One of the most entertaining parts of the whole thing is pondering the opinions of two women who supported him in 2012 and now don't seem to like him very much. Jennifer Rubin, the conservative blogger at the Washington Post, was so pro-Mitt in 2012 that she could have been mistaken for a paid publicist. Now she's horrified:
Romney's cringe-worthy start
How is this Mitt Romney any different from the last one?
The Romney reality: His time has passed
Peggy Noonan was both warm and cool towards Romney in 2012; in September she called his campaign "incompetent," then clarified that she really meant "rolling calamity." (Read it here.)
By November 5, however, the day before the election, Peggy had decided that Mitt was going to win, and deserved to. She based her belief on good vibrations and lawn signs; you can read the entire piece here. Best parts:
Romney’s crowds are building—28,000 in Morrisville, Pa., last night;
30,000 in West Chester, Ohio, Friday It isn’t only a triumph of advance
planning: People came, they got through security and waited for hours
in the cold. His rallies look like rallies now, not enactments. In some new way
he’s caught his stride. He looks happy and grateful. His closing speech has
been positive, future-looking, sweetly patriotic. His closing ads are sharp—the
one about what’s going on at the rallies is moving.
All the vibrations are right.
And there’s the thing about the yard signs. In Florida a few weeks ago
I saw Romney signs, not Obama ones. From Ohio I hear the same. From tony
Northwest Washington, D.C., I hear the same.
Is it possible this whole thing is playing out before our eyes and we’re
not really noticing because we’re too busy looking at data on paper instead of
what’s in front of us? Maybe that’s the real distortion of the polls this year:
They left us discounting the world around us. (Epistemic closure alert: the idea that the absence of Obama lawn signs in "tony Northwest Washington, D.C." means that there aren't any Obama lawn signs anywhere and by extension that the Republican is going to win, is a good indication that Peggy needs to get out more.)
And there is Obama, out there seeming tired and wan, showing up through
sheer self discipline. A few weeks ago I saw the president and the governor at
the Al Smith dinner, and both were beautiful specimens in their white ties and
tails, and both worked the dais. But sitting there listening to the jokes and
speeches, the archbishop of New York sitting between them, Obama looked like a
young challenger—flinty, not so comfortable. He was distracted, and his smiles
seemed forced. He looked like a man who’d just seen some bad internal polling.
Romney? Expansive, hilarious, self-spoofing, with a few jokes of finely
calibrated meanness that were just perfect for the crowd. He looked like a
president. He looked like someone who’d just seen good internals.
Maybe
that’s what the coming Romney moment is about: independents, conservatives,
Republicans, even some Democrats, thinking: We can turn it around, we can work together,
we can right this thing, and he can help.
- Mitt is good at life, good at business and good at faith. He is politically clunky, always was and always will be.
- The real Romney-Reagan difference is this: There was something known as Reaganism. It was a real movement.
- Mitt is a smart, nice man who thinks himself clever and politically insightful. He is not and will not become so.
- Romneyism is just “Mitt should be president.” That is not enough.
- There is no such thing as Romneyism and there never will be. Mr. Romney has never encompassed a philosophical world.
- Mitt would have been a better president than Obama. That is not nearly enough.
Will Mitt run? I'm going out on a limb to say that in the end, I'm guessing he won't. Stay tuned.
No comments:
Post a Comment