January 12, 2012--Mitt's New Best Friend
He is Ron Paul. That Hobbit candidate who came in second in New Hampshire with 23% of the vote. (Mitt got 39%; and poor Jon Huntsman received only 17%.)
Romney may not be be turning on the Republican base, but he has now won the Iowa Caucus and the New Hampshire primary. This is the first time in history that a non-incumbent candidate, a sitting president, won both contests.
One can discount this by saying that he is running in front of a mediocre field--how can we forget Michele Bachmann, Donald Trump, and Herman Cain--but to so successfully parley his flip-flopped pretense of being a conservative with his Mormon religion with his cool personality into being just one primary away from, for all intents and purposes, wrapping up the nomination is nothing short of, well, brilliant.
According to Politics 101 the first thing to do is attempt to deine your opponents before they have a chance to define themselves. At this Romney has excelled. He not only has defined Barack Obama as a "European-style socialist," but characterized each of his GOP opponents as they one-by-one approached him in the polls. Look what he, sorry, his Super PAC group did to old Newt. It destroyed the soaring Gingrich candidacy by going negative, spending millions in Iowa to take him down. No matter that the content of the ads there were based on the truth--Newt has, to say the least, a checkered past.
So one after the other his challengers have fallen by the wayside. This would be impressive enough if Romney and his minions caused this to happen.
In fact, what he has succeeded in doing is even more effective and brilliant--he has attacked and eliminated threats selectively.
Which brings me to Ron Paul--the current number two.
Romney has been careful not to attack him or even challenge him and his crackpot ideas about the economy. Who better to have in second place soaking up 25 percent of the total Republican vote than someone, Paul, who has no chance whatsoever of being nominated? This is allowing Mitt to slip through to victories with only 30-40 percent of the vote.
This looks to me like 2000 all over again, when George W. Bush defeated Al Gore because and only because Ralph Nader was running as a third party candidate. Nader absorbed enough otherwise Democrat votes in places such as Florida to give us Bush.
Of course, Obama and the Democrats are hoping that in November Paul will run as a third party candidate. They think it might tip enough votes away from Romney to reelect Obama. To preempt that possibility is another reason Romney is being so deferential to Paul. Even calling him "our constitutionalist" during last weekend's debate.
The real deal may be that if Paul doesn't run and Romney is elected president he'll make Ron Treasury Secretary so he can bring America back to the gold standard.
Romney may not be be turning on the Republican base, but he has now won the Iowa Caucus and the New Hampshire primary. This is the first time in history that a non-incumbent candidate, a sitting president, won both contests.
One can discount this by saying that he is running in front of a mediocre field--how can we forget Michele Bachmann, Donald Trump, and Herman Cain--but to so successfully parley his flip-flopped pretense of being a conservative with his Mormon religion with his cool personality into being just one primary away from, for all intents and purposes, wrapping up the nomination is nothing short of, well, brilliant.
According to Politics 101 the first thing to do is attempt to deine your opponents before they have a chance to define themselves. At this Romney has excelled. He not only has defined Barack Obama as a "European-style socialist," but characterized each of his GOP opponents as they one-by-one approached him in the polls. Look what he, sorry, his Super PAC group did to old Newt. It destroyed the soaring Gingrich candidacy by going negative, spending millions in Iowa to take him down. No matter that the content of the ads there were based on the truth--Newt has, to say the least, a checkered past.
So one after the other his challengers have fallen by the wayside. This would be impressive enough if Romney and his minions caused this to happen.
In fact, what he has succeeded in doing is even more effective and brilliant--he has attacked and eliminated threats selectively.
Which brings me to Ron Paul--the current number two.
Romney has been careful not to attack him or even challenge him and his crackpot ideas about the economy. Who better to have in second place soaking up 25 percent of the total Republican vote than someone, Paul, who has no chance whatsoever of being nominated? This is allowing Mitt to slip through to victories with only 30-40 percent of the vote.
This looks to me like 2000 all over again, when George W. Bush defeated Al Gore because and only because Ralph Nader was running as a third party candidate. Nader absorbed enough otherwise Democrat votes in places such as Florida to give us Bush.
Of course, Obama and the Democrats are hoping that in November Paul will run as a third party candidate. They think it might tip enough votes away from Romney to reelect Obama. To preempt that possibility is another reason Romney is being so deferential to Paul. Even calling him "our constitutionalist" during last weekend's debate.
The real deal may be that if Paul doesn't run and Romney is elected president he'll make Ron Treasury Secretary so he can bring America back to the gold standard.
posted by Steven Zwerling at
4:58 AM
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