Lev of Library Grape asks:
How could a party–even the Republicans–be so stupid as to nominate someone who is completely untrustworthy, totally self-interested, completely out of sync with the country’s current economic climate, and the most bumbling and gaffe-prone frontrunning candidate since Chevy Chase was starring on Saturday Night Live?
I don’t think this is exactly the right question. I would ask rather: why would a far-right party with an obsessive hatred of ACA nominate a candidate who once held moderate-to-liberal social beliefs and recently passed a state version of ACA? But in either case, Lev is dead on that the story of Richard Nixon gives the answer:
He (Richard Nixon) came to make the only moral claim that mattered to his audience. To tell them he had made it. “You can see why I believe so deeply in the American dream.” He had risen, politically, from the dead. And he had done it by the route these men respected — by making money. Nixon had been a candidate before, and politician always; but only after his 1962 defeat did he become a wealthy man. The Checkers speech was truthful, back in 1952 — he was poor; he was young, starting out, working hard to succeed. But then there had been failure, political defeat. And through it all he had not earned the money to be independent. Only when he became a Wall Street lawyer, with $200,000 a year from his practice, and with Bebe Rebozo to help him invest in Florida land, could he look his fellow Republicans straight in the eye at last. A campaign coordinator who worked with Nixon through the years put it this way: “Dick could not have made it to first base in 1968 without a substantial personal income. Republicans, especially those who finance the party, respect only one thing, success, and they have only one way of measuring success, money. Dick never had any money before now. He could not talk to these people as an equal, even when he was Vice-President. The thing that would have killed him with them was any suspicion that he simply needed a job. Now they knew he’d be giving up a damn good job, and good money”
Romney is a rich guy who knows how to care of his bidness. That goes a long way. If Santorum were a business tycoon of some kind, he’d be destroying Romney.
rlrr
But Romney was born rich, unlike Nixon…
Scott
I think it might also be because, as Norquist said a month or two back, they just want someone who’ll sign the legislation the Republicans will send him. Romney isn’t a guy with any principles that’ll get in the way — he’ll sign anything. That’s all the GOP wants nowadays — someone who’ll smile for the cameras and sign whatever crazy shit Congress sends him…
MariedeGournay
Romney made it…rise from dead…only brains of one percenters and GOPers take pain of being dead away…*drool*
Mino
I’m just afraid Mittens wll treat us like he did any other failing business–sell us for scrap.
El Cid
If it weren’t for the race thing, their perfect candidates would be big-ballin’, mo-money hip hop stars.
dmsilev
Santorum isn’t exactly counting pennies and worrying about making rent at the end of the month. His net worth is estimated to be something in the 1-2 million dollar range, with most of that in rental properties. He’s no Mitt Romney for sure, but he’s not in the poorhouse either.
c u n d gulag
Oh!
It’s a candidates PERSONAL wealth that sways Conservatives.
And here I thought it was a candidates wealth of ideas!
Silly me…
chopper
because everyone else on stage is a non-starter. they know deep down if they nominate frothy the whole thing is going to go more tits-up than dolly parton doing the backstroke.
they just can’t rationalize going with mittens. the party really is torn.
terraformer
No one gets near the microphone unless they are pre-approved by the oligarchs. That person then is beholden to those oligarchs to some extent, in some cases more in some cases less. This is why we can Never Look Back™ and why nothing substantive can be done to reign things in.
Don’t know what we can do about this dynamic, especially when a sizable portion of the polity thinks it’ll one day be rich too.
ExurbanMom
You can’t spell Romney without Money. The man is a well-greased weathervane, pointing wherever the prevailing winds are blowing at the moment.
Bob2
The thing is that when Santorum drops out, he’s got right wing welfare to fall back on. A job consulting with Heritage or whatever that pays 6 figures like when he was voted out of Pennsylvania after voters finally caught on to how corrupt he was.
