The Republican establishment is on the road to a predictable defeat in November as it huddles behind Mitt Romney just as it did behind Bob Dole (R-Kan.) in 1996.
Romney and Dole have similar uninspiring cardboard personas that fail to excite the base. The establishment likes to say that we need Romney because he can win in November. But how can he win when he can’t even get the GOP base, who he needs to come out against Obama on Election Day, to get behind him? Barack Obama showed in 2008 that he is an expert campaigner.
Let’s not forget that President Clinton was considered dead in 1995 after the Gingrich Revolution swept Republicans into Congress for the first time since 1954. But the establishment’s choice of Bob Dole in 1996 resulted in a Clinton landslide because Republicans found their nominee “too old” and uninspiring.
Sure, the Dole campaign could bus in hundreds of students like myself into the 1996 Republican National Convention in San Diego to cheer for him on the night he accepted the nomination. But he simply couldn’t seal the deal
My former Penn State political science professor quipped during last week’s Arizona debate that the only way people cheer for Mitt Romney is if they are paid to do so. I agree with him.
The Romney-Dole connection wasn’t lost on Atlantic Wire columnist Elspeth Reeve who wrote the following after the ex-Senator endorsed Romney in January:
“Most obviously, in the 1996 election, Clinton won 379 electoral votes to Dole’s 159. Likewise, conservative bloggers worry that Romney’s not the most ‘electable’ candidate this year at all. Romney’s ‘general election campaign will be an utter disaster for conservatives as he takes the GOP down with him and burns up what it means to be a conservative in the process,’ RedState’s Erick Erickson wrote in November.”
The fact is that every moderate Republican who has won his party’s presidential nomination since 1976 has lost election or re-election in George H.W. Bush’s case.
Having an uninspiring nominee like Mitt Romney who can’t excite the Tea Party base is a recipe for disaster in November that can only leave Barack Obama licking his chops.
