Rod Dreher

Judge: Attacking Atheist OK (UPDATED)

Romney Lost In the Stadium

By Rod Dreher • February 25, 2012, 12:11 AM

You could say that it’s unfair of The New York Times to focus on the fact that Mitt Romney gave a major policy speech to a largely empty Detroit stadium. But really, isn’t that the truth of things? Nobody likes Romney, or gives a rat’s rear end what he has to say about anything. He’s going to be the GOP nominee, and he’s going to draw a certain number of votes, because he’s a Republican, and because he’s not Barack Obama.

But really, nobody cares. Not even the people who are going to vote for him.

I feel bad for the guy, because I honestly believe he’s a decent man. But man, what’s the point of this guy’s candidacy?

UPDATE: The WaPo’s lede:

Friday was supposed to be the moment for Mitt Romney’s triumphant return to his birthplace, when he would use the cavernous Ford Field to deliver a policy addressthat established him as the lone Republican capable of both fixing the economy and beating President Obama.

But the event served up fresh evidence for Romney critics who say he can’t rise to the occasion and rally important elements of the GOP around his candidacy.

It’s a long, long time, from now till November. Oy.

38 Responses to Romney Lost In the Stadium

Geoff G. says:

February 25, 2012 at 12:48 am

The point of his candidacy is that he is the candidate that is best suited to bridge the gap between the increasingly hysterical crazy emanating from the right and the rest of the country.

No-one shows up to see him because the GOP base is almost entirely composed of said crazies who want nothing to do with anyone who’s insufficiently ideologically pure. Which drives Romney further and further into crazy-land himself.

Assuming the economy holds up (admittedly a huge “if”), Obama will probably win the election against Romney. In which case you will see a veritable Götterdämmerung in the conservative movement, a vast conflagration of insanity, as the movement destroys itself in an orgy of finger-pointing, and every GOPer out there screams “I told you we should have elected ~~Gingrich~~, ~~Santorum~~, ~~RON PAUL~~, ~~Perry~~, ~~Cain~~, ~~Bachmann~~, ~~Palin~~, [insert conservative standard bearer of choice]“. And the rest of us, who are already shaking our heads and wondering what the fudge has happened to the GOP, will be stuck with a one party state for the next several years.
Norman says:

February 25, 2012 at 2:29 am

I can’t be the only one reminded of Spinal Tap; there will probably be a dozen comments referencing it when these get moderated in the morning.

Romney wasn’t this bad in ’08. He’s like a hitter in a slump taking tips from everybody who passes in the street and he’s gone from not being able to hit the curveball to not being able to hit anything. The great manager has been eaten by his organization; he’s assembled a team of top talent, but who the hell is in charge? I know the DEC is ostensibly in charge, that it’s usually a forum for staid and substantive speeches which if memory serves are usually held in Ford Auditorium or Cobo Hall, but nobody on Team Romney stopped to say “hey, this place seats 65000 and we’re expecting 1200?”

The True Conservatives who bailed on Perry for his “heartless” comment deserve a good swift kick in the teeth right now, and I’d like to give it. Romney will skate through and it’s a long way till November, but a campaign that makes the likes of Newt Gingrich and Rick Santorum seem plausible is in dire need of a shake-up.
Alex Y says:

February 25, 2012 at 3:16 am

What makes you think Romney is a decent man? His family life? OK, it’s stable, he’s not a philanderer. But at what point does lying and pandering disqualify you from being a “decent man”? I feel like no matter where you draw the line, Willard is clearly on the “not decent” side of it.
mlindroo says:

February 25, 2012 at 5:23 am

I pretty much agree with Rod … Romney seems like a decent guy who doesn’t do stupid things. My impression is few Democrats actively hate the guy. If the economy tanks again and Obama loses as a result, I can only hope that Romney becomes the next president rather than Santorum or Gingrich.

