After losing the Alabama and Mississippi primaries to Rick Santorum, Mitt Romney is adrift and floundering.
He didn’t even bother to give a concession speech, instead mailing in a statement about the importance of the delegate count, which seemed to be the theme of the day.
“This is all about getting delegates,” he told the press Tuesday afternoon.
There’s nothing as unexciting as being a bean-counter, but that’s what Romney has reduced himself to.
It’s as though he’s walking his campaign through a Harvard Business School case method rather than trying to inspire or motivate or lead in any visionary or principled way.
In fact, he proves every day that he’s totally lacking in principle.
Pandering again this week to the far right, he said he would “get rid of” Planned Parenthood if elected President. His campaign aides quickly retreated on that one, saying he meant only that he’d deny federal funding to the organization. But he was clearly after the far right anti-abortion vote, which won’t help him with women in the general election.
Nor will he be able to outflank Santorum on the right.
In his victory speech Tuesday night, Santorum led off by expressing appreciating to all those who’ve come up to him on the campaign trail to tell him, “I’m praying for you.” And practically doing a Tebow, Santorum added: “Thank God for giving us the strength” to keep campaigning. He hailed America with clichés about ordinary people doing extraordinary things. And toward the end of his speech, which was remarkably devoid of issues, he stressed “the integrity of the family and the centrality of faith in our lives.”
Faith, family, country. Those are the emblems of arch-conservatism everywhere.
They don’t provide answers to the vexing issues facing the country, but if Republicans want to put up an arch-conservative against Obama, they now have that option.
If you liked this story by Matthew Rothschild, the editor of The Progressive magazine, check out his story “Don’t Lower the Corporate Tax Rate."
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