Don't Be So Surprised

I'm not going to say the implosion of Mitt Romney in the past few weeks has been anything short of shocking. Between the exploitation of a foreign tragedy, the leak of an embarrassingly frank talk to Boca donors, the proclaiming of the $200k-$250k earners as "middle class and the delayed tax return release, this has been a spectacular parade of unforced errors like I have never seen.

But there has been a cry among flustered Republicans that this was a year the GOP could not lose. Not that they care what I think, but rubbish.

That last link goes a widely-quoted piece by Peggy Noonan essentially blaming Romney's poor polling on a sloppy campaign. But if nobody noticed in the clown show that was the 2012 Republican primary, Mitt was the best they got.

Does anyone really think this election would be closer had Republicans nominated Newt Gingrich? Or Rick Santorum? Or laughably Michele Bachmann or Herman Cain? Of course not. But that was the choice presented to voters.

Now, that's not to say this list of Republicans from the shallow end of the cestpool are truly the most attractive candidates for president. But the greatest sign last year that the tide, whatever you think of jobs reports, was in our favor was the number of folks who stayed on the sidelines. Mike Huckabee. Sarah Palin. Mitch Daniels. Jeb Bush. Really, Romney and Rick Perry were the only major contenders any realistic Republican was dreaming about who actually threw a hat in the ring. Perry, it turned out, was not ready for primetime, so we ended up where we are today.

Actually, I laid out more than two years ago the reasons that while Jeb may well harbor White House ambitions, 2012 wasn't the year to pursue them. My top reason:

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Jeb Bush won't run unless he can win. He knows that, unlike governor, there are no second chances at the White House. 
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Barack Obama at no point in the last four years has seemed like a loser for re-election. That gets forgotten by Republicans so blinded by hatred of his liberal principles that cannot see the broader view of the president. Let's just check out some conventional GOP wisdom.

Republicans believe Obama is ruining this country by taking it far to the left, yet he has pushed tax structures well to the right of uber-moderate Bill Clinton. Indeed, most liberals have been starkly disappointed that he failed even to go that far. The same goes for the hardly-ambitious ObamaCare reforms which look more like DoleCare even than RomneyCare.

While Republicans believe Obama has done way too much, most liberals, and I believe moderates, feel he has actually done too little.

In that sense, it seems no surprise that the Romney campaign has floundered so. The message of the GOP, after all, is that intervention is the wrong medicine, but Romney as a challenger to an incumbent has to make the case this president has not done enough to fix the economy. Those messages simply don't jive.

So Obama was always a favorite. And in their hearts, Jeb and Huck and Sarah and Mitch and Marco and Fred and everybody viable candidate with some base instinct for the lay of the land knew it. The polls have born that out too, with Romney failing to hold a lead in the polls since cinching the nominations and finally having to share broadcast time with a Democrat.

The growing conventional wisdom is that Mitt Romney with his recent gaffes has lost the election. But the truth is he was never winning in the first place.