MARCU$
Jack P says:

February 25, 2012 at 6:48 am

Meh. Somewhat biased analysis, but that’s OK. The reporting seems to suggest that the candidate can’t fill Ford Stadium as he planned- (he didn’t and that wasn’t the intention.) It was originally scheduled for a smaller venue at Ford’s atrium room but after selling out that space ($75/seat), was moved to the field for security concerns. The hope is that Romney will become more confident after securing the nomination. The game is for his opponents to shake that confidence with stories like this. And I agree Rod, he is a decent man, and maybe that’s the point of the candidacy, unlike, say, Gingrich. (who may also be a decent man, but that’s not the point of his campaign.)
Fred says:

February 25, 2012 at 7:17 am

Dick Cavett on homeschooling:

http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/02/24/schooling-santorum/?ref=opinion
jaybird says:

February 25, 2012 at 7:53 am

My understanding is that this was not a public rally, but was supposed to be a speech to the Economic Club of Detroit, which is a reliably conservative/Republican outfit. Why they decided to hold it at Ford Field is truly baffling, though. The Fox Theater would have looked 1000x better.

All that said though, Romney is truly paying for every single word of that “Let Detroit Go Bankrupt” editorial four years ago. Even Republicans around here are still pissed off about it.
Don Quijote says:

February 25, 2012 at 7:59 am

But man, what’s the point of this guy’s candidacy?

To kick that dirty, nasty socialist, fascist, Nazi, communist, atheist, anti-christian, Sharia imposing Islamist anti-colonialist Kenyan out of the White House
JonF says:

February 25, 2012 at 8:31 am

If we had a solid Democratic Congress to tether Mitt to the center I could see voting for him. His wishy-washiness is almost a plus for these times, since he could maybe be counted on to do the right thing in a pinch, rather than sticking to some ideological playbook whether it was working or not. I’d much rather have a Clinton or an HW Bush– even a Nixon without the criminality– in office right now.
Hope says:

February 25, 2012 at 8:43 am

He does it to himself. If he can’t control the campaign and his image any better than this, well, you get the rest.
Oh, and I am in Michigan. What the hell is the b.s. about the trees being the right height?? When you say something stupid, for gawds sake, don’t repeat it, man.
SteveM says:

February 25, 2012 at 8:48 am

Romney is Dukakis with only half the panache.
Sheldon says:

February 25, 2012 at 9:27 am

One problem with the focus on the empty stadium is that it takes attention away from the content of Romney’s speech, which offered a program of tax cuts mainly benefitting the rich funded by across-the-board cuts in government programs – Defense excepted of course – that benefit pretty much everyone else. In the Washington Post’s Ezra Klein’s column this morning:

“I don’t know whether independent analysts will say the numbers add up to make the rest of Romney’s plan deficit neutral. My guess is they won’t. But even if they did, Romney’s priorities are clear: In order to cut taxes and raise defense spending, he’ll cut the programs that support the poorest Americans.

In 2000, George W. Bush ran for president saying “I don’t think they ought to be balancing their budget on the backs of the poor.” In 2012, amidst a much worse economy, Romney is running for president saying exactly the opposite.

Perhaps that’s why the stadium is empty.”

I’m not conservative so obviously I can’t “get” the antipathy so many on that side of the ledger feel for Obama. But even further beyond my comprehension is why anyone who isn’t super rich or who believes abortion and gay rights are the most critical issues facing the country can believe that a so-called moderate like Romney, let alone an extremist like Santorum, wouldn’t leave the country even more divided than it is today. But then even at the height of the Depression 40% of the public voted for Hoover over FDR. We are not one country, and haven’t been for some time.
MattSwartz says:

February 25, 2012 at 10:11 am

I would never vote for Romney, because voting for someone in the hopes that their true feelings are less awful than their stated positions seems foolhardy, but in Romney’s case, that strikes me as a real possibility. A Romney presidency scares me less than a Newt Presidency, or 4 more years of Obama, and he seems to have more substance than Santorum.
MWorrell says:

February 25, 2012 at 11:07 am

What I can say about Romney is that I don’t mind him, although I truly think he’s a member of a cult. If he’s the nominee, I’ll vote for him. The point of his candidacy is to be an option to Obama. Romney is accomplished in ways that Obama is not, and which point to the foundational strengths of our country.

