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The motives for the drumbeat on the Right demanding that Mitt Romney get “more specific,” which shows steady signs of getting louder, aren’t necessarily that easy to divine. There are without a doubt many conservatives who truly believe this is a “center-right country” looking for a sharply more conservative direction; that swing voters are mostly conservatives; and/or that the margin between victory or defeat for the GOP will come from the relative temperature level of “the base.” In their endless diatribes on the anger of “the people” towards Obama and “socialism” and “elites” and all that, many have probably bought their own spin. And there is obviously some mass base out their for the Palin/Breitbart proposition that the only way conservatives can conceivably lose any election is by displaying insufficient hatred of the opposition, and an insufficient zest for projecting conspiracy theories and outright fabrications into the overheated air.
But even more sophisticated conservatives (e.g., the Editorial Board of the Wall Street Journal) who probably don’t think maximum polarization is the key to the political kingdom seem to be talking the same way. At Ten Miles Square, Jonathan Bernstein suggests they know Mitt’s vagueness is smart politically, but want him to become specific “because specific commitments will tend to constrain him once he takes office.” Earlier today I said something very similar in guessing that the Journal is willing to risk defeat in order to “make sure the mortgage to Mitt’s soul stays in the right hands.”
What we may be witnessing is a truly rare phenomenon: a general election where one party’s candidate is so manifestly without trust among key elements of his own “base” that they are demanding he continue to campaign as though the primaries are still going on. Check out this Hugh Hewitt post from today about what Romney needs to do right now on the health care issue:
Governor Romney needs to huddle with Speaker John Boehner and Senate GOP Leader Mitch McConnell and come up with a strategy that combats this suspicion, which is deeply held and far wider than most GOP insiders want to admit. That suspicion is going to hobble turnout and it is already a dead weight on enthusiasm and contributions.
They need a very well publicized joint appearance at which they put out a firm pledge of repeal that is accompanied by a detailed plan and a timeline, one that gets into the “tall weeds.” They all need to resist the temptation to argue that the public isn’t interested in the “tall weeds.” The public is very interested in just that set of weeds, and reacts extremely negatively to vagueness and obfuscation because it smacks of condescension. “Reconciliation,” which is the process by which repeal of Obamacare will be accomplished, is a lot less complicated than the average business of running a business, and it is aggravating in the extreme to be treated like children and told that the details are too obscure to be trotted out. Social media has empowered the public, allowing very smart people to translate Congress-speak into plain language, and the lack of detail gets translated into charges of deceit even when those charges aren’t deserved.
Now even Hugh Hewitt isn’t crazy enough to think that “the public,” 41% of whom are not even aware the Supreme Court upheld the Affordable Care Act, is demanding a Romney campaign that provides a step-by-step account of how and when the Supreme Court’s work will be overturned. This is all about what conservative activists want because they did not get the assurances they wanted from their nominee during the primary season, in no small part thanks to their crappy field of candidates, and also, of course, as a reflection of Mitt’s richly earned reputation for lying.
So Romney is going to have to spend his time between now and election day not only trying to beat Barack Obama, but proving himself over and over again to “the base,” running a primary as well as a general election campaign. If I wasn’t so aware of how he’s put himself into this situation throughout a career of serial pandering to anyone he needed to fulfill his ambitions, I’d almost feel sorry for him.
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RepublicanPointOfView on July 05, 2012 4:59 PM:
The Wall Street Journal is absolutely correct!
Our next president, Mitt Romney should go all in on the fact that his economic platform is Bush's economy on steroids. He should emphasis that the only reason that the tax cuts for the wealthy did not create jobs was that they were not deep enough cuts for the 1%. Mitt should push for eliminating the 'death tax' and explain that it would be unfair that he sons not inherit all of his quarter billion. He should push for eliminating capital gains and explain that it is unfair that he has to pay all of a 15% tax rate on his income. After all, all good Americans understand that the only fair taxes are those on labor and not on capital.
c u n d gulag on July 05, 2012 5:10 PM:
What's he need to do?
Go visit Sarah in Alaska, and club baby seals to death?
Pull out a gun, and shoot some illegal aliens at the border?