Also, if you took Republican primary voters as a percentage of their state’s overall voters, you get a pretty clear picture as to how just how few people control the nominating process.
General Stuck (Bravo Nope Zero)
yes, and beyond republicans it is worth respecting the power of this meme to block out all sorts of other shortcomings of Mr. Romney. Especially in hard econ times, the likes of which we haven’t been seen since the GD.
It is a wonder of nature, just how short, and short sighted the American voters thinking can be. And the power of this phenomenon cannot be overstated.
I can’t remember where, but yesterday I was reading interviews of ordinary voters in Fl, I think. With a 2008 enthusiastic Obama voter complaining about losing 3 percent of her salary the past 3 years. And opining that Obama had had his chance, and now she wants someone else to have a turn, and likely won’t vote for Obama.
It is this kind of shallowness and short term memory loss that is the biggest threat to America. This woman wants to give the wingnuts a turn after they almost utterly destroyed the economy and had to beg for tax payer cash to keep the bottom from falling out. Because she lost 3 percent of her salary do to cutbacks. I know there are other voters who get it, maybe more of them than this person. But I am not filled with confidence of that proposition. So it is likely needed padding that the GOP is certifiably insane in about every way these days. If that is not enough, then we deserve what we get.
liberal
@General Stuck (Bravo Nope Zero):
It’s not exactly news that the public at large has no understanding of the business cycle (e.g. here that the crash started on Bush’s watch, and recoveries aren’t instantaneous).
I agree that right-wingers are more responsible for the crash (my list of the top three are, in order, Greenspan, Milton Friedman, then Reagan), but it’s not like Democrats have their hands clean on this issue. I completely agree that those who say there are no substantial differences between the parties are crazy; but the (mis)management of the FIRE sector is probably the one where the parties differ the least.
Suffern ACE
Hmmm. Well Santorum ran the K-Street project and was a big shake down artist himself when he was in office if I recall correctly. And then there is Newt. So I’m not certain why, of the big 3, Romney should get singled out for being self-interested and untrustworthy.
Schlemizel
@Suffern ACE:
Its the persona. Willard comes off as an entitled inheritance baby. Frothy & Salamander can play the aw shucks, just plain folks card & the morans lap it up.
General Stuck (Bravo Nope Zero)
@liberal:
The country decided thirty years ago to turn right and to let the right wing have its way with them. Of course there were dems who stuck their fingers in the wind and took the easy and often profitable path to GOP light. And there is still remnants of those types in the senate, at least. As well as a sizable blue dog caucus in the House having an effect, that are mostly gone now, and the dems in the senate are beginning to wean themselves off the DLC pork wagon, it seems, some.
My sense is more positive, the trend with elected democrats, who in the end, will go with where dem voters are going, to stay elected. Whether it takes some more education having the wingnuts run things some more, to prove to many knucklehead voters who may still doubt, that that way is a road to ruin, both personal and national, I don’t know. But we will soon enough find out.
Mino
@liberal: Yes, I agree Dems are partly responsible here, as in suckered by Republicans, but they can learn from a mistake. Republicans, not so much.
rikyrah
and who cut it.
heifer, it’s the REPUBLICANS IN CHARGE OF YOUR FUCKING STATE.
see, this is why I say, some people never learn.
and, why I’m never in the ‘ oh, we should praise them for waking up’.
their dumb asses were stupid enough to vote for these fuckers all along…because they thought they were talking about everyone else BUT THEM.
(YES, I mean those folks in Ohio, Michigan, Wisconsin who voted for the GOPers, then went ‘ huh’, when their asses got gored by them.)
What Have The Romans Ever Done for Us? (formerly MarkJ)
I think it’s a little more complicated than this. Name recognition for Romney has to be higher for the low-information (as opposed to high-misinformation) Republican voter. They know his name from last time around if nothing else. That plus oligarch money that allows him to carpet bomb every state with negative ads against his rivals gets him narrow victories in a lot of States.