Knowing what I know about what fires up your average Conservative (Sarah Palin, Glenn Beck, etc.), I personally could not care less if they are fired up about Romney.
Another Matt says:

February 25, 2012 at 11:28 am

Rod:

It’s a long, long time, from now till November. Oy.

That’s why there’s reason for hope for conservatives, and why I worry about Obama’s candidacy. Electoral memory is short, and there’s plenty of reason to believe Romney-Obama would be a very close race in the electoral college (Romney could eke it out even if he lost the popular vote decisively).
MH - secular misanthropist says:

February 25, 2012 at 11:30 am

Don Quijote, you forgot crypto-homosexual because of eliminating don’t ask don’t tell.

I find it really strange that there’s more intense dislike for Romney on the right than on the left. The guy is supposed to be their candidate.
Gretchen says:

February 25, 2012 at 12:09 pm

The Guardian published contrasting pictures of Obama stadium rallies from February 2008. He wasn’t the candidate yet, he was in a hotly contested primary, and he packed stadiums. I went to one myself that drew 20,000. The enthusiasm gap has to mean something.
Rod Dreher says:

February 25, 2012 at 12:24 pm

The Guardian published contrasting pictures of Obama stadium rallies from February 2008. He wasn’t the candidate yet, he was in a hotly contested primary, and he packed stadiums. I went to one myself that drew 20,000. The enthusiasm gap has to mean something.

I went to one too, in Dallas, with colleagues from the editorial board of the paper — not as partisans, but as journalists (the paper endorsed McCain that year). There was a lot of energy there, and excitement over Obama. No question.

But I doubt very much you could get that kind of turnout for him today, four years on.
John Haas says:

February 25, 2012 at 12:27 pm

The problem isn’t really Romney, per se. It’s the GOP. And as the GOP is merely the political expression of the larger American “conservative” movement, we need to focus on that, and determine what’s gone wrong with it, or if it was ever very healthy in the first place.

One could say, as many do, that the Obama candidacy/presidency has just pushed them over the edge into near-clinical levels of paranoid hysteria. This well-known video of Senator McCain being booed by his own supporters would seem to support such a view

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=llef8ZRTWQo&feature=related

and Governor Romney’s campaign persona shows every evidence that he’s studied it thoroughly. The lesson drawn by the GOP from the humiliation of 2008 is you can’t be even slightly to the left of the base, which–unfortunately for the nation, since we actually do need a responsible conservative party in our national politics–translates into the unspoken maxim, “You can’t be too crazy out there.”

But here’s the thing. Most of us, I suspect, tend to think we (ie, conservatives) went off the rails at some recent point: it was 2008 that made us nuts, or maybe it was Bill Clinton’s popular presidency that drove us into sputtering frustrated rage, or perhaps it was all the hopes pinned on Bush II with so little to show in terms of conservative goals, or maybe even a deeply suppressed disappointment with Reagan and his tax hikes and deficits and refusal to take the fights to the Soviets, or was it actually Nixon who ended up governing like a liberal and cutting-and-running in Vietnam . . . ?

I suspect, in fact, that it’s always been like this. What’s new is they’ve found their voice, and thanks to the internet, they’ve found each other. And, as the debacle of 2000 showed, Republicans can’t win without them,which means they have to be catered to. But, again, that’s not entirely new. Eisenhower had to be very careful about alienating the McCarthy-ite wing of the party, too.

