Within the last half-century, it seems to have become a tradition in American politics for the losing party in a presidential election to distance itself from their candidate. But the vehemence with which Mitt Romney is being urged to leave the stage has been quite remarkable.
He did himself no favors when he spoke with his donors after the election and said that president Obama won by essentially bribing the young and women and minority voters with ‘big gifts’, thus reiterating the claims he made in his infamous 47% speech, which was widely seen as doing him great harm by denigrating nearly half the population as shiftless moochers. It is interesting how policies that promise to benefit the poor or middle class are seen as shameless bribes while handing out tax cuts for the wealthy is portrayed as being good for the country.
Tim Pawlenty and Newt Gingrich are among the others who have piled on, the latter probably anxious to deflect blame away from himself for his ferocious attacks on Romney during the primaries that were seen as doing him great harm.
Interestingly, the strongest criticism of Romney was by Louisiana governor Bobby Jindal, a one-time rising star in the party whose luster has been somewhat diminished. He seems to be trying to make a comeback and stake a claim to be the leader of a reformed Republican party, condemning Romney’s remarks as being indicative of the Republicans being a ‘stupid party’. Mind you, this is coming from someone who signed legislation that allows the teaching of creationism in public school science classes, a craven act of pandering to the religious right that alone takes him to the head of the class in stupidity.
Jindal knows he needs to walk a tightrope and not alienate the significant portion of the Republican party who heartily believe Romney’s analysis, and so he says that they need to shut up those who make “offensive and bizarre comments” (and we all know who he is referring to) and ‘modernize’ the GOP but not ‘moderate’ it. (Translation: The GOP needs to find more palatable ways of conveying the same old hateful message.)
The Daily Show has its own take on Romney’s ‘gifts’ message.
(This clip appeared on November 15, 2012. To get suggestions on how to view clips of The Daily Show and The Colbert Report outside the US, please see this earlier post.)
Colbert: I still think it’s bullshit.
Lucci: You’re probably right.
Hard to believe it, but Romney was the best of a bad lot of GOP candidates.
Perry, Bachmann, Cain, and Santorum showed evidence of religion induced cognitive impairment. They were just too dumb to vote for.
Santorum was clearly campaigning to be a New Dark Age Pope.
Gingrich is a vaguely humanoid toad who always seems more interested in more money and where his next wife will come from.
Jon Huntsman was the most mainstream of the lot and came in last.
“Santorum was clearly campaigning to be a New Dark Age Pope.”
Actually, more of a Counter-Reformation Pope; the late-antiquity to early mediaeval guys weren’t that bad. Check out Pius V (or Michele Ghislieri), who headed the Roman Inquisition before getting promoted, similarly to the current gloriously reigning.
I think you are reading this wrong, Mitt is doing this at the insistence of the GOP.
They are playing the classic good cop bad cop routine here. Whatever you may think of him, he is not an idiot.
Jindal will never be allowed to run for President. He is more of a liability than Mitt was. He is dark-skinned, and there are enough birthers who see him as a foreigner, which is the same problem they have with Marco Rubio, although the latter will be running for the VEEP slot first. His star was rising because… well he was young.
Ask yourself why Jindal said little about this very same nonsense in the months preceding the general election, and during the primary debates?
Jindal will never be allowed to run for President. He is more of a liability than Mitt was. He is dark-skinned, and there are enough birthers who see him as a foreigner …
This was my reaction to the suggestion of Jindal too; how is the Party of Racism ever going to nominate him for federal office? His successes in Louisiana are hard to comprehend, and he would have to get the whole Confederacy behind his campaign.
Gingrich made it quite clear the only person he cared about was Newt Gingrich. He keeps discarding wives because none of them love him as much as he loves himself.
I doubt it. Romney just does not seem the type to volunteer to play the role of a punching bag. When he was running for office, he was willing to pander but now that his political career is over, he has no incentive to suppress his sense of entitlement.
To accurately gauge the situation, I think one has to remember that it took large swaths of the GOP by surprise when Romney lost on election night — even though it should have been obvious to everyone paying attention that his chances were slim.
I’m sure the Republican party aspires to be a bunch of sinister manipulators, playing the electorate to get big concessions for the rich and to fuck over minorities and women. But the problem is that “the loonies have taken over the asylum” — there is so much reality denial within the party these days that their collective access to the truth has been weakened, and that makes it much harder to act as manipulators.
These people may not be stupid, but they’re immersed in a culture of irrationality, and that can make them do very stupid things.
I think the GOP will look for its missing “ingredients” (the young, women & Latinos) while still making the same old recipe: my bet is on running Jeb Bush (with his Mexican-heritage wife, IIRC), and either Rubio or Nikki Haley.
And then they will be very careful to say what people want to hear, so they can actually *do* as they please.
#2
I am open to your theories on why Romney would repeat his open-mouth-insert-foot routine on an open mic, fully aware that it’ll be played over and over again. His sense of entitlement does not, I think, come from belittling his winning opponent.
I think that this is what he truly believes and he has no reason anymore to hide it.
And there was me also thinking that they might want to bring forward Shrub Minor in attempt to court the Hispanic vote …