Holy shit. Mitt Romney looked about as presidential as is humanly possible during last night’s Republican debate. He accomplished this goal by implementing a flawless two-part strategy: First, by speaking in coherent sentences and second, by sharing the stage with six blithering idiots. Nobody else scored any hits at all: Ron Paul sounded as crazy as ever (and he looked a lot more tired than usual, to boot); Michele Bachmann downplayed her zaniness and played up her fertility; Newt Gingrich looked and sounded like a petulant baby; Tim Pawlenty sucked up to Romney (good luck with that vice presidential nod, Timmy, but it ain’t going to happen); Herman Cain continued his weird strategy of getting progressively dumber every single time he opens his mouth; and Rick Santorum continued to run for president of some alternate universe where values voters are a deciding factor in the race.
It felt as though everyone on stage—Pawlenty most of all—was running hard for vice president. Nobody wanted to rumble with the Big Man on Campus, and Romney looked doubly good because of that. If this keeps up, the campaign won’t even be a contest, and an unruffled Romney will put up a very solid race against Obama next year. The best hope for Democrats is that someone goes on the offensive. There’s a lot of anti-Romney sentiment in the Republican Party that’s looking for an outlet. Someone—say, a firebrand candidate like Rick Perry—can ride that sentiment all the way to national prominence, and maybe the nomination.
They’re not running for VP at this point, and I don’t know what ambitious person would run for VP. The career path for VP assumes that a) the president you serve under is going to be so popular, for eight full years, that b) voters will want to extend that presidency through you for 8 more years. I don’t think trends in the electorate bear that out as a likely scenario anymore.
VP is basically the best career-ending consolation prize you can get, like a plum ambassadorship, it’s not something you get in a campaign for. To wit: Pawlenty probably isn’t running for VP to Romney by coining the term “Obamneycare” just before the debate.
What the Non-Romneys were trying to do last night is to stay positive and make a good first impression on the many GOP voters who were tuned out of the early campaign rumblings until last night.
You have to build credibility before you deploy it to make an effective negative attack, and last night was all about building. There will be plenty of times in the coming months were the candidates will start to more forcefully differentiate themselves.
It’s going to make for some truly funny moments in the next year, and also truly sad when you realize that one of these pandering idiots will get at least 4 out of every 10 votes cast, no matter what truly stupid things they’ve said or done prior to sealing the nomination.
Of course I didn’t watch, I mean, what would be the point of that?
However, I do like to imagine them all getting out of the same teeny-tiny car, tripping over their big, goofy, floppy feet and spraying seltzer all over eachother, while honking.