Romney and Benghazi
I suppose it’s moot, but there’s been a bit of discussion here and elsewhere about Mitt Romney’s failure to emphasize the Benghazi debacle during his campaign.
I want to make my position clear. If you followed the evolution of my attitude towards Romney, he was not my favored candidate but once he was nominated I supported him wholeheartedly. I thought he was the best of the candidates, with the best chance of winning—which, unfortunately, wasn’t saying much, because I didn’t think he had a particularly good chance of winning.
I consistently said Obama was a much stronger candidate than most people credited him with being, and that the race would be very tight and if Romney did manage to win it would be a very narrow victory. I was nervous beyond belief the whole time, and never indulged in the “all the polls that say Romney is behind are lying” routine.
So that’s where I’m coming from; I never thought it was Romney’s election to lose, despite the chorus of people who did think just that.
Nor am I writing this to say “oh, I’m so smart!” It was just the way I saw it, and although I happened to have been right this time it doesn’t mean I’m such a fabulous prognosticator, and in fact I very much wish I’d been wrong and that Romney had won the election.
And so I think that those who say that, had Romney pounded Obama harder on Benghazi, Romney would have been likely to have defeated him, are engaging in Monday morning quarterback wishful thinking, if there is such a thing. The American electorate who voted for Obama could not have cared less about Benghazi—and I mean that literally. Not just liberals, either; most moderates cared not at all. The only people I talked to at the time who cared at all, or who believed Romney was not just being politically expedient when he spoke of Benghazi, were political junkies on the right who were already going to vote for him and did.
Romney’s attempt to hit at Obama on it during the second debate failed abysmally due to Candy Crowley’s collusion with Obama (see also this) in misrepresenting what he said in his Rose Garden speech after the attacks. Romney then saw the writing on the wall and pulled away from further discussion of the matter.
I still think he should not have done that; I think he should have hammered away at it anyway. But I don’t think that hammering would have made a difference in the election result—in fact, it was probably likely to have backfired on him, although I still think he should have done it.
But I’m with Ann Althouse on what would have been the result had he done so:
You can say with hindsight that you think it might have worked, now that you know that what was done did not work, but you need to picture the outcry from the Obama campaign ”” the ugliness, the damage to national security interests, Romney’s unreadiness to play on the international stage, the disrespect for the dead and their mourning families, and ”” it worked against Hillary’s original 3 a.m. ad ”” the dog-whistle racism.
This seems spot on to me, and I say with regret that those who think it would have gone otherwise are overestimating the judgment of the American people and underestimating the influence the MSM still has on the viewpoints of voters today.
Now, forward: will Benghazi matter, even now? I lean to the side of “no.” There’s no dearth of articles purporting to say one way or another—or to spin and convince one way or another (see also this). But when ABC allows itself to publish a piece about how the talking points on Benghazi were changed over and over to scrub references to terror, it gives me a teeny bit of hope that some of this will filter down to the general public, the so-called low information voters, a few of whom might even be convinced to care. In more cynical moments, though (which I experience more often than the hopeful ones on this score), I’m with Kevin O’Brien, who writes:
Once again, the most insulated president in the history of the republic will employ a strategy of blaming underlings and changing his story at will, knowing that anyone who tries to call him to account will be branded a racist, dismissed as a political opportunist or simply ignored.
Speaking of 3 AM here’s a Romney ad on Benghazi that was produced but never aired:
http://americandigest.org/mt-archives/driveby/3_am_redux.php
I agree completely with O’Brien’s and Althouse’s analyses.
Our president was re-elected based on class and race antagonism (won’t say warfare) and nothing else.
Benghazi, Fast & Furious, horrendous economic performance, and the consequences? Nothing.
When nothing else matters, how do we respond?
IMO, a spot on analysis. And I was one of those who thought that the election was Romney’s to lose and that the polls were highly skewed in Obama’s favor.
