The
Republican establishment, which has lined up heavily behind Romney, has
tried to depict him as the "electable," if not invincible, candidate in
the general election this November. But it is hard to maintain an aura
of invincibility after you have been vinced, especially in a month when
pundits had suggested that Romney might build up an unstoppable momentum
of victories.
In a sense, this year's campaign for the
Republican nomination is reminiscent of what happened back in 1940, when
the big-name favorites -- Senators Taft and Vandenberg, back then --
were eclipsed by a lesser-known candidate who seemed to come out of
nowhere.
As the Republican convention that year struggled to try
to come up with a majority vote for someone, a chant began in the hall
and built to a crescendo: "We want Willkie! We want Willkie!"
If
there is a message in the rise and fall of so many conservative
Republican candidates during this year's primary season, it seems to be
today's Republican voters saying, "We don't want Romney! We don't want
Romney!"
Even in Colorado, where Governor Romney came closest to
winning, the combined votes for Senator Santorum and Speaker Gingrich
added up to an absolute majority against him.
Much has been made
of Newt Gingrich's "baggage." But Romney's baggage has been accumulating
recently, as well. His millions of dollars parked in a tax shelter in
the Cayman Islands is red meat for the class warfare Democrats.
But
a far more serious issue is ObamaCare, perhaps the most unpopular act
of the Obama administration, its totalitarian implications highlighted
by its recent attempt to force Catholic institutions to violate their
own principles and bend the knee to the dictates of Washington
bureaucrats.
Yet Romney's own state-imposed medical care plan
when he was governor of Massachusetts leaves him in a very weak position
to criticize ObamaCare, except on strained federalism grounds that are
unlikely to stir the voters or clarify the larger issues.
The
Romney camp's massive media ad campaign of character assassination
against Newt Gingrich, over charges on which the Internal Revenue
Service exonerated Gingrich after a lengthy investigation, was by no
means Romney's finest hour, though it won him the Florida primary.
This
may well have been payback for Newt's demagoguery about Romney's work
at Bain Capital. But two character assassinations do not make either
candidate look presidential.
If Romney turns his well-financed
character assassination machine on Rick Santorum, or Santorum resorts to
character assassination against either Romney or Gingrich, the
Republicans may forfeit whatever chance they have of defeating Barack
Obama in November.
Some politicians and pundits seem to think
that President Obama is vulnerable politically because of the economy in
the doldrums. "It's the economy, stupid," has become one of the many
mindless mantras of our time.
What Obama seems to understand that
Republicans and many in the media do not, is that dependency on the
government in hard times can translate into votes for the White House
incumbent.
Growing numbers of Americans on food stamps, jobs
preserved by bailouts, people living on extended unemployment payments
and people behind in their mortgage payments being helped by government
interventions are all potential voters for those who rescued them --
even if their rescuers are the reason for hard times, in the first
place.
The economy was far worse during the first term of
Franklin D. Roosevelt than it has been under Obama. Unemployment rates
under FDR were more than double what they have been under Obama. Yet FDR
was reelected in a landslide. Dependency pays off for politicians, even
when it damages an economy or ruins a society.



