Romney’s Uninspiring Michigan “Victory”

The headlines yesterday declared that Romney won Michigan on Tuesday. Except that he didn’t. Michigan delegates are awarded by Congressional district. As such Rick Santorm will walk away with 15 delegates, the same as Romney. Romney didn’t win a single Congressional district that doesn’t at least touch a portion of metro Detroit. In other words, Romney won the liberals in the state while Santorum won the conservatives. Can anyone imagine a more uninspiring victory for a candidate in the state of their birth, where their father was Governor?

Romney will very likely be the nominee. This despite Santorum’s recent surge and the apparent reemergence of Newt in the polls. He creates as much enthusiasm in the GOP as John McCain did in 2008. In other words, not much. He isn’t particularly well liked by anyone other than the northeastern elites of the party and their country club sycophants. Sort of the same as John McCain, who the grassroots of the party never warmed up to until Sarah Palin. This is a serious problem for Romney. McCain’s biggest problem in 2008 was that he didn’t have a solid ground game like Bush did. Romney is facing the same problem.

Romney isn’t winning because voters like him. He’s winning because he’s outspending his opponents 5 to 1, largely running attack ads suggesting that Santorum and Newt aren’t conservative enough or are conservative heretics on one issue or another. Such ads share no vision of the future under a Romney administration. Perhaps more importantly the ads comically ignore Romney’s own conservative heresy and his run for Governor a mere decade ago in which he ran as a progressive.

Mitt Romney is a sure fire loser in the general election. If he can’t inspire Republicans, how in the world is he going to inspire independents to vote for him? He won’t be outspent by Obama, so he can’t skate through the November election with just a bunch of attack ads. He’s going to have to present a vision for the country. Unfortunately his vision is a lot closer to Obama’s than it is to Reagan’s.

Given the choice between an authentic progressive and a Republican wannabe progressive, the American public will always choose the authentic progressive. Given the choice between an authentic progressive and an authentic conservative, the public will always choose the conservative. The GOP establishment has never learned this lesson, which is why they continue to force losers like Ford, Bush 41, Dole, McCain and Romney down our throats. Since 1980 the only Republicans to win ran as right-wing conservatives. This was Reagan’s path to victory, as well as Bush 43′s. Bush 41 ran on Reagan’s record, ran as a hardline conservative and won. Once elected he returned to being a liberal and raised taxes among other things. He promptly lost to an authentic liberal, Bill Clinton.

Mitt Romney might as well be John McCain or Bob Dole. He’s uninspiring, he shares no vision for the future and his path to victory seems to be little more than buying ads attacking his opponents and whining about his opponents doing the same things he does. (read: trying to get Democrats to vote in GOP primaries) Mitt Romney can’t even win his home state of Michigan outright.  How can he beat Obama when he can’t even inspire Republicans in his home state to overwhelmingly vote for him?