I was one of those who greatly overestimated the judgment of the American people and underestimated the influence the MSM still has on the viewpoints of voters today.
Obama’s reelection ripped that away and nothing I’ve seen since has impelled reconsideration of that view.
I now think it unlikely (though hoped for) that the American people will awaken before its too late.
Even when the fiscal collapse into sovereign bankruptcy occurs, (that Obama’s policies makes certain) I expect that blame will be, for a slim but growing majority of American voters, successfully affixed upon Republicans, just as the democrats and MSM did in 2008.
Even when another WMD attack upon American soil occurs, as the FBI has testified is certain, I expect that the democrats and MSM will again successfully affix blame upon Republicans, just as the public is now conditioned to accept.
A democracy’s Achilles heel is that it cannot be saved from itself. Given the time and means, a Gramscian enemy clever enough to realize that can bring low any society that is willing to “give up a little liberty to gain a little security”.
“America will never be destroyed from the outside. If we falter, and lose our freedoms, it will be because we destroyed ourselves.” A. Lincoln
Mark astutely asks, “When nothing else matters, how do we respond?”
I for one, have no answer.
At this point it seems increasingly certain that the American people will have to live with what they have condoned, allowed and embraced.
The simple truth is that a slim majority (but growing) of the American public do not deserve nor are capable of living under the liberty bequeathed to them.
They are too busily forging the chains of their own oppression.
I think Romney made a big mistake by focusing too much on the Obama administration’s ex post *characterization* of the Benghazi attack rather than on its reaction to the events as they were unfolding. I can see why nobody got very excited about whether Obama had been clear in describing the attack on the Benghazi consulate as terrorism.
Instead of worrying about what Obama said or didn’t say in the Rose Garden after the disaster, Romney should have called Americans’ attention to the duration of the siege (how many Americans knew it lasted eight hours?), the real possibility of intervention, and the administration’s shocking passivity while American lives were in danger half a world away. Maybe nobody would have woken up, but the importance of the issue would have been a lot plainer.
Vanderleun, I’ve never seen the ad you linked to, but it would have been a step in the right direction. Why Romney didn’t move aggressively in that direction, I’ll never know.
Neo,
While I don’t disagree that Benghazi was not necessarily a defining moment, we will always disagree on the idea that it would not have mattered who ran against Obama. Accepting that premise is accepting that NOTHING mattered, and you can’t make that case.
Obama was vulnerable on many fronts – unemployment, the economy, a shaky foreign policy, personal disapproval ratings, a highly unpopular and devisive health care law, record debt, downgrading of US credit, and on and on.
The argument that Romney was up against the impossible completely ignores the abysmal record Obama compiled, and assumes people cared nothing about anything.
Romney’s campaign was outsmarted, and Romney admits much of the decisions made were his. Romney was tentative and timid when he needed to be bold, he made a number of unforced errors, and misjudged his own strength in many precincts. On top of this, he failed to convince the conservative base he was going to bat for them – he avoided conservative media outlets and pandered almost entirely to the middle throughout the election. And he didn’t connect with people — I digress, but I can’t help pointing out the new grandkids are named Winston and Eleanor. Seriously? Historical references aside, who names kids like that anymore? Maybe those are average New England names?
In the end, Romney failed to close the deal. Proclaiming that Obama was an invincible force to remove the blame from Romney is to rewrite Obama’s first term, which sucked. Obama didn’t draw the big crowds, the adoring fans, or the cult of followers he had in the first election. Compared with his first run, he looked like an average candidate, making several errors himself. Gone was the soaring rhetoric. The left wing editorials wrote not about a transformative man, but how bad it would be under Romney. And that was Obama’s case for re-election, over and over. He was hardly inspiring even to his base — but they supported him.
