An extended, contentious nomination contest paradoxically hones and improves a presidential candidate — except when it nonparadoxically does not.
It is increasingly difficult to argue that the GOP is benefiting from the struggle between Mitt Romney and the challenger — alternately outsider and insider, hefty and svelte, conservative and more conservative — who isn’t Romney. Internal Republican ideological debates, while interesting to Republican ideologists, have little relationship to electoral needs. The longer these controversies continue, the longer President Obama has to regain his political balance.
This is increasingly obvious on the economy, where the election will be won or lost. Republican candidates have a strong case to make against Obama’s dismal, craven economic performance. Instead they are competing to be viewed as the most resolutely anti-bailout. Given the beliefs of Republican primary voters, this is a rational political move. It makes little sense as a national message.
Rick Santorum has attacked Romney for seeking a bailout of the Salt Lake City Olympic Games. He feels compelled by ideology to attack a patriotic success story — an event that attracted 2 billion viewers and inspired the United States five months after the terrorist attacks of 9/11. Perhaps he should call on American athletes to melt down their 34 medals won at the Games to repay the government.
Both Santorum and Romney have also stumped across Michigan criticizing the auto bailout, which Romney describes as “crony capitalism on a grand scale.” This at a time when General Motors has announced the largest profits in its history.
You can’t prove a counterfactual, so Santorum and Romney can claim that GM and Chrysler would have been even more successful without public loans, emerging from Chapter 11 leaner, meaner and better able to survive. But this requires an intentional, determined amnesia.
