A funny thing happened to Mitt Romney on the way to his coronation as the inevitable Republican candidate for President of the United States. Minnesota Missouri and Colorado happened. Rick Santorum beat him in all three states on the same day -- and beat him by huge margins in two of those states as well as upsetting him in Colorado where the Mormon vote was expected to give Romney a victory.
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 years 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 years primary season it seems to be todays Republican voters saying We dont want Romney! We dont 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 Gingrichs baggage. But Romneys 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 Romneys 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 camps 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 Romneys finest hour though it won him the Florida primary.
This may well have been payback for Newts demagoguery about Romneys 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. Its 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.
Thomas Sowell is a senior fellow at the Hoover Institute and author of The Housing Boom and Bust.
A funny thing happened to Mitt Romney on the way to his coronation as the inevitable Republican candidate for President of the United States. Minnesota Missouri and Colorado happened. Rick Santorum beat him in all three states on the same day -- and beat him by huge margins in two of those states as well as upsetting him in Colorado where the Mormon vote was expected to give Romney a victory.
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 years 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 years primary season it seems to be todays Republican voters saying We dont want Romney! We dont 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 Gingrichs baggage. But Romneys 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 Romneys 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 camps 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 Romneys finest hour though it won him the Florida primary.
This may well have been payback for Newts demagoguery about Romneys 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. Its 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.
Thomas Sowell is a senior fellow at the Hoover Institute and author of The Housing Boom and Bust.
