Byron York Confirms the Obvious: Romney Sucked

Mitt Romney (photo by Matthew Reichbach)

The Republican Party is facing soul-searching
following the crushing loss in 2012. Should the party be more "Gay
Friendly"? Should the party move to the center on key social issues, like
abortion and gun control? The Republican Party has turned into a tired bastion
of rich, old, white men who control Wall Street and contort national policy to
suit their minute yet elite interests.

And then there's the "Hispanic vote". If
only Romney spoke more Spanish, did not say "self-deport", and
demonstrated an assiduousness to reach out to people whose skin color was
darker than his.

Conservative
columnist Byron York ran the numbers. If Romney had pulled off a greater
share of the Hispanic vote — Bush's 44% in 2004, or as much as Obama's 71%
even — he still would have lost the election. He still would have lost the
election.

Coulter was more gentle about the outcome (in
large part because she had supported Romney long before other conservatives
grudgingly supported the Establishment candidate). She concluded that any
sitting incumbent President is hard
to defeat, especially when no one is dragging down the person
in office through primary and third-party challenges. In 2002, and to a lesser
extent 2004, Green Party candidate Ralph Nader siphoned away votes from the
Democratic Party, helping to nudge more electoral votes to the Bush column.

No matter how many Hispanics would have voted for
Romney, the former governor of Massachusetts still would have lost. Why? The
white vote did not turn out in November. The low-voter turnout also
explains why Democrats won the US Senate seat in a number of very winnable
races, including North Dakota and Montana. Despite the onerous gaffes of the
candidates in Missouri and Indiana, Romney was a wet blanket on the entire
national conference.

White men and women in the United States were
turned off by a candidate who would have reintegrated American forces into
Afghanistan. They did not trust a man who had tacked so far to the right during
the primaries, only to surge for the center once again, and show little fight
while doing so. "RomneyCare" was on everyone's lips during the
long, fraught, and long-fought primaries from the middle of 2011 until April of
2012. How else can one explain a candidate as weak and marginal as Rick
Santorum springing from single digits to second, then first place in Iowa,
followed by jockeying back and forth, with some takings by Newt Gingrich? ABC
News speculated until April that another, dark horse candidate could have
stepped in to win the nomination for the GOP, and take back the White House.

The Republican Party has to accept the unpleasant
truth: Romney sucked. He sucked the enthusiasm out of the base for the whole
political process. Pundits like Charles Krauthammer and Peggy Noonan had to
contort themselves to minimize the GOP Presidential candidates self-inflicting
wounds: "I am severely conservative!" "47% won't vote for
me." "

Romney was not a good candidate, ladies and
gentlemen. Simple as that.

He had no real plan for bringing down the debts
and deficits damaging this country. He refused to come clean about which
loopholes to eliminate in the taxcode. He presented no credible plan for bring
down the cost of entitlements. Most of all, people simply did not believe that
guy. Even he admitted that he really did not want to be president (per
one of his sons) 

The infuriating element of a depressed and
depressing national standard-bearer is that many competitive, winnable races
throughout the country were sandbagged. Scott Brown of Massachusetts would have
trumped Elizabeth "Faux-cahontas" Warren without much ado. The
Northern Plains states would have flipped back to Republican control without
much trouble. Perhaps California today would not be saddled with a Democratic
tax-and-spend supermajority if another Presidential candidate had motivated
voters to get out and cast their ballots.

With this cynical appraisal in mind, conservatives
and independents, Democrats and Republicans, need not worry that one-party rule
is coming to California or the country, for that matter. The Republican Party
does not have to take cues from liberal pundits or mainstream media
mediators. New leaders like Ted Cruz of Texas, along with more libertarian
leaning Rand Paul of Kentucky, along with the compelling legacies of thirty
governors will provide a front-bench of qualified, capable, and compelling
leaders for the future.

In the end, the aftermath of 2012 boils down to
this:

Romney sucked.