Mitt and Ann Romney discuss why they lost the
2012 presidential
election, with Chris Wallace of Fox News (watch below).
Mitt Romney and the GOP: 'The Loser Syndrome' (Le Figaro, France)
"Today the Republicans
have lost all sense of who they are, of their core values, and out of the anger
that seems to possess them, blaming everyone but themselves for their
misfortunes. ... Four months later, Romney is unable to recognize
this error of becoming someone he was not to make himself more appealing to
very reluctant Republican base. ... And he laments that minorities and
young people didn't hear his message. He should have begun by not despising
them."
Four months after the
presidential election, Mitt Romney is still unable to recognize the reasons for
his defeat. It is a syndrome that afflicts the Republican Party. There was a
time when things were reversed: The Democrats always posed as victims, and
Republicans, on the contrary, advocated responsibility. Today the Republicans
have lost all sense of who they are, of their core values, and out of the anger
that seems to possess them, they blame everyone but themselves for their
misfortunes. Example: the recent interview with Mitt Romney on Fox News.
First, Romney is
unable to examine his campaign with a critical eye. He denies to his
interviewer, Chris Wallace, that he became more conservative during the
primaries, an obligatory process that had become a genuine ideological death trap.
Romney denies the obvious, and the daily videos were there to prove it. His
rather center-right opinions from when he was governor of Massachusetts turned
completely to the right when Gingrich, Santorum, Perry & Co. began attacking
him. So, four months later, he is unable to recognize the error of becoming someone he was not, to make himself more appealing to a very reluctant Republican base.
The second sign of his
blindness: Romney says in the interview that “the president has the power of
incumbency. In plain language, the Mormons say that Obama's victory is due to
the gifts he showered on his base. He repeated what he had told his campaign backers
a week after his defeat. According to him, Obamacare,
which allows millions of Americans to have health insurance, is not a moral
imperative, but a gift to the poor (read: minorities) who, in return, moved en-masse
to vote for 44. For the Republican candidate, enabling the poorest to have
insurance is actually a bribe. For the former Republican candidate, White
people of a certain age are animated by a sense of public service and are concerned
about the common good, while Blacks, Hispanics and young people think only of
government benefits.
In his interview,
Romney laments that minorities and young people didn't hear his message. He
should have begun by not despising them.
