Hawkins: What the Beltway Crowd Misses About Newt & Mitt
This is John Hawkins second very well written common sense article explaining the myth of Mitt Romney's electability.
The biggest problem that Mitt Romney has is that the arguments in favor of his candidacy have been paper thin and largely circular.
He’s the “most electable” candidate because his supporters keep saying he’s the most electable. He’s “inevitable” because his supporters say he’s inevitable. “He’ll be conservative in office” despite governing as a moderate because his supporters say he’ll be conservative in office.
None of these arguments hold up under a bare minimum of scrutiny. Mitt has lost 2 of 3 major races he’s run so far (His record would have been 1-4 if he had run for governor again in 2006), he’s only won 1 out of 3 primaries up until this point despite having every advantage, he’s only pulling about 30% of the vote nationally, and there’s no reason at all to think that a guy who’s famous for shifting his positions would suddenly turn into Ronald Reagan once he gets into office.
Moreover, it’s hard not to notice the double standard that’s been going on during the primary. Every candidate in the field who pulls ahead of Mitt gets savaged by the mainstream media and his allies in the conservative press, while Mitt hasn’t even had a basic vetting. Furthermore, when Mitt bombed Newt into the ground with vicious negative ads in Iowa, despite the fact that Newt had been running a positive campaign, we were told, “Politics ain’t beanbag.” On the other hand, when the remaining candidates gave Mitt the same treatment he had dished out after New Hampshire, this was supposed to be some sort of unconscionable attack on capitalism that was hurting the guaranteed winner of the primaries. That’s horseflop.
Given that Ted Kennedy beat Mitt in 1994 with attacks on Bain Capital, how ridiculous is it that the most basic questions about his time there still hadn’t been brought up and perhaps worse yet, that Romney still doesn’t seem to have particularly good answers for some of those questions?
Read on HERE.