He doesn’t get it.
Tone deaf Mitt Romney attacked Newt Gingrich on FOX and Friends today for challenging liberal moderators at the debates.
The Hill reported, via Free Republic:
Mitt Romney attacked his GOP presidential rival Newt Gingrich over what has to date been one of Gingrich’s most effective debate methods — going after the moderators and the media for questions he deems inappropriate.
“It’s very easy to talk down a moderator,” Romney said Wednesday on Fox News. “The moderator asks a question and then has to sit by and take whatever you send to them. And Speaker Gingrich has been wonderful at attacking the moderators and attacking the media.”
The raucous conservative crowds at the debates have played a big role in the Republican primary season, often rewarding Gingrich with wild applause for his sharp retorts to the debate moderators.
Mitt doesn’t get it.
The conservatives in America are sick of pantywaist Republicans bowing to the liberal media elites.
C. Edmund Wright said it best at the American Thinker.
The math is clear. While negative ads can be effective if run in huge numbers — as in Iowa — what the voters are craving in the debates and on the stump is someone who can look liberals squarely in the eye and tell them why we are right and they are wrong. The American conservative base has had to put up with being called stupid, racist, greedy and unfair for decades by not only the Democrats but the vast majority of the media. The pent up frustration of these decades is magnified by the fact that George H. W. Bush, Bob Dole, George W. Bush and John McCain would not or perhaps could not confront this.
In fact, rare is the Republican candidate at any level who refuses to put up with this and fights back. When they do, they become sensations. Even Chris Christie and Donald Trump — neither one a real conservative — earned the love of the Republican base by simply deigning to fight back. Marco Rubio and Allen West are far more popular and well known than they have any right to be simply because they refuse to accept the argument on liberals’ terms. They fight. They elicit the roar.
Which brings us back to the crowd roar in South Carolina. In Myrtle Beach and Charleston combined, there were probably 3-4 thousand folks total in attendance. Now while that is not significant in and of itself — consider that every day we look at polls with far fewer folks and consider them gospel truth on everything from elections to mouthwash. In other words, my assumption was that those few thousand folks are indeed a darned good cross section of Republican voters across South Carolina and in fact the country. It wasn’t the few thousand who rose to give Newt his standing ovations per se, it’s that there were probably hundreds of thousands cheering at their television sets across the nation as well. That something like 60% of all likely voters in South Carolina did watch those debates was merely confirmation of just how important the crowd reaction should be assumed.
If Mitt wants to widen his voter base he would learn from Newt’s success and not belitte it. By attacking Newt on this, Mitt is attacking conservative Americans who want a candidate with some cojones. We don’t want a pantywaist.
