Latin Lover
Predictably, conservative after conservative is explaining how Mitt Romney lost when he could have won so easily if he'd just [fill in the blank]. Well, that's how a close race goes. All he needed to do was shift the vote slightly in a handful of races. Sometimes it's easier to lose big so you don't feel so haunted.
Still, there was one thing that many were expecting him to do that he didn't. And I have to wonder if it would have made that difference. Probably not, but I guess we'll never know.
What we do know is I, along with millions of others, suggested it last year:
Saturday, August 27, 2011
Veepstakes
I don't know who'll be the Republican nominee for President, but let me predict the running mate--Marco Rubio. They'd have to be nuts not to choose him.
He's a young, attractive candidate who seems destined for the national game. His politics are popular with the conservative base but probably won't be too scary for independents. No one, as far as I know, is questioning his competence or intelligence. And he's popular in Florida, a state the Republicans need to win.
Above all, he'll help in the outreach to Latinos. It's very possible the 2012 election will be decided by this group, and if Rubio can bring just a small percentage over to the GOP, it could make the difference.
Maybe the bigger question is will he accept.
posted by LAGuy @ 12:13 AM
5 Comments:
I think he avoided this "opportunity" like the plague
Mitt Romney lost when he could have won so easily if he'd just ...been more like Obama
I think Rubio discouraged the call coming to him. He knew Rommney was a long shot, and his time would come. Afterall, he only has 2 years Senate experience so far (I know, I know, those were the credentials of the current Pres. in 2008).
But he didn't need whatever bad stuff might happen in the 2012 campaign to stick to him.
My question is, who will be Rubio's running mate if he wins the primary. Christie might seem a good choice.
Rubio will have to overcome Ryan and maybe Santorum in 2016. But here's my prediction, he will take the lead, in concert with Obama, in passing comprehensive immigration reform in the next year or so. He will ride that to notariety in the Senate, so he will be the strongest candidate.
I'm not sure what Rubio was thinking, but being a Veep on a losing ticket would still make him a national figure who can run himself--think Walter Mondale or Bob Dole.
I'm not sure why he wasn't chosen, but I'd guess Romney figured if he can't take Florida anyway without Rubio, he had no chance--better to excite the base and get help in the Midwest. Also, perhaps Rubio wasn't ready in general, he signaled too much trouble for the campaign, and Romney knew they weren't a good fit.
Comprehensive immigration reform is still unpopular enough that it might have trouble passing, especially in the House.
I'm not sure how much trouble Ryan or Santorum will present in 2016. I can think of a bunch of newer, fresher names that could cause more trouble.
As for Chris Christie, it's possible he's destroyed himself as a figure in Republican national politics.
I was talking to a friend here who's from New Jersey, and he thinks that Christie's doom isn't what he did the last week of the race, but the fact that he will lose re-election in New Jersey now that Cory Booker is running.
All the advice and recriminations are inevitable, and some of the points are correct. The head of Obama's Super-PAC even commented the day after the election that "we began defining Romney in March, and he didn't define himself until much later." The Obama smears all had very short shelf-lives (remember Harry Reid's bizarre claim about Romney's taxes?) but whenever one of them went stale they invented another.
The two main suggestions for fixing the GOP are totally opposed to one another: (1) Focus on economic conservatism and forget the social issues! (2) Reach out to Latinos, who can be attracted to the GOP if we stress social issues.
Here's my proposal. The GOP should come out now for Puerto Rican statehood. Puerto Rico would have the fourth-largest Hispanic population of the fifty-one states, and the Republican party has a much better reputation there than it does among Hispanics on the mainland.
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