Obama Without Romney (Or Ross Douthat fantisized that if Obama had no opponent, he might lose)

[Kber]

http://campaignstops.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/09/25/douthat-obama-without-romney/?ref=opinion

Click on the link if you want the details, but essentially, Ross believes that Obama's impending victory is more about how terrible Mitt is than how well Obama has done as President.

Question for Ross: Could ANY republican have beaten Obama?

[DCBob]

1. A generic Republican might have won..

but there is no such animal.

[alcibiades_mystery]

2. Conservatives refuse to believe that people like and trust Obama to do the job

This is the first of many Conservative explanations for why Obama kicked their asses.

[awake]

3. Huntsman

Good thing he was nock out early.

[Kber]

4. Agree that Huntsman might have won

but in the current GOP climate, winning the primary was in impossibility.

But what I find even more disturbing is the introduction of a theme that no matter how big a margin Obama ends up with, the GOP will never grant him a mandate on the grounds that the election would have been different if they'd fielded a better candidate or if Romney had run a better campaign.

They won't admit that the central problem is that the GOP philosophy, as embodied in their platform, is simply objectionable to a large number (dare I say a majority?) of Americans.

Any GOP candidate was either going to have to live with that platform, making any GOP candidate less attractive than Obama. Huntsman didn't have the power base to change the GOP philosophy and therefore appeal to a majority of Americans.