Go to a hospital, and pull the plugs on all of the machines for old men and women, and children?
Lynch a Nigrah?
Tie a gay person behind his limo, and drag him or her to death?
What?
Personally, I don't feel at all sorry for him.
If he gets elected - the national breakfast will be the waffle, and the national footwear will be flip-flops.
Ron Byers on July 05, 2012 5:16 PM:
The Wall Street Journal is right to worry. The President is winning, not by much, but he is winning. Unlike a number of dittoheads the WSJ editorial board can read and realize that most people kinda like Obama, but they don't like Romney. Obama's campaign rollout seems flawless. No drama Obama is just hard to rattle. The trend lines don't seem favorable if all you are telling voters is "vote for me, I am not Obama."
Romney needs to grab the election and shake it up. So far he seems unable to do that.
Danp on July 05, 2012 5:18 PM:
Funny, I don't recall anyone asking Mitt or anyone else to be specific during the primaries. It was enough to come up with a long list of boogie men that the Republican nominee would tackle day after day. Romney showed his attack power by going after the other clowns in the race.
howard on July 05, 2012 5:50 PM:
i couldn't help but notice the usual right-wing fetishizing of business sneaking into hewitt's remarks, all that claptrap about how running a business is more complicated than appropriations reconciliation.
first off, most people don't run a business.
second, most business are in fact quite easy to run (i always think of warren buffet's dictum that he tries to buy businesses that will make money even if run by an idiot, because sooner or later, an idiot will run it).
and third, yes, appropriations reconciliation is, in fact, complicated if you really want to explain it to people.
(hewitt, of course, doesn't: he just wants to say it's a simple procedure where the nice people who are doing away with that awful tyrannical imposition of statist obamacare can vote yes or no whether to do it.)
martin on July 05, 2012 5:50 PM:
I dread to see what happens when the "dead weight" is lifted from the Republicans fundraising efforts.
troglodyte on July 05, 2012 6:20 PM:
I dread to see what happens when the "dead weight" is lifted from the Republicans fundraising efforts.
That's a misdirection from the real anxiety that various wingnut pundits may be feeling today. Do you remember at the end of last week when the outraged right predicted that the groundswell against Obamacare would swell the Tea Party into a tsunami of rallies on July 4th? Did you hear of any?
Rip on July 05, 2012 7:12 PM:
Hewitt is one of those conservatives who firmly believe that Americans would overwhelmingly fall in line with the far right agenda if only someone could articulate it without sounding crazy. For them it's not just about reassuring the base, but convincing the middle in the superiority of their ideas, but in a language that doesn't scare them away. He and others like him are lost in an idyllic fantasy of 1980, where St. Ronald slew the liberal dragon because he convinced voters that conservatism would save them.
anon again on July 05, 2012 7:59 PM:
In my area--a swing state-- so many people you'd typically think would vote Republican are saying that President Obama is doing a great job, and Romney seems way out of touch.
I like it that so many voters are hearing dissension and dissatisfaction from Republican pundits and typically conservative newswriters on the candidate's issues. It is really getting a lot of tv coverage here.
The flip flopping of Ro-money and the overseas wealth management/hidden investments also get a lot of coverage around here. Amazing how informed many are becoming. Plus that revealing story about his investments in the abortion disposal company by Ro-money/Bain is really hitting the proverbial fan.
Zorro on July 05, 2012 11:41 PM:
And yet... IT DOESN'T MATTER. As we've seen, the GOP decides which votes count and which don't count (look at who owns the makers of most of the voting machines, like the company formerly known as Diebold), as well as who has the opportunity to vote in the first place (such as in my home state of PA, where state Rep. Mike Turzai (R) was refreshingly honest when he said that PA's new voter ID law would enable Romney to win the state).
If Romney doesn't take the oath of office in January 2013, I will be genuinely surprised. Relieved, but surprised.
-Z
Doug on July 06, 2012 9:21 PM:
It boils down to the fact that the general voting public, not often seen in off-year elections, doesn't LIKE what appeals to the Republican "base". Which is why Republicans can win those elections and lose this year.
By large numbers, with luck...