I keep reading stupid things like…
…”in 1994 Romney ran to the left of Kennedy.”
This sort of statement has been made by commenter after commenter in all manner of blogs and MSM articles lately. I’ve never seen a single scrap of evidence offered to back it up, just the bold statement as though it’s a self-evident truth.
But it’s nonsensical. If the posters said instead that in 1994 Romney ran to the left of where he’s at today, or to the left of where they’d like him to be, then I’d have no quarrel with them on that score. But to the left of Ted Kennedy? An absurdity.
If Romney had run to the left of Kennedy, why (just to take one teeny example) did Romney say, in his speech to the 1994 state Republican convention, that he’d attack the “failed big brother liberalism” of the 32 years Kennedy had been in office (from the book The Real Romney)?
Please show me those clips from Romney’s debate with Kennedy that show him running “to the left” of Kennedy. I can show you tons of them where he’s running to the right of him.
Like this one, which I’ve offered before.
Another stupid thing I keep reading is that the GOP field is especially weak this year. Now, I’m not happy with the field either, and I’ve said so before. I think all the candidates are deeply flawed. But I’ve never said that this year is so much weaker than most years. I happen to think that most politicians are deeply flawed, and that it’s the rare year when we have some really really fine choices (and I believed that when I was a Democrat, too, so at least I’m an equal-opportunity cynic).
But I vote, always. And not for a third-party candidate, either; I consider that throwing away my vote, and besides, I’ve never been too keen on those guys, either. Ross Perot, anyone?
I can back up my statement that this year’s candidates are not especially weak by reiterating what I wrote in this post of about a month ago, in which I listed the main Republican presidential contenders in each primary year going back a bit:
2008: McCain, Romney, Huckabee
2004: Bush was the incumbent
2000: Bush, McCain, Alan Keyes (originally running but early dropouts were the likes of Gary Bauer, Steve Forbes, Orrin Hatch, Lamar Alexander, Elizabeth Dole, John Kasich, and Dan Quayle).
1996: Bob Dole, Pat Buchanan, Steve Forbes
1992: incumbent George H.W. Bush was primaried by Pat Buchanan
1988: VP George H.W. Bush (one of the few VPs running in recent years), Bob Dole, Pat Robertson
1984: no challenge to incumbent Reagan
1980: Reagan, George H.W. Bush, John Anderson (an interesting primary in which Reagan was hugely popular and his nomination a foregone conclusion, based on his showing in 1976 when he primaried incumbent Gerald Ford and did well).
Except for the years when there was an incumbent, or when Reagan was running, not an especially strong or inspiring bunch of choices, were they? And it’s easy to forget how many people ridiculed Reagan at first, too.
Coupled with this “especially weak field” business is the idea that someone else would have been a much stronger candidate this year. I happen to share that perception; I think Ryan or Rubio or Christie or a couple of others would have been preferable. But you know what? That may just be a case of grass being greener on the other side, or the road not taken.
I can just hear the attacks now if they’d entered the fray (and this is only what we know about so far; no doubt there would have been a mad scramble to dig up dirt on all of them, and/or to use truncated quotes to make it seem as though they were saying something they weren’t): Ryan and Rubio? Too young. Ryan too geeky and uncharismatic, and a House member to boot. No executive experience. Rubio’s a newbie. Just who does he think he is? He’s hardly gotten his feet wet on the national level, and here he’s running for president?
And don’t get me started on Christie. RINO extraordinaire. Too fat; wouldn’t there be health issues? Another inexperienced newbie. Too hotheaded.
No, perhaps there’s a reason these guys aren’t running this year: they have good judgment, and they know they’re not seasoned enough yet. So let’s all just deal with what we’ve got, and stop complaining so much.
[NOTE: I’ve also had the thought lately that at least a few of the most vocal Romney-haters on some comment boards may be liberal trolls, sent to rile up the Republican masses and depress turnout (see many commenters here, for example).]
Why am they sayin’ dese ting?
Because they are STUPIDHEADS!
I was on that thread yesterday that you linked at the end of your post. I have to agree. It was full of the worst Anti-Romney commentators I have ever read. The hatred was palatable.
I also agree with your point that there are some very wonderful people we all fantasize about seeing on the ballot. Those same people strike me as rational beings, not fed by inflated egos and/or realizing that perhaps they need a little more experience under their belts before they take on this behemoth nightmare of running for president.
neo, you need to develop a taste for fine agitprop.
I believe the origin of that “ran-to-the-left-of-Teddy” meme was a statement by Romney that he would be a more effective senator than EMK on the issue of gay rights. He has explained this comment as a reference to the fact that as a Republican, his support for gay rights would have a lot more sway in Washington and nationally.
