Hey, did you know that some of the candidates for President on both sides of the aisle don’t like each other? Apparently the NYT’s just figured it out with their new article this morning. To be sure, there does seem to be a bit of hostility directed towards Romney:
With so much attention recently on the sniping between Senators Hillary Rodham Clinton and Barack Obama on the Democratic side, the almost visceral scorn directed at Mr. Romney by his rivals has been overshadowed.
“Never get into a wrestling match with a pig,” Senator John McCain said in New Hampshire this month after reporters asked him about Mr. Romney. “You both get dirty, and the pig likes it.”
Mike Huckabee’s pugilistic campaign chairman, Ed Rollins, appeared to stop just short of threatening Mr. Romney with physical violence at one point. “What I have to do is make sure that my anger with a guy like Romney, whose teeth I want to knock out, doesn’t get in the way of my thought process,” Mr. Rollins said.
Funny stuff. Why do they hate him so according to the Times? Apparently he is a good looking lad, he has a good chance of winning, he’s smart, his lack of experience in politics compared to the others along with his experience in the real world as a businessman and finally his wealth:
Campaign insiders and outside strategists point to several factors driving the ill will, most notably, Mr. Romney’s attacks on opponents in television commercials, the perception of him as an ideological panderer and resentment about his seemingly unlimited resources as others have struggled to raise cash.
Mr. Romney’s campaign contends that the hostility is driven by the fact that he has aggressively sought to win the early primaries, setting himself up as the chief antagonist, first, to Mr. Huckabee in Iowa and then to Mr. McCain in New Hampshire.
Myself, I think you need to include one other fact that Ramesh Ponnuru put out there:
There are a lot of Romney-haters out there, Mark (Levin). I don’t think Amy Goldstein is on the mark, however, when she suggests that Romney’s rivals hate him because, for example, “[h]e believes that America’s best days are ahead of it, and not a memory.” Or because he is a Mormon. The fact that they have to raise money and he doesn’t, on the other hand, probably accounts for some of the hostility. Let me suggest two other reasons they hate him. One, they resent it when he attacks them for being to the left of positions he has very recently adopted. I think that’s an understandable reaction. Of course it has received a lot of attention. A second reason for the hostility has been less noticed. It is that the structure of the campaign has worked to intensify hostility to Romney from everyone. Giuliani and Huckabee have not been competing with each other for votes, and so there has been little back-and-forth between them. Romney has been an obstacle to everyone, and everyone else has been an obstacle to him. So he has made attacks on more people than the others, and more of the others have made attacks on him.
Tom Maguire also notes some past Romney supporters have turned away from him because suddenly, overnight, he is has found conservativism:
I met three business-community Republicans at a social event last night, two of whom have raised money for Mitt Romney in the past. All deeply dislike his turn to the right on social issues and his retirement on active duty while ostensibly in the Governor’s chair; all can be counted as firm non-supporters.
What a great field of candidates we have on the Republican side huh? McCain, Giuliani, and Romney.
Bleh….
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Wow, underlinement, what will you think of next?
The New York Times and many of the other liberal papers would love nothing more than to get the attention off the two morons pretending to viable candidates.I’m hoping they (Billary and Obama) keep this up long enough to retain the dialogue that can be quoted in the general election as “new changes” or “new directions”.
Go Mitt!
Rovin,
I do not know if you heard about this, but Bill Clinton was chastizing the media for using smear tactics he employed for years. Seeing Bill Clinton attack CNN (Yeller) for using the same tactics he has (but against him) was priceless. Watching Bill Clinton wag his finger his onetime allies for using the same tactics he, other leftist politicians, “multi-culturalists”, and intellectual “elites” on the left still use to attack anyone not agreeing with them is akin to Dr. Frankenstein trying to give his monster a “time out”.
Even in politics, the basics and the normal still apply: Everyone hates the person with – LOOKS, BRAINS and MONEY! ….why would it be different with Romney? He has all those. Hate is an offspring of envy and jealousy! GO MITT!
Do you suppose Bubba actually thinks that anyone really believes anything he says, if so he’s delusional. Ah wait were talking about Democraps here aren’t we.
I’m sorry the above comment got on the wrong thread.