I was reading Andrew Sullivan's Blog (He's away this week, he's got some guest bloggers), and this entry linked to an old entry from the 2008 election.
I thought this comment hit the nail on the proverbial head so dead on. It's an obvious comment, but one I've never seen in print before.
In February 2008, just as Mitt was sliding into obscurity yet again, Christopher Orr at The New Republic had this to say about Romney:
I was not a fan of the Kill Bill movies, but I did appreciate one scene, near the end of KB2, that displayed the genius for pop banter that had characterized Quentin Tarantino's earlier films. In it, David Carradine explains (not entirely accurately) that Superman is unique in the comic-book universe: Whereas most superheroes' secret identities (Bruce Wayne, Peter Parker) are their true identities--the people they were before their parents were murdered or they were bitten by radioactive spiders or exposed to gamma rays or what have you--Superman was born Superman. It's Clark Kent that is the invented alias, the pose, the "costume." And in the way Superman plays Kent--weak, self-doubting, cowardly--we see his critique of the human race.
It occurred to me that the same is true of Romney's desperate, if never terribly persuasive, impersonation of a conservative Republican. That persona--angry, simple-minded, xenophobic, jingoistic--is exactly what Romney (who is himself cultured, content, and cosmopolitan) imagines the average GOP voter to be.
This observation really struck me. Romney has NO IDEA who it is that he is trying to get to vote for him. He is being advised, he is being told, he is being coached on who these conservative voters are, but he can't really wrap his brain around it, because it's very foreign to him.
He is bewildered by this change in the Republican party from patrician elites to religious zealots and angry reactionaries. One might question why he is even putting himself through this. He doesn't get these people, and he doesn't seem to want to. He is willing enough to give it the old college try, to use the zingers that are put on his teleprompter, but when he strays from the script, his confusion and befuddlement show. "Severe conservative"? Who says something like that? It's so weird. Mitt Romney says something like that, trying to speak their language but failing miserably.
This is why, more than the flip-flopping, or the "moderate-ism" or the Mormonism, he'll never get people behind him. People can sense that not only is he not one of them, but that he has no idea what makes them tick. He's just spouting one-liners, desperately hoping that something sticks to the wall.
It's painful to watch. And this is the Republican's inevitable nominee, who will run against Obama.
Part of me thinks it's no good to feel cocky or start to call the race before it's even started, but I don't see a way that Obama doesn't wipe the floor with this guy.