Romney for 2016… Are You Nuts?

Two losses in national politics should be equivalent to three strikes in baseball.  You’re out! 

A 2012 primary Romney-backer could be forgiven for thinking and hoping that the former Massachusetts governor had benefited greatly from the experience and lessons acquired from his failed effort in 2008 and would be far more effective “this time”. 

I was one.  I was wrong.  Mitt Romney repeated the same mistakes that doomed him on the first go-round.

It was really quite amazing on one level.  Plainly a bright and accomplished person in many activities, Romney would very likely have been a good president.  But because of his nature, he was unable to capitalize on the opportunity.

 

The Republican nominee again displayed an inability to relate to the American public.  He simply didn’t show authenticity when he tried “ever so painfully” to connect .  Remember his claim that he was “severely conservative”?  Real conservatives don’t talk like that.  Or how about photos of Mitt Romney on a jet-ski racing about on an exclusive resort lake?  Most Americans don’t vacation like that.  (Remember the John Kerry pictures from 2004 as he was on a sailboard in the Atlantic?  That was similarly panned.)

And then there were the episodes that showed an incredible naiveté (“incredible” because Romney should have already learned these lessons).   He gave a talk to a group of contributors and was surprised when his disparaging comments about 47% of the American public were recorded and publicized.

 

[How does anyone with even the briefest exposure to politics not absorb the truism that nothing spoken can be considered private – unless a dog is the sole listener?]

How about the term “self-deportation” when describing his recommendation to illegal immigrants?  It was a silly suggestion that generated guffaws from the media.

Simply put, Mitt Romney has a tin ear for politics.  The profession doesn’t suit him, much as he and many others wish the truth were otherwise.

 

There is no reason whatsoever to believe that this political affliction has disappeared.  If experience were the antidote, the cure would have been apparent in the last Romney campaign.  It was not, for the deficiency is a part of Mitt  Romney’s make-up.  It remains.  And, thus, a Romney campaign in 2016 would be no more successful than the last two efforts.