Which of the following candidates would you prefer as the GOP’s nominee?Oh, right-wing bloggers! Why do you hate reality?
Mitt Romney: 47.1% (32 votes)
An as of yet unknown candidate selected at a brokered convention: 52.9% (36 votes)
March 5, 2012
"Mitt Romney FINALLY appears to have become the consensus nominee in the blogosphere."
Email from John Hawkins, who posts his survey results here. It's not that clear-cut for Mitt. In particular:
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Blogospherians worship Romney because they worship Mormons. Even those who disagree with Mormons on theological grounds still are head over heels in love with the Mormon lifestyle.
Not much explanation needed, really. Right-wing bloggers are functioning, at least to some extent, as pundits, and thus share in pundits' long-standing obsession with brokered conventions.
@Peter: Really? I've been impressed that so few of the posts discussing Mitt at sites that support him even mention the religion angle. It's almost always his detractors who bring it up.
ePeter's comment, that people are in love with Mormons makes absolutely no sense. Methinks it is his anti-Mormon sentiments being expressed .
They don't hate reality--well, they may, but not necessarily in this case.
They hate the catastrophe they foresee with Romney and favor an alternative.
As do I.
Romney is a lose-lose:
1. Either he goes down in defeat, and because he doesn't mobilize various groups, many good people lose down-ballot.
Or:
2. He wins, tinkers around the edges, and succeeds merely in making things work well enough to postpone the fiscal reckoning--thus rescuing Leviathan.
The fiscal problem, as bad as it is, isn't the worst problem; the worst problem is the anti-constitutional, omni-competent State that gives everything, cares for everyone and decides everything.
Romney will, if he succeeds at all, merely make it all work well enough to live on until the next crisis; meanwhile more people forget what it means to be free.
This could be entertaining.
He really has Rush and the Apology stuff to thank for his ascent. I think the majority of voters agree with Mitt when he says the issue is the economy, and not social issues or the idea that somehow, somewhere, someone is having fun. And that lets all the air out of the Social Conservatives' campaign balloons.
I think the far right crowd has gotten a good scare with Santorum's recent bump and the contraception controversy. They see that Romney is the only candidate with an ice cube's chance in hell of beating Obama.
He's not great. But he's the right guy for right now, and he gets us to 2016 without any further damage done to the Constitution, and he just might undo enough of the damage that's already been done that we start out 2016 on a more even keel.
He has been the default nominee for a year now.
The only proviso was if a Conservative could beat him.
None have, so I disagree it's a case of FINALLY.
It's always been there in the background. Now that the others have been vetted, he's still standing.
I honestly don’t get this fascination with brokered conventions. It seems to me that the one of the most important functions of the primary process is to vet potential candidates before one of them becomes the nominee so that we don’t have an “October Surprise” when it’s too late to change our minds. The other function (and this is one of the benefits of having a longer campaign) is that by the time the general election starts, we’ll have a nominee who’s experienced in speaking on the national stage and knows how to carry themselves when people finally start to pay attention. I’d rather someone makes a flub during a debate that no one will remember in eight months than when it counts.
A brokered convention just means we’re going to get someone who hasn’t been vetted for the last several months. Any skeletons in their closet are going to come out at the worst possible time when it’s too late to change our minds. Also they’re going to be on the steep end of the learning curve at a time when every flub and misstatement is going to get maximum attention.
I can get why Obama supporters would want a brokered convention. Why conservatives who want to defeat him would want one, not so much.
He really has Rush and the Apology stuff to thank for his ascent. I think the majority of voters agree with Mitt when he says the issue is the economy, and not social issues or the idea that somehow, somewhere, someone is having fun. And that lets all the air out of the Social Conservatives' campaign balloons.
I think that MM is right here. Maybe it was luck, or maybe it was skill, but Romney managed to avoid the bullet back in January when the Dems were rolling out this attack, trying to change the debate from the way that they had destroyed the economy to the Republicans stealing their lady parts from all the women voters in this country.
And, so, I think that Rick Santorum's campaign is going to deflate. Not because he couldn't be a good candidate, or a good President, because I think that he could. But, because he is too closely tied to the social conservative side of the Republican Party, at a time when we need to be running on the economy, size and reach of the government, and the massive level of debt incurred by the Dems over the last 5 years.
Romney had good instincts with that Stephenopolous interview, for someone who seems to have a fairly tin ear. Santorum though seems to have been too easily led astray here.
As I have said before, but will repeat here. The next Republican President is going to have to take a meat axe to the federal government, and esp. to the 5% of GDP that the Dems have added to it over the last 5 years. Romney is credible as the candidate who has the training, skill, and inclination to do so. That was how me made all that money with Bain Capital.