I can’t imagine what these people are going to do when Obama’s re-elected.
Peter H says:

February 25, 2012 at 12:46 pm

1,200 people in a stadium that seats 65,000. That’s a great representation of how many voters participate in the primaries.
Mont D. Law says:

February 25, 2012 at 1:10 pm

[What the hell is the b.s. about the trees being the right height?? ]

See I understand this perfectly. When I moved from one city to another the trees were the wrong colour. The city I was raised in has many different species of trees – the city I moved to has about 4 species. So in the fall the colour palette in my new city is just wrong. Limited to yellows and oranges, no browns, golds, maroons, purples or reds. It was disconcerting.
Don Quijote says:

February 25, 2012 at 1:18 pm

Don Quijote, you forgot crypto-homosexual because of eliminating don’t ask don’t tell.

It’s hard to keep track of all the evils that he is…
Peter H says:

February 25, 2012 at 1:25 pm

John Haas, you can see the depth of the problem when you have Jeb Bush saying things like this:

I used to be a conservative, and I watch these debates and I’m wondering, I don’t think I’ve changed, but it’s a little troubling sometimes when people are appealing to people’s fears and emotion rather than trying to get them to look over the horizon for a broader perspective, and that’s kind of where we are.

And yes, the fact that the Romney campaign didn’t consider how this would look when photographed from high above the field speaks a great deal to their ineptness.
John Haas says:

February 25, 2012 at 1:43 pm

“What the hell is the b.s. about the trees being the right height?”

Not bs. The first time I was in MI the first thing I noticed was that, in most areas, the trees are a good deal shorter than I was accustomed to growing up in the east. I asked a friend who’s a geologist (and is in MI) and he said, yes, the soil in MI is sandy and loose, which means taller trees can’t be supported by it. If you’re from elsewhere, the landscape really feels wrong (of course, some people just don’t notice such things). If you grow up in MI, I suspect the trees elsewhere strike you as freakishly large, and possibly threatening.
Libertarian Jerry says:

February 25, 2012 at 1:50 pm

When will people realize that the politicians,especially the Presidents,have been bought and owned by the Elites and Globalists,behind the scenes,for years. Would anything have been terribly different if McCain had won in 2008 instead of Obama? I doubt it. But,there are a few politicians that can’t be bought. This is the reason that the Elites hate and fear Ron Paul. They know he can’t be bought. They know that he is a direct threat to their power. They know that if he is elected,especially with a Tea Party Republican majority in the House and Senate,that he will work day and night to dismantle the leviathan that has been erected over the last 100 years in Washington. This next election will be a turning point in American history. Nay,more than a turning point,but the last chance for all time to save and restore our Constitutional Republic. Romney? Romney is just a puppet like all the others.
Connie says:

February 25, 2012 at 2:00 pm

Don Quijote also forgot “cocaine-user” because, umm, he’s thin?
AnotherBeliever says:

February 25, 2012 at 2:33 pm

To slightly lighten the mood in this thread, I bring you this, from my inbox this morning. Get your Obama iPhone cover here!

http://store.barackobama.com/iphone.html?source=20120225_rg_mv1s2&utm_medium=email&utm_source=obama&utm_campaign=20120225_rg_mv1s2

I DID buy the Obama Birth Certificate “Made in America” mug, because I thought it was pointed and mildly clever. The iPhone covers though? Um, a bit much silliness. They probably would have sold wildly at those packed auditoriums in 2008 though.
MattSwartz says:

February 25, 2012 at 2:43 pm

And yes, the fact that the Romney campaign didn’t consider how this would look when photographed from high above the field speaks a great deal to their ineptness.

Romney has the best political advisers money can buy. The sum of money they’ve spent on focus group analysis and high-dollar consulting would purchase TAC from Mr. Unz two or three times over. Plus, they have priceless experience from the 2008 race. They know what they’re doing, and when people know what they’re doing, their “accidents” are often intentional.

