Sorry, but the lady’s right. From my New York Post column today:
Lost in the weekend’s back-to-back debates in New Hampshire was this illuminating remark by Democratic strategist Donna Brazile after Saturday night’s soporific contest in Manchester: “Mitt Romney won tonight because no one touched him. And for Democrats, you know what? It was good news for us . . . because we believe that the weakest candidate is the candidate that the Republicans are not attacking. And that’s Mitt Romney.”
The remark drew guffaws from some of the other assembled party faithful and media commentators, but Brazile spoke the truth. Democrats do believe that Romney is eminently beatable, the perfect foil for President Obama, in fact.
And yesterday’s debate on “Meet the Press” amply illustrated her point.
This will probably bring me the usual array of brickbats, but let me, as the president likes to say, be perfectly clear. I have nothing against Mitt Romney. He’s a fine, intelligent man. He’d very likely be a good president — certainly better than the one we have now — and if he’s the candidate, I’ll probably vote for him.
But is he the candidate the hour calls for? Plainly not. He shows no sense of the urgency of the tasks before him, nor of the enormity of the catastrophe awaiting him. His Bain Capital record is going to be a liability, not the plus he thinks it is, since the the GOP is going to have to defend it in theory (the joys of creative destruction capitalism) while the media-wired Democrats will sob-sister it to death (bread lines and soup kitchens).
Meanwhile, Democrats and their media allies have been busy measuring Romney for the Occupy Wall Street/One Percenter memorial bad-guy suit. They can’t wait to rip him apart over his background as a corporate turnaround specialist who may have saved some golden parachutes but put ordinary folks out of work.
Which is why Romney needs to experience this assault from his own side first, to toughen him up for next fall. Off yesterday’s evidence, he’s still got a long way to go before he learns how to respond.
As Rich notes below, Romney’s a formidably weak frontrunner, and one can only hope that Maggie is right that Santorum and Gingrich have been keeping their powder dry for South Carolina. Because I just don’t see any evidence that either Mitt or Team Romney will be able to go toe-to-toe with Barry & Co. in the fall. The Dems have already telegraphed a good deal of their playbook — they’ll paint him as a nervous, grinning, stuttering, heartless capitalist who’s also a “weird” social-issues nut — and hope to scare the hell out of the electorate, which by now has grown used to the dull pain of the Obama administration.
Thus George Stephanopoulos’ bizarre fixation on Saturday with the absurd non-issue of whether the states can ban contraception. Romney was right to call the question “silly” and treat it with the incredulous contempt it deserved.
But expect more of this as the campaign progresses, as the Democratic media complex desperately tries to change the subject from Obama’s failed stewardship to those nutty Christian moralizers on the right.
Will the Republicans let them get away with it? Or will they heed Brazile’s words and make sure they field their toughest candidate in November? Because this race is not to the swift, but the strong.
Whatever the NYPost is paying you to write this stuff, it's way too much.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseFor every person the Dems can peddle being dislocated by Bain Capital, the GOP can assemble 1,000,000 or more persons whose lives have crumbled under Obama and Democratic economic policies.
Sorry, I'm not sold on this line of attack, particularly when Obama, Pelosi, et al are millionaires who spend their holidays in Hawaii.
Romney is the ideal antitode to Obama this fall, because millions of independents, seniors, soccer moms and moderates are looking for a calm and reassuring alternative to the Obama economy. We want the most seasoned and non-threatening GOP candidate imaginable, and that is Romney.
Come Labor Day, Obama will have the Rose Garden. Gingrich and others would have the tabloids. The debates, contrary to what Newt says, become irrelevant, because people will have stopped listening to him at that point.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseI've got similar thoughts. The problem right now is that no one in gov't is willing to fire anybody. They keep on endlessly expanding gov't spending and bureacracy. Can't the case be made that the kind of tough-minded person who is willing to pink-slip folks is just the sort of person we need as President?
The idea that anyone with private sector experience making tough decisions can't be elected is to accept the Occupy way of thinking.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseI don't know that Donna Brazile has spoken the truth about anything at any point in her life.
She's an operative who is in communication with other operatives to carefully craft her arguments before any of her news channel appearances.
Like Newt with the NYT, you should know you're too invested in an argument when you quote your enemies in an intramural fight.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseIf the rethuglican nomination doesn't last until at least June, we're in trouble.
Look how it worked out for Barry Sowerto in 2008. Billary was the inevitable president-in-waiting.
If Mitt (God help us!) is the new Billary, she needs to be REALLY bloodied before she has to take on Barry Sowerto and the media wing of the democrat party.
Oh mr president thank you gracious God power to the people oh ba ma
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseThis will probably bring me the usual array of brickbats...
Maybe not so much.
