By Jeff Berkowitz -
5. Romney simply is not very likeable. Putting aside their views, this just isn’t a guy you would prefer to have a cup of coffee or beer with over Obama.
4. Romney lost two of the three debates. As the challenger, he needed to win two of the three. The first one, which he won, was the fluke. Obama is the better debater—he just had a bad night on Debate No. 1.
3. Romney was not a good candidate. Voters didn’t trust him. He flipped on abortion, gays, guns, and at the end-- on tax cuts. Who knew what he would do. Even with Paul Ryan, there was not enough there to energize the Republican base. Without your base, you have nothing.
2. Romney had no consistent message. Some would say it was the economy, jobs but he never made a good, solid strong case on tax cuts, growth and how he would substantially outperform Obama on the economy. There was nothing there there when it came to assessing Romney. And, Ryan never lived up to expectations that he would be used to define the race about fixing the entitlement mess (social security, Medicaid and Medicare) and the budget. The Republicans let this election be the election about nothing, and they didn’t even make it about the sad state of the economy and jobs. There is no real leadership in the Republican Party and Romney surely was not the guy to fill the void.
1. Romney let Obama define him early on as a bad guy-- because he shipped jobs overseas and killed them at Bain Capital. The arguments were stupid but Team Romney was even more stupid not to use their money early on to define Romney, to defend him from the attacks and to use more of his time to get out in the public instead of raising money. All of those actions, not taken by Romney, are politics 101. Good grief, can't anyone play this here game of politics?
Jeff Berkowitz writes a Public Affairs column in Chicago Now.
