MUST READ: The blunder years

[highplainsdem]

From the Australian newspaper The Age:

http://www.theage.com.au/opinion/politics/the-blunder-years-20120922-26dui.html

One problem for Romney's campaign is that, politically speaking, their plastic, anxious, arrogant candidate does nothing well. The other problem for the campaign staff is, well, the campaign staff. Led by Stuart Stevens, an extreme sports guru who has appointed himself speechwriter, strategist and ad producer, their ineptitude has prompted open warfare, with major conservative commentators such as Peggy Noonan saying that the Republican Party needs to ''step in''.

The double-whammy of poor candidate and campaign has led many to ask where the fault lies. Bad campaigns with good candidates can win - the Clinton 1992 effort was one example, though compared to Romney's it was Cirque du Soleil on ice. A good campaign can keep a bad candidate on a leash, though with Romney, a Hannibal Lecter mask and trolley deal might be the go.

Above all, a candidacy can only succeed if it has a real relationship to the society it is petitioning to govern. Romney's 47 per cent quote was so abysmal not because it was dismissive, but because it had no rationality to it. It constructs an America that is a mere projection of its fantasies, and then campaigns to it. Such a process has become a right-wing disease in recent years, a process that began with climate change denialism, and extends to everything from the idea that rape does not cause pregnancy to the ''birther'' movement.

Of initial benefit, it eventually isolates the campaign and makes it unable to steer itself by reacting to its environment. Hence the spectacle of a Republican Party that wanders into next week's disasters by trying to clean up this week's. The right is more susceptible to this temptation in our era because contemporary conservatism, trying to twin anarchic free-market politics with traditional fixed values, is a fantasy at its root.

-snip-

Brilliant critique of Romney and his campaign, from the early paragraphs about all the earlier gaffes ("Mitt is a man who has made an art of the brain-fart&quot , to the great analysis of how much worse "47gate" is, to the final devastating comment on Romney's campaign "skills" ("Mitt Romney, this week in Ohio, will find the one couple whose votes can swing the election, and remark on how ugly their children are&quot .

But since this is an Australian paper, we'll need to get the column out via social media to make sure US voters see it.

[hollysmom]

1. This is the opposite of the Plunder years

that Romney had so much success with.

[lunatica]

2. His karmic adjustments are catching up with him

[highplainsdem]

3. +1,000

[Freddie]

4. Brilliant and spot-on!

I've heard the Aussie press dosen't mince words.

[bemildred]

5. "and Mitt Romney, this week in Ohio, will find the one couple whose votes can swing the election,

and remark on how ugly their children are."

[highplainsdem]

6. I love that line.

[bemildred]

7. That is how it is done. nt