Romney Can't Win

Mitt Romney can't win.  Oh, I don't mean that he didn't win the Iowa caucuses, though it is quite possible he didn't, and it is quite likely that he will win the New Hampshire primary today.  He could win a lot of the primaries and perhaps even the nomination because he is "Mr. Good Enough," as Ed Morrissey says, to a lot of Republicans.  His principal charm in all of these races, however, is his supposed ability to defeat Barack Obama in the general election, and Mitt Romney cannot win the general election against Obama.

It has been pretty obvious for some time that the Obama campaign and the big-megaphone media WANT Mr. Romney to be the nominee and are prepared best to run against him.  All they have to do is to say "Wall Street Republican" and liberals and Democrats will run screaming to the polls.  They will spend the early part of the campaign relentlessly pounding Romney's "flip-flops" on every conceivable issue, and conservatives and Republicans will stay home in droves, just as they did for McCain, and we know how well that turned out.  Mr. McCain's recent endorsement of Mr. Romney seems almost prophetic in that regard.  Finally, the Obama campaign, once Romney's nomination is secure, will trumpet the fact that all of Romney's flip-flops have been in the WRONG direction and he is now just one more EEEEE-vil conservative, thus driving away the independent voters.  The only way Romney can draw any votes at all, under all that media onslaught, is to promise to govern as the moderate (relatively) that most of us suspect he really is, and I do not think that is what we need right now.  A radical Leftist got us into this mess and it is going to take a sweet-sounding but radical Rightist (conservative) to get us out of it.

Notice that I did not say that in a fair and sensible world Mr. Romney wouldn't make a good President; I merely say that the outrageous bias of the mainstream media makes the presidential campaign anything BUT a fair and sensible world.  There is, however, one Republican candidate who has not only challenged the media frequently during the campaign but rather quietly laid out a plan to beat them at their own game, and that is Newt Gingrich.  There is no way a Republican candidate, even a wealthy one like Mitt Romney, can compete dollar-for-dollar against the billion-dollar Obama campaign AND the major media.  Mr. Gingrich recently outlined a strategy, however, to use "free media" to full advantage.  I paraphrase: "I will challenge Barack Obama to a series of seven or more three-hour Lincoln-Douglas-style debates on national television.  He can even use a Teleprompter if he wants.  If he refuses, as I suspect he will, I will follow him around the country and match him speech-for-speech, and simply correct all of his misstatements."  We've already seen this tactic work.  Obama gives a speech one day and the media slavishly cover it.  The next day Newt Gingrich says something outrageous, simply by disagreeing with the President, and the media cover that, splashing their outrage over the front pages.  The third day Mr. Gingrich is hounded by the media to retract his outrageous remarks, but he repeats the comment and explains, in simple terms that the average voter can understand, why what he said was exactly correct, and the media publish that as well, believing it even more outrageous.  Most likely, at some point, Mr. Obama will become frustrated by the constant criticism and "lose his cool" in full view of everybody, and his cruise to defeat will be launched.  It is not a scenario without risks to the Republic, and it is possible that the current squatter in the Oval Office could make any Republican seem preferable, even Mitt Romney, but it would be nice to have the clear choice of somebody with a bold, clear plan to fix the country AND who could win.