The Party, Not the Person 2
It increasingly appears that the Republican Party is going to lose the presidential election and, indeed, may take down its Congressional candidates as collateral damage.
If that happens, Republican insiders will certainly argue that they lost because Mitt the Flip was not conservative enough. The Republican answer to every political failure seems to be that it was because they were not conservative enough. It generally is not an accurate answer, but it’s the only one they’ve got.
At the Guardian, Gary Younge points out that, actually, it’s not the person. It is the party. A nugget:
So when people wonder how Mitt Romney became the party’s standard-bearer they need to first remember just how low the standards were. To make sense within the Republican party was, almost by definition, to appear nonsensical outside it. More credible candidates took a look at what you’d have to say and do to compete and decided to sit the election out.
It is today’s QOTD writ large.
September 24, 2012 at 1:58 pm
It’s the party of and for the vile. The writer gives Mitt Romney too much slack. He’s been on television enough, exposed as himself, to show everyone he’s really just horrible and contemptuous of everyone not in his economic niche.
September 24, 2012 at 4:01 pm
I thought Younge was kinder to Romney than he normally is. I think he might have been trying to show that the Party drove the Person to the right, as opposed to versey vicey.
I think Mitt has at heart the morals of a shady used car salesman wearing a loud checked coat with white belt and shoes–willing to say whatever he needs to say to get the mark of the day to purchase the clunker of the hour.