This was a winnable race for the right candidate. If you honestly believe that it would not have mattered what Romney did, I couldn’t disagree with you more – there have not been many presidential campaigns where our country had that many things going badly, and the still incumbant wiped out the challenger. Romney was not smart enough to beat a candidate who had a terrible first term, and who had sunk to below 50% in approval ratings. A great deal of the blame HAS to go to Romney.
The next republican challenger may have to face lower unemployment figures, a better economy, low energy prices, and stability in the Middle East. So if this last campaign was just too hard to win for even Romney, the republicans might as well not bother to run.
Will it now make a difference?
My heart hopes but my head says ‘no’.
Main-stream media coverage for three kidnappings in Cleveland beats that for four killings in Benghazi. And just as worthy of condemnation, the appetite of the general public for the former is greater than for the latter.
We focus on the collusion between the media and the liberal faction in government, but it is also true that the media provides the public with what it wants to read or view. Alas!
Good post, Neo. But I still think Romney ran a weak, timid campaign. And that certainly didn’t help his chances.
The 3 things he did wrong IMO,
1. Ad campaign in my prime swing state was pathetic. The only one that was good didn’t get much play and the other two were stupid and played at the wrong time of day to hit their target audience.
2. The third debate was so bad I couldn’t keep watching it.
3. Campaign leaks that they would “fix” Obamacare. He should have argued how badly Romneycare has turned out and why it was good that this mistake was made on the state level.
Add not spending his own money at the beginning to defend himself against the smear campaign.
I don’t think he wanted to win, at least not enough to fight hard enough for it.
southpaw: note that I never said it would not have mattered who ran against Obama. I do not believe that is true.
What I did say, and have consistently said, and still believe, is that of the candidates who declared themselves in the running in 2012, Romney was the best candidate. That’s all.
Talking about the extent to which the Benghazi story is NOT getting through to low information voters, watch this 2:44 minute video by Crowder and Klavan:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=LFRtZEj5pwQ
southpaw: agree. and if the immigration bill goes through, this next election will the republicans last chance.
neo – then we have nothing to argue about. damn.
O’Brien’s piece is fabulous. Thanks for bringing it to our attention! Linked here: http://bobagard.blogspot.com/2013/05/are-cicadas-here-yet.html
Criticizing Obama for the Benghazi incident works best if couched in a broader foreign policy critique. The incident is symptomatic of Obama’s foreign policy.
Eg, the Dems hyping up the Abu Ghraib controversy as an indictment of the whole Iraq mission, the Bush administration, and the GOP.
However, the problem is that Romney had to tread lightly on Benghazi because the GOP is not prepared to offer a distinct alternativ to Obama’s foreign policy nor even refute it any serious way. Just another cost of the GOP surrendering to BDS and their failure to uphold Bush’s legacy.
“The argument that Romney was up against the impossible completely ignores the abysmal record Obama compiled, and assumes people cared nothing about anything.” southpaw
No assumptions needed. Obama’s reelection demonstrates that for a slim majority of the American public; apathy and entitlements, leftist ideology and liberal illusions trump all other considerations.
They have been conditioned to accept the left’s memes, including that all on the right are either greedy, racist reactionaries or their dupes.
Honestly, were they here, would you accept anything Hitler, Stalin or Pol Pot advanced? Of course not, their actions have delegitimatized anything they might say…and, for the low-information voter, so have we too been delegitimatized…and, legal or fraudulent, they have the votes.
Slightly OT, but I read on Drudge and elsewhere that there was a private, closed briefing session at the White House with selected reporters. This looks like a panic move. I think things are more advanced than people realize.
Maybe the reason Romney backed off from going after Obama on Benghazi is because foreign policy was not Romney’s strong suite, and so he really couldn’t think on his feet in that area.
I know, for example, that I was very surprised during the campaign when he said that Russia was our number-one geopolitical foe. Odd. Obama was able to play off that remark quite effectively in his acceptance speech at the Democratic convention.
