Wednesday, February 8, 2012

The Wheels Fall Off The Bus ... Again.

The results of the February 7th caucuses are in and it was rather grim night for Multiple Choice Mitt. Once again Romney’s position as front runner got dinged.

In any campaign three items are critical for success: funding, organization, and the candidate. Team Romney has no problem with funding nor with the organization; it’s the candidate that keeps falling short. Romney’s latest campaign effort in the caucuses of Missouri, Colorado, and Minnesota should have been a walk in the park; instead it was a mugging.

Every time Mittens looks to be building up some momentum, it seems he gets side-swiped. Newt Gingrich acted as a speed bump in South Carolina and now Rick Santorum has stalled Mitt in the latest caucuses. Romney keeps failing with the hard right evangelical voters. Granted, the nomination is still Willard’s to loose, but at times like this, it really does look like he is up to that challenge.

Remember that Santorum was on the wrong end of a eighteen point drubbing that last time he ran in a General. That filthy rich, super organized, Mitt got his head handed to him by such a weak challenger tells you volumes about how vulnerable Romney is. With only a shoestring operation, Santorum was able to strangle Team Romney in three states; not good, not good at all for the Mighty Mormon.

The latest unforced error by the Romney crew must have Establishment Republicans once again reaching for the Maalox. Having just carpet-bombed Newt Gingrich into a smoldering wreck via Super Pac slush funds, the powers that be must once again call in the heavies for a yet another run. This time it will be the sweater-vest wearing candidate with the unfortunate Google result that will be the target for the rolling thunder.

Romney has yet to win a state on his good graces alone. Every victory has been won by grinding his opponent into a fine powder via negative campaigning.  Romney is going to remind the next set of primary and caucus voters of every “interesting” and “offbeat” musing to ever escape the lips of Santorum. We are definitely revisit that whole zoophilia meme that Santorum indulged himself in only a few years back.

In the long run this cannot be good for Mitt, this scorched earth policy with his fellow Republicans. Romney’s negatives have climbed with his negative advertising. Romney was alway going to have a likeability deficit to overcome; he is a very off-putting man.

The preternaturally cold Romney always had problems connecting with the hoi-polloii who found him stiff and unauthentic. With all this bad Karma oozing out of the Republican primary effort, Mitt’s optics have shifted from merely cold, to cold and nasty. The more time Mitt spends clubbing his opponents into submission, the more he looks like one of those mean old Canadians brutalizing doe-eyed baby seals.

Mitt’s nastiness will also inoculate Team Obama against charges of over-the-top brutality. Team Obama will have a wide field to throw the odd elbow against the Mighty Mormon without the ref calling a foul. The 2012 general was always going to be a nasty affair, and Romney keeps on lowering the bar. Obama is going to go all Andrew Golota on Mitt (he has already green lighted Super Pacs to do the dirty deed) and Mitt has provided the cover for the tactic. Sauce for the gander dear reader.

I do wonder if a viable third party will step into this breech and provide a little sanity. I doubt it. Both Mitt and Obama are going to be able to shovel tons of cash into their efforts; how does a true independent counter that? How does that independent get the Corporate Media to pay attention to his or her campaign with Obama and Romney providing endless and pointless gossip for our juvenile journalist to wallow in? After all, that policy stuff is so deadly dull; give us scandal to boost the ratings!

Peel back the petty theatrics and the General still looks the same: two fundamentally weak and compromised candidates who talk past the very public that they are supposed to represent. The president is one of those fundamentally weak and compromised candidates. On the Republican side the choice appears to be the fundamentally weak Romney or the disastrously weak Gingrich or Santorum. This is the best a billion dollar campaign can achieve. That is the state of play; pretty damn pathetic, don’t you think?

1 comment:

Cujo359 said...

A rule of thumb I've developed over the years is that the more alike the principal candidates are in a race, the nastier it is likely to be. After all, what else can differentiate two nearly identical character but all the horrible things they've done as teenagers? By that logic, an Obama/Romney race would, indeed, be nasty. That's particularly likely when they'll each have a $ billion or so to put into anonymous advertising.