I've hurled some junk at you...the nastiest and harshest backtalk that I thought I could get away with. But the hostility to you has not been about your reasonable opposition to Romney; it has been about your sophomoric mocking of his name and such immature tackiness. I didn't see anything like that today although I admit that I didn't read closely as I don't have high expectations that would justify much of my careful attention to your comments.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseIf you care so little, why bother reading? Or, for that matter, taking the time to comment? There's a portion of your life that you'll never get back.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseYes, we need to field our toughest candidate. Who is that again?
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseGingrich or Michelle Bachmann.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseMichael Walsh,
I believe you "have nothing against" Mitt Romney, like a believe you know what you are talking about!
Which is to say, I don't believe you at all. You're clueless.
So to educate you: to effect change in this country you first have to win an election.
How do any of the non-Romney's defeat Barack Obama?
By sounding like paranoid lunatics, and proclaiming the sky is falling?
See, Walsh, what you'll never get or understand, is people like cool and rational over hysterical and panic.
Do you see the polls? Romney performs far better than any other named Republican in a match-up with Obama!
You're analysis has about as much weight as Sarah Palin's. She was on Jeanine Piro's Fox News show and all she could do when Ms. Piro brought up the polls is stammer and claim it is her "personal opinion" that Obama wants to face Romney.
Reply to this commentLinkReport Abuse"How do any of the non-Romney's defeat Barack Obama?"
They don't, but then again, Romney probably won't, either.
Reply to this commentLinkReport Abuse"They don't, but then again, Romney probably won't, either."
Quoting Derb, We...Are...Doomed.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseDon't be so hard on Romney. His demeanor screams, "this isn't about ideology; it's about competence." That's always a winning strategy, right? Right? (Oh wait....)
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseI am not so sure that whether states can ban contraception is a silly issue. At least it is not any sillier than whether the states can ban abortion.
I would think the main is whether the federal constitution protects an individual's privacy. If Roe v. Wade was wrongly decided, so was Griswold v. Connecticut. If one goes, so must the other.
"The enormity of the catastrophe?" Obama has spent three years trying to recover from the failed Bush economic and foreign policies. I can't see how Obama's successors could have any worse time of it than he did.
Reply to this commentLinkReport Abuse"I would think the main is whether the federal constitution protects an individual's privacy. If Roe v. Wade was wrongly decided, so was Griswold v. Connecticut. If one goes, so must the other."
Uh, not really.
Roe engaged in legislative balancing between the rights of arguably two individuals--the woman and her unborn child. This was plainly inappropriate. This "balancing" required allowing the killing of the unborn child.
Griswold involved the right of a woman to control her body versus...what? The state doing so? Because the Pope or somebody else didn't like it? There was absolutely no competing interest of any compelling nature. Moreover, you might read Justice Harlan's concurrence in Griswold--there was no need to use Douglas's hyperbole to get to the right result.
If you want to have the GOP telling people the Constitution doesn't assure them of any level of privacy, good luck with that strategy. You'll be kicked to the curb in no time flat.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseWhich State is wanting to ban contraception? That's right, not one.
Which candidate at any level in any party wants government to outlaw contraception? That's right, not one.
Then it's silly ridiculous spin by you and the Dems at ABC to try to make it a campaign issue.
Griswold would not be overturned even if Roe were overturned. And even if Griswold was overturned, no state would start outlawing contraception.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseI generally agree. Romney is the right's own General McClellan: a competent and agreeable leader with a real talent for organization and leadership who, despite all of that, is simply the wrong person for the job. McClellan was too concerned with the well-being of his troops to make the difficult and painful choices of being a battlefield commander, and Romney is too concerned with his image and the approval of others to make the difficult and painful choices of being a political commander.
What the right needs now is its own General Grant: a hard-driving fighter who takes the battle to the enemy and does not apologize for making enemies. We are facing an opponent whose (political) genius is indisputable, and who will use every trick in the book to defend his position, and "good enough" will not be good enough. Unfortunately, we are presented with a field of candidates who resemble not so much Lincoln's later generals so much as his earlier generals, and I worry that we will not find the real fighter among them in time, if one even exists.
Reply to this commentLinkReport Abuse" They can’t wait to rip him apart over his background as a corporate turnaround specialist who may have saved some golden parachutes but put ordinary folks out of work."
Wouldn't they do this to anyone who's had a real job?
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseNewt Gingrich has been "keeping his powder dry"???
See it is a laughably refutable comment like this that earns you "brickbats" Mr. Walsh.
Newt Gingrich has been throwing a temper tantrum and having a very public melt-down!
That you could consider such a loud mouthed whiner, electable, shows that you need to get your head examined or at least leave the Post office and get some fresh air!
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseI would respectfully disagree with this line of argumentation for the simple reason that that same argument could be made about ANY GOP candidate. The MSM will try to destroy whom ever it is. Romney is plainly our best bet and is no more a target rich candidate for the MSM, maybe even less so, than anyone else in the field.
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