GOP’s blunder – right man, wrong message

The Romney-Ryan ticket was the best the Republicans could have put forward in 2012. It had all the hallmarks that Republicans support, ticked all the boxes that should bring out the voters in the handful of swing States were elections are decided.

Romney should be heading for the White House now because he was the right candidate for Republican America, which took to him after initial reservations about his Mormon background when he quickly shifted his position rightwards - and especially after he selected the solidly conservative Paul Ryan, an ideological hero of the radical right Tea Party movement, as his running mate.

The United States is a conservative country more at home with pro-business, small government Republicans than Democrats who are often perceived as wild-eyed free spenders contemptuous of traditional American values of family, community and church.

Apart from a few decades following Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s ‘New Deal’, Republicans have dominated the White House since the Civil War and even when Democrats have won, their tenure has been short-lived.

So what happened to Romney, apparently a Republican ideal, who is left counting the Electoral College votes that got away, consigning him to a question for trivia quizmasters of the future?

Right candidate, wrong message. Romney failed to win over enough of the uncommitted voters who would have put him over the top because they had heard the slogans about ‘new directions’ and ‘fresh starts’ from so many other candidates in so many other elections. Obama had used them with success in 2008, but coming from a young man seeking to be the nation’s first black president, they sounded believable.

Romney is a white, late middle-aged male, one of a number of the kind who have tried unsuccessfully to win the White House for the Republicans (remember McCain? Remember Dole?) by attempting to be what they are not – youthful, exciting, stimulating.

There is nothing wrong with an ageing white Baby Boomer running for the White House on the Republican ticket as long as the message matches the image (Ronald Reagan’s ‘Morning in America’ hit the spot). Romney needed to have portrayed a strong calming persona, inspiring hard work, dedication to the flag, and a grim determination to dig America out of the hole that Republicans say the Democrats have dug.

If he wanted to see how it was done, take a look at Vice President Joe Biden.   

Instead he set the same manic pace as his younger opponent and in the final stages of the campaign, and especially when Hurricane Sandy interrupted the schedule, began to appear old and frazzled. Not a good look when talking about bright-eyed visions for the future as the final raft of uncommitted voters headed to the polls.