The conventional wisdom is that Mitt Romney was the strongest possible opponent President Obama could have faced in November. However, The New Republic's Alec MacGillis offers a contrarian view. To MacGillis' mind, Mittens is a gift from the gods for the blue team.
The economy, after showing signs of a solid recovery just a few months ago, is gasping for air again, and there may be worse on the way. This should be disastrous for the incumbent. Yet he’s very much in this thing. Part of this surely has to do with the dynamic that Team Obama is dearly banking on: many voters still blame Obama’s predecessor for the hard times. Part of it also has to do with Obama’s personal likability (which defies the deathless Beltway caricature of him as distant and aloof.)
But there’s no getting around it: a huge part of it must have to do with his lackluster opposition.
MacGillis then refers us to
an NYT piece detailing Romney's somewhat tortured performance on the stump of late. To MacGillis' mind, Romney simply isn't connecting well with the average voter. He inadvertently proved it on Sunday's "Face the Nation," when he suggested that his wife spends so much time with her expensive dressage horses that he may have to have her treated for an addiction.
There may actually be something to this. One of my online friends is a moderate Republican-turned-Democrat (thank you, Shrub) who lives in Philly's Main Line, an area that has undergone one of the most dramatic conversions from red to blue in American political history. Romney was the kind of Republican who did well in that area before the Clinton years. And yet, my friend tells me that to a man, nobody she's talked to likes Romney at all. This could be critical, since Romney has to cut into Obama's margins in the Philly suburbs to have any chance at all of carrying Pennsylvania.
If this is accurate, Romney may be getting squeezed from all sides. Moderates and independents think he's too elitist, teabaggers think he isn't conservative enough, and a significant portion of fundies still aren't willing to vote for a Mormon. Could that mean the difference in November? Time will tell.