What better way to counteract the image of Romney as a bloodless inevitability than to show him surrounded by empty seats? Detroit is an underdog city (just look at the recent Chrysler campaigns), and Michigan is an underdog state. I’m from there, and I think they’re playing it perfectly, tree height and all. They’re trying to make a Romney vote seem gutsy, and if they succeed, they win. We few, we band of brothers, etc.
Geoff G. says:

February 25, 2012 at 2:46 pm

MH – secular misanthropist

I find it really strange that there’s more intense dislike for Romney on the right than on the left. The guy is supposed to be their candidate.

They don’t like him precisely because he’s meant to appeal to the broader electorate. Anyone who’s not one of them is suspect. Matt Taibbi has the best take on this I’ve read. The GOP really has retreated into a fortress of paranoia.
An Anachronistic Apostle says:

February 25, 2012 at 3:30 pm

“The Guardian published contrasting pictures of Obama stadium rallies from February 2008. He wasn’t the candidate yet, he was in a hotly contested primary, and he packed stadiums. I went to one myself that drew 20,000. The enthusiasm gap has to mean something.” — Gretchen

The couch is generally closed on Saturdays, but I’m scribbling on the pad that the “something” is likely to reflect either

1. history, or

2. hysteria
An Anachronistic Apostle says:

February 25, 2012 at 3:39 pm

Post: >> “Don Quijote, you forgot crypto-homosexual because of eliminating don’t ask don’t tell.”

Riposte: “It’s hard to keep track of all the evils that he is…”

Re: Riposte: Indeed, and this is why the political shorthand of “Satan” proves to be so useful.
Maxine says:

February 25, 2012 at 3:45 pm

Rachel Maddow addressed this at length last night and stressed how this is evidence that Romney’s campaign staff is no good at their job. (And, ergo, Romney’s bad at it too, since he’s supposed to be in charge of his campaign.) They knew exactly how it would look, and could have changed the venue, but they didn’t.
An Anachronistic Apostle says:

February 25, 2012 at 4:00 pm

What the hell is the b.s. about the trees being the right height??

A. If you were the presumed “top-dog” in the race for the Republican nomination, you’d fully understand.

B. According to plan, the poor will have their safety net, the rich have their palaces, and the middle class will have its tree houses.

C. In the ongoing negotiations with the Paul team, Mr. Romney has categorically refused to return to the gold standard, but agrees to outfit naval carriers with wooden masts.
Sean Scallon says:

February 25, 2012 at 5:08 pm

“Don’t care about anything? Then vote for Mitt! His supporters don’t care about him either.”

Now that’s a campaign slogan.

Or how about this?

“Vote for Romney as though your life didn’t depend on it.”

or

“If it’s not too much trouble, please vote for Mitt.”

I think that sums up the Romney effort.
Sean Scallon says:

February 25, 2012 at 5:11 pm

“I can’t imagine what these people are going to do when Obama’s re-elected.”

The same thing they did when Clinton was re-elected.
Fran Macadam says:

February 25, 2012 at 8:45 pm

Who cares about stadiums being filled or not?

Who cares about political theatre – I’m disgusted by it.

This isn’t a boxing match or a horse race.

It’s supposedly to determine our destiny, not political ego-tripping indulgence.

What I’d like to hear is a credible plan for addressing the terrible things in this country – “Change We Couldn’t Believe In” – but all I hear from Republicans is a doubling down of the doubling down of Cheney policies by Obama that are bringing us to ruin.
Siarlys Jenkins says:

February 26, 2012 at 8:42 pm

Romney is running for president because he admires the notion of himself being president, and because his wife told him he should run.

I agree though that if President Obama is not re-elected, Romney would do far less damage than a president who is firmly and tenaciously committed to a course of absolute destruction and mayhem.
TWylite says:

February 26, 2012 at 11:41 pm

He should have booked the Silverdome in Pontiac instead. It’s a more suburban locale (Oakland County), and could really use the business. It’s gone from NFL and Led Zeppelin glory days to Monster Truck rallies and courting Major League Soccer. Because everyone knows Michigan is such a soccer hotbed.