Obviously, Mitt’s comment wouldn’t even justify the assertion that he ran to left of Kennedy ON GAY RIGHTS, let alone across the entire spectrum of issues being discussed in that election.
Unfortunately, the Romney haters have just accepted his “liberalism” as an article of faith. You can’t get through an entire comment thread on a lot a sites without coming across someone asserting that Mitt and Obama are ideological twins. It’s insane.
I can’t help but remember how many of the anti-Romney types jumped onto the Cain bandwagon before they knew a thing about him. I’m not talking about the women stuff; I’m talking about his disinterest in foreign policy and probably not knowing who the committtee chairs are in congress. I won’t waste my time on these people and their rants. If they have real alternatives, I’ll give them a hearing.
BTW;, I feel perfectly vindicated in not wanting Ryan to run. He is too important where he is.
http://www.commentarymagazine.com/2012/03/20/paul-ryan-extraordinary-budget/#more-787953
Propaganda was never designed to educate humans.
Lisa –
Although I do find Romney hatred palatable, and I’d be delighted if you did too, I think you were gunning for “palpable.”
I anything about Romney starts giving me bad vibes i just think about Barak Obama. Then Romney’s bad vibes miraculously turn into wonderful attributes!
On the Internet, blog comments, emails, instant messages, Tweets, etc. are often just too damned intense. That’s part of the reason anti-Romney comments are often so brutal.
I think a large part of the explanation of this is the anonymity on the Internet. People say things to and about other people they’d never say to their faces. If the did, they’d get smacked.
In some parts of America, they’d also get shot. Which may put a damper on some people’s willingness to part with their mouth on promises their a&& can not cash.
Politics is brutal because of the Left. Just in general that is so. The aristocrats do not really like peasants and peons and people who didn’t make the educational “cut” and “accent”, near their circles of power. They have ways to make sure of this. And all Americans engaging in the political process, are affected by this cultural imperative one way or another, even if they aren’t part of the aristo class.
Thank you, kolnai. I need to reread my comments before posting. 🙂
Lisa –
Thank YOU for taking it in good humor. I was poking fun at myself (I’m the resident Romney basher; maybe Foxmarks matches me though :). I’m really not THAT pedantic, though lord knows it is the great vice of my type.
Well, actually communism and lesser variants of far leftism are the great vices of my type. Any guesses what my type is? (Hint: starts with “a” and ends in “-cademics”).
I first voted for president in 1972 and precisely once did I walk out of the presidential election booth feeling good about the vote. My politics were different then; I voted for Mondale and thought although he was a bit to the left of me that he’d make a good president and was a decent, admirable person.
I voted Democratic until 2008. When Obama said that the chief quality he was looking for in a supreme court justice was “empathy” and shortly thereafter responded to Russia’s aggression against Georgia by calling for both sides to show restraint I knew I was going to have to vote Republican.
For that matter, he ran a lousy campaign but I thought McCain was about as good as you’re going to get at that level of politics and he certainly is an admirable and heroic person.
expat: You’re doing the same thing with this nonsense that Cain wasn’t interested in foreign policy. I have linked here in previous threads snippets from Cain’s pre-candidate times where he identified the threat of political Islam, for example.
kolnai: I am happy to tag-team with you. There’s so much wrong with Romney I can’t bash it all myself.
neo: Maybe people keep thinking the field was weak because we’ve allowed the job to become too large. The President is supposed manage the entire economy (including gas prices), provide care for the old and the sick, keep foreign bogeyman at bay, minister over nearly every personal choice in our domestic lives, and be an inspiring example for both our kids and oppressed masses around the globe. All before 9am.
Our acquiescence to the modern bureaucratic state means we are essentially trying to elect a minor god. I say take it the opposite way. If the candidates can’t handle the job, maybe we need to trim the job description. The Constitution provides a nice model for a presidency that real people could fulfill.
I will say the same thing as before. Instead of electing one President, have the first 6 people on the Presidential ballot become the President, Vice President, SecDef/SecState, no questions asked, no hearings required, no confirmations needed.
They used to do this thing as well. Lincoln appointed a Democrat loyalists as his VP. Who then proceeded to veto every attempt by Republicans to fix the voting situation in the South. This caused a long enough delay for the KKK to change the votes of blacks and cause a resurrection of Democrat holds. In that case, it went badly. These days, it’s not like it would work worse than what we have now. Even if you gave the choice to a Republican like Bush 2 or McCain, who do you think they would pick? Many of them Democrats or allies of the same, like many many many people who we now know to be culturally allied with the Left, not America.