In any case, I think most of you don’t accept that Obama is sui generis. And that that fact, combined with young female voters, more than likely made him unbeatable by anyone.
oops — I think that should be “strong suit.”
Romney’s response to Benghazi wasn’t a deal-breaker on its own, it was emblematic of how he ran his whole campaign.
And the timidity was exemplified by his insistence on treating the media as if it were some sort of objective arbiter.
When it’s completely “hands off” against your opponent’s best weapon, it’s going to be tough to win. It was difficult in the past, but possible. Now the media’s so far in the thank that it MUST be dealth with accordingly.
mizpants – Could just be they’re trying to work out the scheduling conflict between the usual Sunday Tee-time, and Mother’s Day.
I’m not Mon-morn quarterbacking. I saw the 2nd debate and I was appalled at the time. Mitt had a brief flash of anti-obama fight in debate 1 which he could not thereafter sustain despite seeing he’d put Hussein on the ropes; declined to sustain, in fact. Not how you defeat your enemy, but how you defeat yourself. Not stand up to Crowley?? He was tougher on Newt than on Hussein. In debate 2 he caved, folded, took a dive.
Of course he’d have been better for the US and the world than Hussein, but that is faint praise. The Dems would have turned him into a quivering W in no time, because he would not fight, is not a fighter, and cannot be made to fight. We are thus edging to a Take No Prisoners situation. There will be an explosion, just as WWII could have been avoided had folks like Winston been heeded earlier.
Refusing to snuff out a small, earlier cancer gets you what? ‘Peace in our time’, then a big and fatal cancer. Peace in our time, thy name was Mitt.
The race was lost when Stuart Stevens convinced Romney that he needed to show he was a better manager than Obama instead of a better Leader. He took the manager tact the whole race; that was the criticism of Obama on the flip side. It wasn’t that Obama had bad ideas, bad ideas like going into Libya and pretending the locals loved us, so let’s lay down our weapons and leave consulates unguarded kumbaya. He never connected the ideas to the bad outcomes and how he had better ideas as a Leader, not just a better technical manager. It was lost at that point, in my hindsight opinion.
I agree he was the best candidate though.
holmes,
I believe Romney tread lightly on foreign policy criticisms because Romney and the GOP were not then and are not now prepared to advocate a different foreign policy course than Obama’s.
Because the only realistic alternative (ie, not libertarian isolationism) to Obama’s foreign policy is Bush’s foreign policy.
Five million conservative voters didn’t vote! They are so much more to blame than Romney, but I wax philosophical at this point. God, that’s right, God made Romney lose in order to punish the nation. Sarc.
Neo,
I think you said at the time that even if it were to be proven that Obama personally flew to Libya and murdered the ambassador and the other Americans with his own hands, it wouldn’t have made a bit of difference in the election. I think that was a perceptive comment then, and it’s still true now.
I still think race was a dominating factor. Aside from blacks who supported Obama, there are just too many whites who were afraid to think critically about him. These same people are also afraid of being put in the same category as fundamentalist bible belt rednecks.
Romney’s biggest problem was that he had to say Obama is a nice guy who is in over his head. But Obama is not a nice guy. Saying that would get you a KKK hood.
I suppose it’s moot…..Arrrrrrgh!!!
All we ever said we wanted was someone who wanted to be President and would fight for it.
Romney, and all the people who championed him from the beginning, may they, if not rot in hell, at least turn rancid in its antechambers before taking a long and laborious journey northwards.
Like McCain before him, he let down the whole country. How can one escape charging him with wither cowardice of indifference? When we needed Grant we got McClellan.
sharpie: that “five million conservatives didn’t vote” is a rumor. I’ve not seen anything that indicates that it’s true. In fact, some of the misconception was based on early returns that showed Romney as having millions fewer votes than McCain, and millions less than Romney’s final tally ended up being. There’s nothing I’ve ever seen that indicates that in fact any significant numbers of conservatives stayed home. I’ve written about this issue quite a few times on this blog.
