Paul Waldman is wise to provide all the appropriate caveats, but Joe Scarborough’s remarks on his MSNBC program this morning are fascinating anyway:
“Nobody thinks Romney’s going to win. Let’s just be honest. Can we just say this for everybody at home? Let me just say this for everybody at home. The Republican establishment — I’ve yet to meet a single person in the Republican establishment that thinks Mitt Romney is going to win the general election this year. They won’t say it on TV because they’ve got to go on TV and they don’t want people writing them nasty emails. I obviously don’t care. But I have yet to meet anybody in the Republican establishment that worked for George W. Bush, that works in the Republican congress, that worked for Ronald Reagan that thinks Mitt Romney is going to win the general election.”
Call me crazy, but I don’t think Scarborough was making this up. Of course, Scarborough is living in Manhattan now, and if you spend enough time there you can find it hard to believe that a typical Republican can be elected to anything, ever. Still, it’s an odd moment in time for Republicans to be feeling so down on themselves. Romney has broken through. He has a clear path to a clean win of the nomination. All the ducks are nearly in a row. Why the pessimism?
I think it’s because of a lot of things. Mitt Romney had a big victory in Maryland last night, but he still failed to crack fifty percent. Wisconsin was closer than the polls were predicting. Gingrich and Santorum may have terrified the Republican Establishment, but they really can’t fall in love with Romney. They have buyer’s remorse and the thing isn’t even mathematically wrapped up yet. They’re all doing their duty and trying to push Santorum out of the race, but their hearts aren’t in it. They feel like they won the Booby Prize.
I also think that Establishment Republicans are a little ashamed of what the party has become. It’s not just Olympia Snowe who’s ready to quit in disgust. They can see what Romney has had to do to win this thing, and they don’t feel good about it. And then there’s another group, the true believers, who think Romney’s a soulless hack and a phony conservative, and they hate having to pretend otherwise. I think both groups agree, though, that Romney isn’t going to win because he doesn’t deserve to win. Among political sophisticates, some feel like if he isn’t Ronald Reagan then what’s the point? And the others know what kind of dishonest game they’ve been running on Obama; they know the cards the president was dealt (and who dealt them), and they know he’s done an admirable job under the circumstances. They think Obama is going to win because he has a good record to run on and Romney has bupkis. They also are clear-sighted enough to recognize that the president and his political team are top-flight pros.
So, is Romney going to turn this all around somehow? Can he just pull Paul Ryan or Marco Rubio out of a hat and change everyone’s perceptions? I don’t know. The one thing I can say to make Republicans feel better about their chances is to remind them that the people who will decide this election don’t know who Joe Scarborough is and wouldn’t give a shit about his opinion even if they did.