No one (I'm looking at you Fr. Martin Fox) should expect the next president to instantly repair all of the fiscal and social ills that the nation is currently subject to. You refer to Leviathan, and that is apt. The sheer momentum of the thing is the biggest obstacle to reform, and no president,no matter how doctrinaire a conservative he might be, can do more than nudge the Leviathan in the right direction. In fact, it would be disastrous for the person in the White House to have the power to do more. What it boils down to is that there is never a "good" candidate for president, only one that is less awful than the rest. I am proud to throw my support behind Mitt Romney, who is currently the least awful Republican.
I agree with Thorley Winston. We have watched Romney, Santorum, and maybe Gingrich improve since we started this process late last year. Romney, really quite a bit. I don't think that he was ready for prime time 4 years ago, and, indeed, probably not last year. But I think that he is now, and is likely to do as well as any other Republican out there against Obama.
If a majority of Republicans want a brokered convention to prevent Romney from being the nominee, it's obvious he's going to lose the election.
The only problem is the Republican rubes are pining for the frothy joke and there is no one credible to challenge Romney.
I wonder how many Republicans will be calling for Romney to step down as the nominee after the convention when they realize how much trouble they are in. For example, George Will's column saying they should give up against Obama.
Tyrone Slothrop said...
No one (I'm looking at you Fr. Martin Fox) should expect the next president to instantly repair all of the fiscal and social ills that the nation is currently subject to.
Definitely. The Demos have been working on this catastrophe for 80 years and it will be an iterative process.
Someone (can't remember who) said we might see a period of one term Presidents similar to the post-Civil War era.
Wouldn't be a bit surprised.
Last polls I've found (pre-AZ and MI) had Santorum up 20 points in my state (Tennessee), but now the word on the street is that Romney has a chance here. That's a big change.
I had the chance to see him yesterday, and it was fantastic. I was very impressed, and clearly not the only one. The place was packed, with people waiting outside just to get a glance at him.
@edutcher
Much as I would like to agree with you, I can't. The R's have spent just as poorly, if a little slower than the D's. In fact, in about every aspect of government, except for national defense(read armed services), the R's are far too often willing accomplices in the mismanagement.
Fr Martin Fox>Brer Fox,= Brer Rabbit.
Tyrone:
Quite right. I definitely do not expect the next President to cure all that ails us.
The Presidency is not my focus. Far more power resides in Congress, if there is a will to use it. Obviously, the combination of a Congress and a President who will wield the power effectively is immense.
President Obama has demonstrated this to all of us with Obamacare, which may well survive even his defeat this fall, were he to be defeated.
So this is one reason I'm so concerned about someone like Romney, and why Bush's ascendency in 2000 absolutely depressed me--and things have, if anything, played out even worse than I predicted (to my friends) back then.
Even if Romney wins--especially if he wins--the Congress is not ready for prime time, and the signs of life among the conservatives in Congress will wane.
Only a Republican who will wage full war on Leviathan from the White House can help Congress get better. Someone like Ron Paul, or someone who might emerge from an open convention, however improbable those scenarios may be. (Doubt improbable scenarios? Repeat after me: "President Barack Obama.")
A President Romney/Santorum/Gingrich all foreshadow a worsening overall correlation of forces.
Any of them as nominees means either a sterile victory, followed by the GOP gaining the White House, managing to make Leviathan work better, or else being on the defensive against Dems in Congress (think back to Bush I), fixing a few things--and giving Dems more to complain about and mobilize over for 2014/16, but not doing the things that actually help long-term.
Or, we face a 2012 loss that costs us many good people in Congress because good people aren't mobilized on Election Day.
Lose-lose.
I do think there's a winning scenario--meaning a way to roll back Leviathan apart from the let it all blow up scenario--but not with Romney.
Luckily, after Obama's election, this isn't as depressing because I've been through this sham once before. I won't be voting. I'm probably done with the political process altogether. A recent study says the electorate is too stupid to pick candidates wisely and, whether that was true in the past, it's certainly a revealed truth now.
Nora said, "He's not great. But he's the right guy for right now,..." forgetting he's got a cult behind him just chomping at the bit for a chance to take power - finally.
Willing sheep to the slaughter.
America deserves so much better than the citizens it has now,...
Of course, Crack, we saw how the Mormon "cult" insidiously took over the institutions, establishment, and levers of power in MA! Scary stuff.
Burnishing your lawyerly credentials HUH?
Looking at minoirity numbers and phrasing it as a majority. AWESOME
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