So Romney pursued a tepid and uninspiring strategy easy for attack by the left, which conversely played a brilliantly dirty game by ginning up resentment many in the Democrat base feel toward “the rich” in general and Northeast capital investment elites in particular. It also meant Romney ducked addressing red meat visceral issues that would put fire in the belly of supporters—while many felt obliged to hold their noses and vote for him as the “lesser evil,” that did not, and could not, translate into the type of enthusiastic commitments needed to win a championship.
The result, in spite of insane predictions of a Republican landslide by cloistered “conservative” elites like Dick Morris, Karl Rove, Michael Barone, George Will, Peggy Noonan, et al, should, but probably will not, discredit such self-styled “pundits.” They are, by and large, the same influential group counseling that in order to win, Republicans need to shed even more core principles, and push even kinder and gentler versions of Bob Dole, John McCain and Mitt Romney, as if the more street-savvy political left won’t paint anyone the GOP puts up as a “right wing extremist,” no matter how many concessions and outright betrayals of their base they make.
This author’s argument is helped by selectively picking who called a Romney win. Plenty of people who predicted a W are the same who now say the GOP needs to move further right.