.
Really, is that why despite anyone dropping out, no other individual became the front runner? Sucks even more for the likes of Cruz, Rubio and their backers. Trump is leading in the home states of Kasich and Rubio. March 15 will be brutal.
Somebody’s gotta do it. Mitt and the establishment so badly don’t want Trump that Mitt said the party’s best ideas are coming from “Ted Cruz, Marco Rubio and John Kasich.” You know it had to burn his ass to praise Ted Cruz.
As the OP points out, Mitt was not talking to Trump’s base. Neither he, nor anyone rooted in the GOP establishment, could sway Trump’s supporters. But, again, someone had to say something.
I think the part of the GOP power base that Romney represents could easily have calculated that it would be better for the party to have Hillary than Trump in 2016.
If that’s the calculation, then an action like this doesn’t have to sway half of the GOP primary electorate to stop supporting Trump. It just has to sway a couple of percentage points of the general electorate.
So to me the more interesting question is whether it creates as much support as it saps, by further painting Trump as a radical figure who fits no party establishment.
I, too, give him props for getting out there and giving his party an alternative message. Too little? Too late? Most likely, but still, he did it. Mittens has what passes for gravitas in the Republican party, a statement it scares me to make, but who’s the alternative, Palin? Huckabee? So like it or not, Romney is the de facto face of the conservative side of the GOP. That being said, I don’t think he holds much weight among the torch-bearing, pitchfork-hoisting peasants who are following Trump up the hill to kill the Obama-stein monster.
What does seem clear at this point is that the common fella is tired of the GOP’s policies of doing nothing, and their laser-focused attention toward thwarting Obama at the expense of making any progress or good use of their current advantage in Congress. I have to hand to Average Joe on that - he works all day and tries to be productive and he expects a similar work ethic from his politician. But Joe is average for a reason, and he’s mistaken Trumps’ bombast for the ability to take action and get things done, and this is the reason why he’s looking to Trump.
If the Republicans want to do any real damage control, they will get their folks in Washington to accomplish something, anything. That will get Joe’s attention far more than all the speechifying in the world can do.
Actually, I never said I really thought he would go third party but I think he might threaten it, implicitly if not explicitly. I really don’t know what the strategy will be if his own party actively turns against him but I’m sure it’ll be interesting.