Barack Obama:69,498,516
John McCain: 59,948,323
Barack Obama: 65,910,437
Mitt Romney: 60,932,795
You are right, Neo. Romney increased Republican votes by 1 million while Obama lost nearly 5 million. (If these numbers by Wikipedia can be trusted.)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_presidential_election,_2012
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_presidential_election,_2008
Fraud?
We know that urban machines deliver almost 100% of the available vote or, in many cases, more so, so the value of total votes should be laughed at. In fact, the totals of the popular vote being as close as they are should provide hope that the actual number of people in support of conservative policy is much larger than it is.
Consider the huge pressure on the urban voter, the urban dweller? For them there are no jobs and gov’t benefits are harder to get. How else can these people survive? They vote to survive.
Against them are many conservative voters who stayed at home because Romney was on the ticket. That Romney brought out more than McCain is true, but the real unknown is how many are out there who can be motivated to vote. Are there many conservative non-McCain and non-Romney voters?
Yes. I still think there are 5 million out there not voting because they don’t identify with the candidate. Obtain their vote, rather than the few million from the soft squishy center and you’ll have a winner.
Still, I am saddened by the conservative voter who found Romney not worth voting for. If there ever was a candidate still capable of uniting America, he was it. That Obama won by making the most tolerant and moderate of exceptional intelligences extreme is indicative of the power of propaganda.
Leaders lead.
Followers follow leaders.
Mitt was a nice guy, lived and lives a moral life.
But not a leader.
Just plain too nice, too deferential to “Mr Prez”.If you are a combatant who refuses to go for the jugular (Benghazi), you will lose the fight of your life.
I disagree that if Romney had gone for the jugular on Benghazi back in the fall, he’d have had a good chance of beating Obama. The media were totally covering for Obama and also didn’t offer the American public much exposure to anything about Benghazi. Just that something bad happened, it was contained, but everything was still just fine over there in foreign lands because, well, Obama got bin Laden.
I’ve got a strong sense that everyone is more receptive now to Benghazi not just because of the recent testimony of the whistle-blowers, but because of the Boston bombing. Everyone, including the MSM, is now back, at least somewhat, in the war on terror mode.
Ann-
The debate was not actively manipulated in real time by the MSM, Crowley the ‘moderator’ aside. My point remains, Mitt had his chance and pulled his punches. I saw it in real time, MSM-unedited, and so, presumably, did you.
Mitt had his chance. The debate was widely watched. He did not take it. He folded.
Don Carlos is right. Romney wasn’t up to the task. His political record is mediocre. Romney is 1 for 4 in political races. He lost a senate race in MA. Won the governorship of MA in 2002. I heard that he did not run for re-election in MA because he knew he would lose. He lost presidential bids in 2008 and 2012. Another way of looking at this is he has lost every race he has entered except one. During the 2012 campaign I heard the story that Romney gave up his inheritance and yet went on to become a very successful businessman. However according to Wikipedia, he started Bain Capital in 1984 and later gave up his inheritance (when his father died in 1995). He also made himself out to be the hero of the Winter Olympics, but I have read that this claim is overblown. So what is his success? His moral uprightness? According to Wikipedia, Kennedy ran ads for his shifting political positions on issues such as abortion. He resolved that by coming out strongly pro-choice. He flip flopped completely when he ran for president. Could Romney have attacked Obama on Benghazi? Damn right. But what in his record says he is anything but a squishy RINO who prides himself on working with dems? Oh how proud he was of his record of working with dems to pass Romneycare in MA. What a loser.
I have just reviewed the 33 responses posted and find they fall into two groups: (1) Fact- based, and (2) Opinion-based.
Facts are facts: Mitt caved. Generally accepted.
Opinions as to why Mitt caved in the 2nd debate are speculations, and are unverifiable. As are speculations that an aggressive performance wouldn’t have made a difference (blaming the stoopids).