The Romney Formula
Posted by Ryan Lizza
The New Yorker
Campaign dynamics change quickly, but the day after the Bloomberg/Washington Post debate Mitt Romney, the former governor of Massachusetts, towers over a field of Tea Party ankle-biters who may continue to harass him as he marches toward the nomination, but who don’t offer a credible alternative. Let us count the ways Romney is now solidifying his place as the G.O.P. frontrunner:
The Establishment
One of the great sub-dramas of the Republican primaries has been the dissatisfaction of the party’s donor and opinion classes with the options at hand—Romney’s bland but seemingly inevitable candidacy, or an unelectable right-winger—and their hunt for someone to rescue the Party. The list of draftees who have declined to run is familiar: Jeb Bush, Mitch Daniels, Paul Ryan, Chris Christie. Christie, who has a flair for the dramatic, ended this chapter of the campaign last week with a fifty-minute press conference shown live on the cable news channels. Christie loyalists headed to Romney, and yesterday Christie himself endorsed him. The white-knight phase of the campaign is now over. Fox News and the opinion pages of conservative media have exhibited a noticeable shift from attacks on Romney to a muted resignation about his candidacy. The party is gradually accommodating itself to him.
The Perry Implosion
Romney has been running for President for years, while Rick Perry has been running for a few months. The debates have magnified this difference in preparation and polish. Various theories have been put forward for Perry’s embarrassing debate performances—back pain, not enough sleep—but by now we’ve seen enough to know that Perry is simply inarticulate, has trouble making arguments, and is lost once the conversation turns to issues outside of the ones he mastered as governor of Texas. He entered the Presidential race late; he has not spent time preparing for the office, and it shows. These might be forgivable sins in a Republican primary—George W. Bush was hardly a great communicator—but Perry also got on the wrong side of the immigration debate for conservatives and gave a weak response to Romney’s sustained argument that Perry’s views on Social Security made him unelectable. Conservatives have little incentive to mount an aggressive defense of an already damaged candidate.
Read more http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/newsdesk/2011/10/the-romney-formula.html
The New Yorker
Campaign dynamics change quickly, but the day after the Bloomberg/Washington Post debate Mitt Romney, the former governor of Massachusetts, towers over a field of Tea Party ankle-biters who may continue to harass him as he marches toward the nomination, but who don’t offer a credible alternative. Let us count the ways Romney is now solidifying his place as the G.O.P. frontrunner:
The Establishment
One of the great sub-dramas of the Republican primaries has been the dissatisfaction of the party’s donor and opinion classes with the options at hand—Romney’s bland but seemingly inevitable candidacy, or an unelectable right-winger—and their hunt for someone to rescue the Party. The list of draftees who have declined to run is familiar: Jeb Bush, Mitch Daniels, Paul Ryan, Chris Christie. Christie, who has a flair for the dramatic, ended this chapter of the campaign last week with a fifty-minute press conference shown live on the cable news channels. Christie loyalists headed to Romney, and yesterday Christie himself endorsed him. The white-knight phase of the campaign is now over. Fox News and the opinion pages of conservative media have exhibited a noticeable shift from attacks on Romney to a muted resignation about his candidacy. The party is gradually accommodating itself to him.
The Perry Implosion
Romney has been running for President for years, while Rick Perry has been running for a few months. The debates have magnified this difference in preparation and polish. Various theories have been put forward for Perry’s embarrassing debate performances—back pain, not enough sleep—but by now we’ve seen enough to know that Perry is simply inarticulate, has trouble making arguments, and is lost once the conversation turns to issues outside of the ones he mastered as governor of Texas. He entered the Presidential race late; he has not spent time preparing for the office, and it shows. These might be forgivable sins in a Republican primary—George W. Bush was hardly a great communicator—but Perry also got on the wrong side of the immigration debate for conservatives and gave a weak response to Romney’s sustained argument that Perry’s views on Social Security made him unelectable. Conservatives have little incentive to mount an aggressive defense of an already damaged candidate.
Read more http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/newsdesk/2011/10/the-romney-formula.html
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