Those voters who are obsessed with the Conservative conspiracy theories (the high misinformation GOP voter) are likely to side with Santorum or Gingrich. They don’t make up the majority in a lot of States, but in the South, they probably do.
Jay C
I read through Lev’s whole post and its sources, and while he may be right in a general sense, the use (and I realize it’s Garry Wills’, not Lev’s) of Richard Nixon as an example doesn’t really pass the smell test. When he left office/politics in the early ’60s, Nixon “made” his money pretty much via an early version of the Wingnut Welfare Circuit: less “institutional” than nowadays; basically relying on a clique of already-wealthy pals to keep him working – and in the Party’s notice – until it was time to re-launch his political career. Nixon was a life-long professional politician, and the notion of the “giving up a good job” trope as being a selling-point to Republicans (in 1968, now or whenever) strikes me as being just a tad on the oversimplified side.
Dave
Guh… If Santorum were a totally different person, he would indeed be totally different.
"Fair and Balanced" Dave
IMO, the biggest problem Santorum has is not his lack of “bidness” experience, it’s his lack of a competent campaign organization. In Ohio, Santorum had no declared delegates at all in three districts and less than a full slate in six other districts–so even though he essentially tied Romney in the state, Mitt came away with significantly more delegates (35 to Santorum’s 21). Furthermore, like Newt, the frothy mix wasn’t even on the ballot in Virginia.
The other problem Santorum has is Newt Gingrich. The two of them are splitting the knuckle-dragger vote.
catclub
Of course, if you are already part of the inherited aristocracy, the fact that you wreck every business handed to you by your father’s rich friends is no bar to advancement.
The fact that Mitt did not wreck every investment just means he is trying too hard.
The frat boy is laughing.
catclub
The other problem Santorum has is Newt Gingrich. The two of them are splitting the knuckle-dragger vote.
Shelly Adelson’s plan. otherwise a single candidate of the knuckle draggers would be thrashing Mitt Romneys ass.
SteveM
Yeah, it’s that, but it’s also that they know that while any real American would just vote the Limbaugh/Reagan’s Corpse ticket, depraved secular-humanist Americans regrettably are still allowed to vote in our ACORN-infested system. So they figure Romney is the most they can get past our diseased, Satanic, liberal-media-brainwashed sensibilities.
Zifnab
I disagree. If being rich was all it took, Steve Forbes would have been on the GOP slate at some point. Hell, if it was all about the money, Warren Buffet would be the GOP pick. You’ve got to walk the walk and talk the talk to sell to the GOP base.
The only reason Santorum isn’t getting destroyed by Romney is because there is a substantial portion of the GOP Big Tent (about 30%) that can’t trust Romney worth a damn on his conservative credentials. If Santorum was rich, he’d be beating Romney because he wouldn’t be fighting every Romney campaign dollar with a Santorum nickle. The fact that Santorum and Gingrich remain so incredibly competitive highlights how ineffective Romney’s candidacy has been. So many of his supporters just think he’s the best hope against Obama – they don’t really like him at all. If Romney couldn’t self-fund to the tune of hundreds of millions of dollars, he’d be polling down with Rick Perry.
This isn’t about Romney’s business acumen at all. It’s about Romney having a lot of friends with a lot of money who can finance the fight against Obama.
bobbo
I think the all-American habit of valorizing wealth is why Romney is absolutely shameless about his station in life. His “I like firing people,” “I have friends who own Nascar teams,” “I’m not worried about the poor,” etc., do not feel like gaffes to him. They are perfectly consistent with his world view, and with the world view of those who have helped him get where he is now. Whether there are enough people who admire him just for being rich to elect him is an open question.
Auldblackjack
So in 1960 ‘these people’ supported Kennedy because he was the guy who didn’t simply need a job?
Sorry, not buying it.
General Stuck (Bravo Nope Zero)
I’m honored, Library Grape.