"This race is not to the swift, but the strong"
Picking up on Aaron Goldstein's comments I mentioned in the previous post, and before the above summation, Michael Walsh put it so, very, very well in his New York Post piece:
Lost in the weekend’s back-to-back debates in New Hampshire was this illuminating remark by Democratic strategist Donna Brazile after Saturday night’s soporific contest in Manchester: “Mitt Romney won tonight because no one touched him. And for Democrats, you know what? It was good news for us . . . because we believe that the weakest candidate is the candidate that the Republicans are not attacking. And that’s Mitt Romney.”
The remark drew guffaws from some of the other assembled party faithful and media commentators, but Brazile spoke the truth. Democrats do believe that Romney is eminently beatable, the perfect foil for President Obama, in fact. And yesterday’s debate on “Meet the Press” amply illustrated her point.
The contest got off to a hot start as host David Gregory invited the not-Mitts to explain why Romney shouldn’t be the nominee. It was Rick Santorum who cut right to the quick, asking Romney directly why he didn’t seek re-election as governor of Massachusetts in 2006. “Why did you bail out?”
Romney’s answer — that he’s not a lifelong politician and wanted to return to the private sector — was so transparently bogus that Newt Gingrich immediately called it “pious baloney” and the other candidates piled on.
The truth is, Romney (who’d been defeated by Ted Kennedy in a 1994 Senate race) chose not to run again because he knew he couldn’t win — and then promptly turned his attention to running for president instead. Pious baloney, indeed.
For months now, conservatives have been watching the endless series of debates, waiting for someone to finally bloody Romney’s nose, especially on his claim of “electability.” So kudos to liberal attack dog Gregory for putting the issue on the table; for about 10 minutes, we got both fireworks and substance.
I know there are establishment types and liberals alike that deny even the notion that Romney's the candidate who Obama wants to face. But Machiavellian tactics are alive and well within the ranks of the Democrat Party. The Left is indeed that cunning. Have we not witnessed it over just the past few years, much less over a longer range? Sarah Palin has also joined Walsh's observation, as has Rush, that the mainstream media and Barack Obama “want to face Mitt Romney in the general election.” Walsh expanded a little more over at NR's 'The Corner':
This will probably bring me the usual array of brickbats, but let me, as the president likes to say, be perfectly clear. I have nothing against Mitt Romney. He’s a fine, intelligent man. He’d very likely be a good president — certainly better than the one we have now — and if he’s the candidate, I’ll probably vote for him.
But is he the candidate the hour calls for? Plainly not. He shows no sense of the urgency of the tasks before him, nor of the enormity of the catastrophe awaiting him. His Bain Capital record is going to be a liability, not the plus he thinks it is, since the the GOP is going to have to defend it in theory (the joys of creative destruction capitalism) while the media-wired Democrats will sob-sister it to death (bread lines and soup kitchens).
Spot on, Mr. Walsh, spot on.
Profits aren't evil, neither are corporations or free market capitalism. I believe Walsh is making the point, as some of the candidates, that at a time when the Obama Administration and largely the Democrat Party have aligned behind the likes of the OWS crowd and the array of outspoken leftists out there, vehemently pushing class warfare rhetoric, welfarism and favoring more & more government intervention (along with executive fiat), permeated by the media with some success (however expansive or minute), how is it suddenly advantageous to have an 'Edward Lewis' model atop the Republican roster? It's not, it plays right into their template of who they want as the Republican nominee & what methods they'd like to use against him. But as Santorum stated, Americans need a leader, not a corporate manager. The point is not to fault Romney for being a successful capitalist, but rather to recognize that Romney’s corporatism doesn't specifically prepare the man for what's ailing the U.S. economy over his Republican rivals' ideas, strengths and experiences. This election must be about leadership, a return towards constitutional rule, and who can best rollback this administration's destructive policies & return the nation to its compass, while also inspiring its people to work towards the same exceptional quality, not just about managing what we've got.
