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Why is Mitt Romney risking it?

By: Griffin@griffinelection (Diary)  |  March 29th, 2012 at 09:28 AM  | 

RESIZE: AAA

In what will only become a story with a life of its own, the GOP presidential candidate, Mitt Romney is going forward with building a four-story house.  That house is being built on a California beach and is being built over a location where Romney already tore down a beautiful home only to build a bigger one in its place.  Romney’s new third vacation home also has an elevator . . . for his cars.

Phew.  Ok.  How do I say this.  I never wanted Mitt Romney to be our nominee.  He is a terrible nominee and he will lose states that republicans have never lost.  With that being said.  Why is he making it worse?  Is there a reason Romney needs to build that house right now?

Generally speaking, there is nothing wrong with being rich and building a vacation home.  Here, is the exception.  When you are running for POTUS in an election where millions of people have lost their homes to foreclosure it demonstrates a fundamental disconnect.  It shows that you really are too rich to relate to what regular people are going through and at some point during the election season, that is going to catch up to Romney.  Like it or not, America won’t elect someone completely out-of-touch, even if they are well qualified.

For conservatives, we have already lived through the nomination of a GOP POTUS candidate that was an old out-of-touch guy who wouldn’t take the fight 100% to Obama and we lost badly.  John McCain will soon pass and not be around to endure the legacy of the Obama administration.  McCain constantly preached about which issues he wanted to take to Obama and which ones  he didn’t.  He harped on the kind of campaign he wanted to run.  McCain never realized that the campaign was never about him but about the soul of our country.

I fear that Romney could make the same mistake.  Romney needs to be Romney, whomever that is, but at the same time he needs to realize how much bigger this election is than him.  If Obama were to make significant missteps and if Romney could campaign intelligently and get a lot of lucky breaks, Romney could have a shot at winning this thing.  He could have a shot at living in the White House.  To blow his chances and ours of a decent president on silly missteps like a vacation home is political malpractice.  Romney has shown that he is more gaffe-prone than most, there is no purpose in taking part in unforced errors.

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  • Common_Cents

    The left wing media have been drooling at the prospect of attacking Romney. And….it has begun.

    • Common_Cents

      You are falling into the trap of the media setting the narrative. You are feeling guilty about Romney, getting demoralized. Feeling bad about his wealth. Instead of spending time looking at reality of the disaster obama has been.

      You are being duped by the left wing.

  • Seedyrom

    forgotten in a few weeks. He’ll never lose the Richie Richness and probably thinks he’s not spending much money so why stop spending. People like that know staffers will deflect most media but the critics will feed on every rich guy thing he does. It will spoon some votes to the left, mostly jealous types and those who buy the cannon fodder coming from the left.

    • habeumnominee

      The real Mitt Romney is a guy who experienced poverty first hand as a 19-year-old missionary. Most people can’t imagine the Romney of today using a pot for a toilet but that’s how most missionaries in France got by in the 1960′s.

      The real Mitt Romney is a guy who has been a conservative at heart his entire life but who, as a young bishop in Massachusetts, looked after the needs of the poor within his ward. He is more of a compassionate conservative than George W. Bush ever was.

      The real Mitt Romney is a compassionate family man who has looked after his wife and 5 sons through illness (his wife has MS) and other difficult times.

      Don’t take the media seriously when they try to paint Mitt as being out-of-touch. They aren’t even trying to write stories about the real Mitt Romney. All they want to do is focus on Romney’s wealth as proof that he doesn’t want to help the little guy.

      It is Obama who doesn’t care for the Americans who are trying to find jobs but can’t. Romney will turnaround this country just like he did with Bain, the 2002 Olympics, and the Commonwealth of Massachusetts.

      • barleycorn

        Nothing wrong with being rich or spreading the word (whatever word) in France, but it strikes me as really funny that you equate what amounted to at worst an extended camping trip to poverty, and try to make conditions in France of all places sound like a 4th World Hellhole.

        And I didn’t need to know about the pot potty either.

        Is ANYTHING about this election going to be normal?

      • deVere

        Isn’t he the guy who said “I’m not concerned about the very poor’”?

        Let’s leave it at this. Obama offers us a certain far-left political horror show. Romney is at worst the flip-flopping RINO father of gay marriage. But who knows? Mitt like Chris Christie may possibly turn out to be a happy surprise.

        As for the new beach house, obviously Mitt felt a strong moral obligation to aid the ailing construction industry and thereby provide employment to many less fortunate Americans. It’s a jobs program,.

  • habeumnominee

    Just like the “story” about how John McCain couldn’t remember how many houses he and his wife owned or how George W. Bush refused to answer questions about prior drug use.

    Romney is creating jobs by putting contractors to work in California, a state that is in desperate need of paying jobs at this time. I don’t care if Romney flies Ann out to California every time she needs a manicure. We need the paying work. Quit slamming the guy for creating jobs.

  • krish

    What Romney & others did was Not against law but how they manipulated the system to get billions of dollars….

    By the way, this article is from Wall Street Journal!! Go figure…may be the idea is to get all the dirty laundry to come out now rather than be found by Axelrod & co?

