“I love this state. It seems right here. Trees are the right height,” opined Mitt Romney about his home state. I never really thought about whether the trees were the right height until Mitt Romney came to Michigan and made that statement while campaigning.
Heir of George Romney, former governor of Michigan (1963-1969), a son of the state, Mitt was expected to do well in the Republican primary on Feb. 28. Indeed he did carry the state: Mitt Romney earned 41.1 percent of the vote, Rick Santorum followed with 37.9 percent, while Congressman Ron Paul (R-Tex.) and Newt Gingrich hardly piqued any interest.
His victory was shortly imperiled, but secured, as expected by many pundits such as George Will, Donna Brazile and Matthew Dowd. They also expect Romney to be the Republican Party’s nominee for the presidency.
Nate Silver, a clairvoyant of American politics, conducted a study of Romney vs. Obama in the scenario of better economic conditions. The results were a 40 percent chance of a victory by Romney and a 60 percent chance of President Obama’s continued administration. I say Romney’s chances are a lot worse.
I watched as he recounted his blissful memories of the city of Detroit, which only a few years back he had doomed to failure, and blissfully drove around the Motor City in a car assembled in Canada, and I realized how truly inept he was as a candidate.
President Obama, the campaigner-in-chief, is quite the contrast to Romney, who is characterless with his robotic speeches and listless murmurs of “America the Beautiful.”
President Obama’s delivery of Al Green’s “Let’s Stay Together” was much better. While this isn’t a contest on American Idol, the contestants’ stage performances matter.
In debates, Romney flubs his animatronic answers and often appears even more loutish than Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), who lost the last presidential election. Romney has often left debate podiums drained of his life force by Newt Gingrich, only to see his formerly vanquished foe achieve a vampiric rise in the polls.
I don’t see why Romney would fare much better in a debate with President Obama. President Obama is an impassioned speaker, with a calmness that differs from Romney’s steely C3P0-like demeanor. Most importantly, the former Massachusetts governor cannot easily assail President Obama on political issues.
The individual mandate included in the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act of 2010 is a near replica of the healthcare policies that were beta-tested in Massachusetts. In fact, much like his editorial “Let Detroit Go Bankrupt” which appeared in The New York Times, Romney released an editorial in USA Today in late 2009 titled “Mr. President, What’s the Rush” in which he opined that President Obama should follow his blueprint for a healthcare overhaul.
Romney’s lame attempts to convince the public that “one of these things is not like the other,” instead affirms the exact opposite that “indeed, one of these things is exactly like the other,” and makes his attempts to abandon his brainchild folly.
Even on the status of the economy, the most important issue, Romney does not have the record to truly criticize President Obama. As governor of Massachusetts, Romney did not oversee flourishes in the business community. Massachusetts ranked 47th in job growth during his tenure according to statistics from the U.S. Department of Labor.
Sarah Palin, the former governor of Alaska and former vice presidential nominee, was subdued in the same way Romney is with his lack of experience in foreign policy, and unfortunately he can’t see Russia from his house.
The gauntlet Mitt Romney has had to run for the Republican Party’s nomination, in which he has had to prove that he is not a witch (a moderate), has left him as backward as Phyllis Schlafly on matters of social policy.
The businessman from Bain Capital is all too reminiscent of the Wall Streeter’s who wrecked America recently; these are the reasons Romney is not the perfect android model to defeat President Obama.
