Dear Mitt, No Mas!

Dear Mitt Romney,

I’m done.  I will not support you if you seek the presidency in 2016, even though I did so quite enthusiastically in the past.  Look, I have nothing but respect for you.  I’ve even made phone calls on your behalf, donated to your campaigns, and argued your merits to anyone who’d listen.  And I still think you’d make an exceptional president!  But, the fact is, at least for this supporter, you have disqualified yourself as a candidate.  Here’s why:   

Mr. Romney, you’re a businessman right?  Let me pose some hypothetical questions to you:  Would you hire a CEO who had legitimate access to the trade secrets of his competitors yet refused to learn from them?  If you owned a football team, would you hire a head coach who had legitimate access to his opponent’s playbook but failed to study it?

Those trade secrets and playbook are readily available in the writings of Saul Alinsky.  Have you read them?  Have you studied them?  Have you devised counter tactics?  I seriously doubt it because you’ve been blind-sided time and again by Alinsky tactics.  Ever since Bill Clinton, Democrats have won every election in which they stuck closest to the Saul Alinsky playbook.  If you had absorbed those lessons and understood how to counter them you might have won.  Instead, you naively ran straight into an Alinsky buzzsaw.  To this day, I’m not sure you understand how you were Alinsky-ed.

Just about every turning point in the last campaign hinged on Alinsky tactics.  The “war on women”, binders full of women, dogs on car roofs, the 47% kerfuffle, ads about the woman who died of cancer, the haircut story, the car lift, the horse, and on and on were all straight out of the Alinsky playbook.  Even the Candy Crowley debate fiasco was manageable had you understood Alinsky.

Then there were the unforced errors, which again could have been avoided with a basic understanding of Alinsky.  “Obama’s a nice guy, but he’s in over his head.”  “Obama didn’t cause the financial crisis, he inherited it.”  “Obama deserves credit for getting bin Laden.”  All examples of huge unforced errors.  If you’d like a detailed accounting of why these were the wrong things to say, (aside from them being flat wrong!) please read my post mortem from December 2012, “Why Romney Lost”.

Here’s another hypothetical:  If you were hiring a marketing executive, would you hire someone who had unfettered access to free advertising but failed to use it? 

Ever since Ronald Reagan, Republicans have won every election in which they understood that the news media, entertainment media, and academia would be aligned against them, and that they therefore must go straight to the voters - especially to their base!  You sir had unfettered access to conservative talk radio, a medium that reaches millions of Republican base voters each day, and you gave them the Heisman! 

I witnessed you passing up these gimmees throughout your time on the national political stage, and it made me want to tear my hair out.  I simply can’t take it anymore.  (Plus, I’m running out of hair.)

Mr. Romney, you’re an amazingly accomplished person.  You are no dummy.  But you’re a “saint”, a Mormon Bishop, and you are ill equipped for the devils domain of today’s Alinsky politics.  Hillary or no Hillary, 2016 will be all Alinsky all the time.  Sorry Mitt, this ain't your game.  No mas.    

Regards, Ron Reich

undiepundit.com

P.S. Dear reader, please forward this to any Republicans you know in the hope that someone in Romney’s circle might perhaps see it and save us, and him, the humiliation of another embarrassment!