Lost in the weekend’s back-to-back debates in New Hampshire was this illuminating remark by Democratic strategist Donna Brazile after Saturday night’s soporific contest in Manchester: “Mitt Romney won tonight because no one touched him. And for Democrats, you know what? It was good news for us . . . because we believe that the weakest candidate is the candidate that the Republicans are not attacking. And that’s Mitt Romney.”
The remark drew guffaws from some of the other assembled party faithful and media commentators, but Brazile spoke the truth. Democrats do believe that Romney is eminently beatable, the perfect foil for President Obama, in fact.
And yesterday’s debate on “Meet the Press” amply illustrated her point.
The contest got off to a hot start as host David Gregory invited the not-Mitts to explain why Romney shouldn’t be the nominee. It was Rick Santorum who cut right to the quick, asking Romney directly why he didn’t seek re-election as governor of Massachusetts in 2006. “Why did you bail out?”
Romney’s answer — that he’s not a lifelong politician and wanted to return to the private sector — was so transparently bogus that Newt Gingrich immediately called it “pious baloney” and the other candidates piled on.
The truth is, Romney (who’d been defeated by Ted Kennedy in a 1994 Senate race) chose not to run again because he knew he couldn’t win — and then promptly turned his attention to running for president instead. Pious baloney, indeed.
For months now, conservatives have been watching the endless series of debates, waiting for someone to finally bloody Romney’s nose, especially on his claim of “electability.” So kudos to liberal attack dog Gregory for putting the issue on the table; for about 10 minutes, we got both fireworks and substance.
After all, the whole point of the primary season is to let the rank-and-file electorate decide whom the nominee should be — not the party elders and the media. And yet, from the start, it’s been clear that Romney is the choice of the Beltway GOP establishment, which regards conservatives and Tea Partiers as the grubby unwashed.
Meanwhile, Democrats and their media allies have been busy measuring Romney for the Occupy Wall Street/One Percenter memorial bad-guy suit. They can’t wait to rip him apart over his background as a corporate turnaround specialist who may have saved some golden parachutes but put ordinary folks out of work.
Which is why Romney needs to experience this assault from his own side first, to toughen him up for next fall. Off yesterday’s evidence, he’s still got a long way to go before he learns how to respond.
Aside from Gregory’s opening question, though, the media was up to its old tricks, smiling genially while sharpening the shivs and evincing a creepy obsession with sex. Boston TV reporter Andy Hiller joined Gregory briefly to blindside Romney: “When was the last time you stood up and spoke out for increasing gay rights?”
What? The 2012 election should be about a lot of issues — the soaring debt, the entitlement monster, America’s weakening position in the world — not gay rights and other social issues.
Still, no surprise there. When conservatives talk about personal freedom, they tend to define it politically and economically. But for the left, the only kind of freedom that matters is sexual freedom.
Thus George Stephanopoulos’ bizarre fixation on Saturday with the absurd non-issue of whether the states can ban contraception. Romney was right to call the question “silly” and treat it with the incredulous contempt it deserved.
But expect more of this as the campaign progresses, as the Democratic media complex desperately tries to change the subject from Obama’s failed stewardship to those nutty Christian moralizers on the right.
Will the Republicans let them get away with it? Or will they heed Brazile’s words and make sure they field their toughest candidate in November? Because this race is not to the swift, but the strong.