The mantra at last night’s Republican campaign debate could have been “you rollin’ with a roughneck,” as Mitt Romney and Rick Perry engaged in a Former GOP Governor Fight Club of sorts. Romney’s face-off and verbal smack down earned him some street creds as he instructed Perry on the rules of debate when Perry repeatedly interrupted him during his rebuttal. Romney even threw a jab or two when he laughingly told Perry that if he wanted to be president of the United States at some point he’d have to let someone else talk. Still, with such an impressive display of bravado, Romney’s poll numbers barely moved this morning as the cover of this week’s Newsweek magazine features (you guessed it!) Herman Cain. Why can’t Mitt get love from the GOP he so adores?
- He’s a flip-flopper’s flip-flopper and that just doesn’t bode well with the Republican base in power (pseudo-conservative religious sect). Mitt’s on record for supporting gay marriage, then opposing it. It seems that he can fashion a response for whatever job he’s courting. That’s fine – except when it comes to issues like wars and pro-choice/anti-abortion. “I respect and will protect a woman’s right to choose. This choice is a deeply personal one,” he wrote in 2002 response to National Abortion Rights Action League’s Massachusetts’s gubernatorial candidate survey as reported in the Nation. ”Women should be free to choose based on their own beliefs, not mine and not the government’s.” But, as the hopeful GOP Republican presidential nominee, Romney has flip-flopped on this position and is strictly pro-life. That’s just one of several major issues he done a double back-flip on.
- Romney’s got a major problem with The Religion Thing. It seems that the party of the Tiny Tent gets even smaller when you don’t belong to one of the sanctioned Christian religions. The fact that he is a Mormon, as defined by the founding fathers directive in the U.S. Constitution, is not supposed to be an issue in the electoral process. Yet, it is – and a big one. “Texans will never vote for a Mormon. We think it’s a cult,” a local Texas politician casually stated last year. And, it seems that Southern Baptist agreed when the evangelical Christian leader Robert Jeffress matter-of-factly stated those very words last week. Though, he’s tried to walk it back a bit, Jeffress did offer that he thought Romney was a nice guy. It was similar to someone cracking a ‘yo’ mama smell so bad’ joke, but later lamenting that she is a polite lady whenever seen in public.
- Until the last debate and New Jersey governor Chris Christie decision to drop out of contention, the big money refused to crack open the wallet for Romney. With Christie refusing to take the bait for a meteoric rise and historic drop back to earth (read: Bachmann, Perry, Trump, soon-to-be Cain), Romney is the GOP’s Candidate of Last Resort.
- The guy is just bland. Last night aside, he just fails to energize voter’s on that (silly) emotional level that resonates with modern-day voter’s. Romney has No Wow Factor, but does remind you of what the infamous Winklevoss twins will look and act like in 20 years. And, does anyone like the Winklevoss twins?
- John Huntsman, plain and simple. The former GOP governor of Utah and ambassador to China under the Obama administration is the guy. Huntsman is smart, has held elected office, has a proven performance on the world stage, a great sense of humor, well respected on both sides of the aisle, photogenic and lover of tacos from street food trucks. The guy is the obvious choice for reasonable GOPers, so of course he is dead last to a guy with a 9-9-9 economic theory, a woman who loathes big government except when she and her extended family can make a buck off of it, and a Bain Capital Wall Street alum. How likely is it Romney loses sleep that this is all a dream and in reality Huntsman is the frontrunner and it is he who has double-somersault, back-flipped to the end of the line.
