There were obviously some lessons that Mitt Romney took out of his failed effort to win the Republican nomination in 2008, and we could probably go back to the beginning of this cycle and find the seeds of some of Romney’s current problems in how he interpreted his 2008 loss. But I think what really happened was that Romney correctly surmised early on that he really could not lose the nomination to any of the clowns opposing him so long as he retained a basic level of support among the base. He had too much money and too much institutional support and such a better claim to able to appeal to people in the middle for him to lose to a Santorum or a Gingrich or a Bachmann or a Cain. So, he basically formed a strategy I’ll call “Live Another Day.”
Everyone in the race (save Huntsman and Paul) had a turn at the top of the polls. The GOP base proved extremely reluctant to settle on Romney. But he didn’t panic. He said whatever he needed to say to keep himself afloat, while each of his opponents rose in turn to the top and then withered in the spotlight. The exercise involved a constant recalibration, as Romney could not let any of the sequential frontrunners get too far to his right. Romney had to move his tax policy as far as Gingrich. He had to move his Islamophobia as far as Bachmann. He had to move his homophobia as far as Santorum. He had to move to the right of Rick Perry on immigration. There was never a point where he could afford to stand up and say, “you guys are intolerant assholes and nut jobs.” When Rick Perry tried to do that on scholarship money for the children of undocumented parents, he never really recovered. So, Romney just kept saying what he felt he had to say to not disqualify himself, and he ultimately contradicted every reasonable position he had ever held.
He took a lot of heat from the right all through the process, but he never crossed them in a way that caused a meaningful backlash. Every time he had a chance to take a stand, he folded. He folded because he knew he couldn’t lose the nomination as long as he never took a stand. It was actually a very safe and cautious, but prudent strategy. Live to fight another day. It was reminiscent of Field Marshall Bernand Montgomery’s strategy against Erwin Rommel during World War Two. Knowing he had an advantage in resources, he was cautious about offering battle and just ground Rommel down.
What Romney’s team couldn’t see is the cost to the candidate’s credibility that this prolonged demonstration of lack of principle would exact. When John Judis points out the long-term costs to the GOP of having failed to consider the ramifications of this rightward drift, he isn’t even considering the costs to Romney himself.
Romney brings a campaign that is hostile to women, gays, blacks, Latinos, Muslims, the poor, and the elderly. And that’s a problem for the GOP going forward. But then there is Romney’s reputation. He has come across as completely inconsistent and unprincipled, incapable of telling the truth, nor of standing for anything.
He won the nomination, but at the cost of becoming King Weasel.
No one likes him, and I mean no one.
He should have risked losing it all. If he had, the nomination might have been worth winning. And the GOP’s future prospects wouldn’t look so bleak.