    You have to be sensitive to what is going on in the country…not all people are going to look at multi-millon dollar home as generating employment! Same here, there is nothing illegal in what they did but this is another instance when the country has a very poor opinion of wall street people, we see that Romney & his partners used the system to make billions….

    This election should have been a cakewalk for Republicans but what a disaster!!

  • lapert

    What states do you think Romney would lose that Republicans have ‘never’ lost. For reference, the only states to vote republican in every presidential election since 1964 are:
    Alaska
    Idaho
    Kansas
    Nebraska
    North Dakota
    Oklahoma
    South Dakota
    Utah
    Wyoming

    You really see Romney losing one of those?

    Maybe you are thinking of the ones that have gone Republican since ’76:
    Texas
    Alabama
    Mississippi
    South Carolina

    You see Obama taking one of those four? Really, or you just talking silly?

    • burke

      The author was using hyperbole to illustrate that Romney is a fairly weak candidate and will have to expend resources retaining traditionally Republican states. I assume you stopped at 1976 for a reason. A lot of states that went for Reagan also went for Clinton and/or Obama in at least one election. It takes more than one or two elections supporting a Democrat to stop a state from being, in my view, basically a Republican state. Indiana and North Carolina went for Obama in 2008, and Missouri was close, but I think all three of them are traditional red states that were lost because McCain was weak.

      I agree that Romney is in no danger of losing the states you listed. These states do not comprise anywhere close to enough electoral votes to win the election, however.

      The relevant list is of Republican states that have supported a Democratic president 1-3 times since 1980. I think you’ll find that a lot of those states are in contention. I’m not a fatalist, I think Romney can definitely win. But let’s be realistic about what we’re facing here. Foolhardy confidence with a weak candidate could easily lead to an embarrassing defeat.

      • lapert

        I don’t see the evidence that Romney is any weaker than say Clinton in ’92, and I certainly don’t see any real evidence of who would be stronger.

        But I stopped at ’76 because going back four elections doesn’t really seem to qualify as ‘never’ being lost. That said, there are only 2 other states that haven’t voted Demoncrat since ’92 – Georgia and Montana – are either of those in play?

        In fact, I don’t think Romney will have to spend any more resources than Bush did to win any of those states. If the relevant list were the swing states from the last few election it isn’t just hyperbole the author used but pure misdirection.

        • burke

          Which I think isn’t very useful — but neither of us can read the author’s mind. I just say that I agree with the author’s broader point that Romney might be weak in some red states.

          I’m not sure which Bush you mean, but neither of them were terribly strong candidates either, so it doesn’t show that Romney isn’t weak to compare Bush to Romney. Bush II had the advantage of likeability, and in 1992, Bush I had the advantage of being VP to a popular president. Romney lacks both of these niceties.

          At any rate, there’s not much polling out right now, anyway. I think that given the enthusiasm gap we’ve seen for Romney during the primary, it’s important to drum up the base even in certain red states (basically all R states that McCain lost, plus the ones McCain won by less than 5%). I hope you’re right that there’s nothing to worry about, but I like to prepare for the worst.

          • lapert

            No, I wasn’t speaking of the strength of Bush, I was speaking of the strength of Clinton challenging a sitting President. His favorables/unfavorables at this point were also negative (though a little less negative than Romney’s) and he was clobbered in head to head polls.

            And I wouldn’t say there is nothing to worry about, but I think most of it depends on circumstance Romney doesn’t control and Obama may only control slightly (things like the public’s impression of economic performance, Iran’s actions, etc.). As with any election against an incumbent, I think it is 80% about them and 20% about the challenger.

  • rightland1111

    Sometimes I wonder if this man uses “common sense”. I have NO PROBLEM with people being rich…none at all. However, with the financial climate being what it is…not how this administration portrays it, people who are scraping by, don’t have the money for gas, etc., etc., don’t need to see a house being built with elevators for the CARS! They are losing their homes.

    In comes Obama with his “hate the rich” class warfare and Romney has helped set up himself.

    Let me tell you what happened in GA yesterday. Went to a nursery to buy some roses. The man that owns the nursery is a Southern Democrat…BUT NOT AN OBAMA FAN. So…with all the bluster about Obamacare and the fact that he is a small business competing against Home Depot and WalMart….I say…don’t forget to vote in November. His reply: I would…IF I HAD SOMEONE TO VOTE FOR. So…he’s not for Obama…that I know…Obamacare and regulations will put him under, besides the economic climate is not as good as reported and he looks to the Republican field…probably his first or second time voting that way…and he just wants to stay home. That’s what is going to happen here and Romney won’t listen.

    Tuned into Mark Levin last night and Levin pleaded with Romney to STOP THE NEGATIVE ADS. He (Romney) is turning people off.

    So…with his superior education…he has decided to build a house with elevators for his cars. Now…can anyone see the ads coming from Obama? They are probably out filming the house’s construction…elevator and all.

    • clintonformccain

      The only thing Romney has done is start the permitting process, back in 2008 if I recall the article. This is a total non-story.

  • vastrightwingconspiracy

    …what he does.

    If you don’t like him, building the home will show how “out of touch” he is. If he doesn’t, it will be purely a political move. If you do like him, it won’t matter what he does.

    For the undecided – do you think that people who are truly undecided really care about this issue?

    I don’t.