COMMENTARY | On Saturday night in Nevada, Mitt Romney ran away with the caucuses, garnering close to half the votes and leaving his nearest competitors, Ron Paul and Newt Gingrich, in the dust. After a blowout win in the Florida primary the previous week, Romney has palpable momentum as the race for the GOP nomination moves forward. Why, then, would all those who voted for him in Nevada on Saturday be wise to avoid going “all-in” on a Romney Presidency? It’s simple. Romney just doesn’t have the cards.
When the seemingly inevitable becomes fact and Romney secures the GOP nomination, the days of being able to compare and contrast himself with the likes of Gingrich and Santorum are over. Romney will then be forced to delineate between himself and President Obama. He will be forced to look people in the eyes and tell them that he is different and that he can change the direction of the country. Here’s the not-so-secret secret though: He can’t. Oh sure, Mitt and his camp will tell you all day long that he is different than Obama. The problem for them is going to be when the Obama campaign rolls out Romney’s entire history and proves Mitt’s claims of differing to be false.
Romney will never escape Romneycare. He will never outrun videos of himself speaking about how he will protect a woman’s right to choose aborting a life. He can’t hide from previous statements and attempts at tightening restrictions on gun ownership. Finally, he won’t apologize for a success that saw jobs lost, jobs shipped to China, and companies gutted in the name of millions of dollars of profit for him and his fellow investors. He won’t be able to hide from these inconvenient truths because the Obama campaign won’t allow him to. You can head to the Bellagio tonight and bet the farm that the Democrats will make sure that every last voter in the country is aware of the true Romney.
The Romney campaign has done a commendable job so far in glossing over the inconvenient truths of his past by focusing on the faults of his GOP rivals at just the right time to take the heat off of Mitt. The Romney campaign and associated Super PACs dwarf the other GOP campaigns in terms of money raised so far and have used this to their advantage in securing Romney’s lead while obscuring his flaws as a candidate. In the General Election, though, Romney’s coffers will pale in comparison to the fundraising machine that is the Obama campaign. Mitt won’t be able to buy enough airtime to hide from the simple fact that will doom his campaign in the end: he’s just not that different from Obama.
The majority of the Republican Party has screamed “anyone but Obama” since the campaigning started. It is becoming more evident by the day that Republican voters are willing to go “all-in” on Romney. Unfortunately, by putting all of their money on one man who lacks the principles to show a distinct difference between himself and the incumbent President, the GOP will wake up broke and remorseful on the morning of November the 7th with no one but themselves to blame. While President Obama may not have the best hand at the table, he’s holding much better cards than Romney and no amount of bluffing by the Romney camp is going to convince Americans in the general election that Romney has anything more than a weak pair.