http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2012/11/03/mitt-romney-s-delusions-of-victory.html by Matt Latimer Nov 3, 2012 4:45 AM EDT Sorry Mitt, the electoral map shows its all over but the shouting. Matt Latimer is the author of the New York Times bestseller SPEECH-LESS: Tales of a White House Survivor. He was deputy director of speechwriting for George W. Bush, chief speechwriter for Donald Rumsfeld, and an adviser to Newt Gingrichs 2012 presidential campaign. Years ago I worked on a political campaign in Michigan. We were losing, badly, but our campaign manager didnt believe it. To him, every devastating setback was a secret boost to our efforts, every sign of failure proof of our imminent victory, every poll that hurt us was rigged in favor of the other side. They arent going to know what hit them. Were right where we want to be. This was the constant refrain. A number of people on the campaign, especially the young and inexperienced, believed him. The rest of us didnt make many sudden movements when he was around. Still there was something endearing about his total, (*)(*)(*)(*)-all-the-evidence conviction. He owned his crazy. Republican presidential candidate, former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney speaks during a campaign rally at the Wisconsin Products Pavilion at State Fair Park on November 2, 2012 in West Allis, Wisconsin. (Justin Sullivan / Getty Images) A similar phenomenon is happening in this years electionexcept its not exactly clear which side has gone, as we used to say, Cuckoo for Cocoa Puffs. I do, however, have my suspicions. The other day I was asked what the Mitt Romney campaign could do to regain momentum after Hurricane Sandy. I was taken aback. Dont you know, I retorted, that Mitt Romney is on the verge of one of the biggest landslides in American history? Fox News fixture Dick Morris told us just the other day that Romney was even headed for a seemingly improbable win in Pennsylvania. The right-leaning RealClearPolitics lists a half-dozen recent polls in the state. Which of them have Romney ahead? Oh, none of them. On Sean Hannitys program, an expert on Ohio predicted a Romney win in the state of 5-7 points. What poll shows this? Just onefrom a Republican pollsterout of eight taken in the last week. Karl Rove says Romney has the edge in the overall vote on Election Day and in his hedging way seemed to predict a Romney triumph. What polls show this? Again, almost none of them. Most in fact show a slight edge for Obama. The lone standout is Gallup, which for the past few weeks had shown a single-digit lead for Romney. If Gallup knows something the rest of the polling world doesnt, it will be a major news story and Gallup will cement itself as the pollster of record as it once was in its glory days. If not, what Gallup is doing to Republicans is cruel. Today they cling to those numbers tighter than Katie Holmes to her divorce lawyers. Now in GOP circles there is boastful talk of Romney expanding the map into New Jersey and Michigan and Oregon. What polls have him ahead of the president in any of those states? Oh well, I think youre seeing my point. Even looking at the websites that unskew the polls in Romneys favor, not a single one has shown the former governor with an electoral college lead over the President. Several sites, however, have Obama clearing 270 electoral votes, often with room to spare. What is propelling Team Romney and their cheerleaders in the media appears to be wishful thinking, not empirical evidence. If any of these hopes turn do in fact come true, then the vast majority of pollsters and media outlets in America owe the nation an apology. And who wouldnt love to see that? But if in fact President Obama is on his way to re-election, then it is must be asked: If the GOP cannot defeat a weak incumbent in the midst of an economic climate like this one, can they ever win a presidential race again? For two election cycles in a row, an Etch-a-Sketch candidate blessed by the Republican establishment, and crammed down the throats of rank-and-file voters would have lost. After hundreds of millions of dollars in forgettable commercials and get-out-the-vote drives had been spent. What, Republicans must ask, has become of the GOP? What is propelling Team Romney and their cheerleaders in the media appears to be wishful thinking, not empirical evidence. That question, as it turns out, is relevant even if Romney does win in a landslide. In that event, he faces a problem. Ever since the Bush years, and I should know because I was there, the GOP has adopted an us versus them mentality. If you arent on our side all the way, you are a traitor. The Bush administration said just that, basically, of George Will, William F. Buckley, Robert Novakany conservative who opposed them on the war in Iraq. Since that time, an entire culture has emerged within the GOP where supporters are told half-truths or fed wishful words and expected to believe them true lest they too be banished, mocked, or blackballed on TV. In the 2012 primary, Republicans were told Mitt Romney was an arch conservative severely conservative in the candidates own wordseven though the facts were quite to the contrary. Candidates who intruded on the Romney coronationand I should know because I worked for onewere going to ruin the election, were nutty, or sell-outs, or fools. Romney would beat Obama not with a strategy or a plan but because the American people had rejected Obama en masse. It was a fait accompli. Never mind the fact that the president retained a relatively high favorability rating, as measured by a number of pollsters, including St. Gallup of NeverWrong himself. Obama was hated because they wished it was so. So they decided it was so. And then it was so. How much better it would have been if Mitt Romney ran for president as the guy he really isa pragmatic businessman with some conservative instincts instead of Calvin Coolidge The Second. How more formidable a GOP campaign might have been if its strategists viewed Obama as a likable, formidable foe, instead of the epitome of all evil in the modern world who the country was clamoring to fire. Then the GOP could have assailed his competence not his morality or patriotism. If the GOP loses to ObamaAGAINwe will undoubtedly hear a litany of excuses: Hurricane Sandy revived the President. The economy improved. The mainstream media conspired against us. The jobs report numbers were cooked. Oh and somehow Obamas birth certificate comes into play. Im not sure how just yet, but Donald Trump will tell us. But thats not the truth. The truth is that the GOP, to paraphrase a prominent Republican, needs to see the world as it is, not as it wishes it to be. Maybe, if Romney does win, he can teach that lesson to his party. But he wont.
At this point, the only way Romney can win is if the polls actually are biased. Random noise alone can't explain the Obama lead. But good luck with that. In 2004, a lot of Democrats said the polls were biased, and the incumbents always broke for the challenger, so being behind Bush in the polls was misleading, and Kerry would surely win. Last June, some Democrats said the polls were biased, and so being behind in the polls in the Walker recall was misleading, and Walker was going down! In 2010, some Democrats said the polls were biased, and so the Democrats weren't going to do as badly as the polls predicted. In all those cases, those Democrats came up with all kinds of anecdotes and statistical reasons why the polls had to be biased. Sound familiar? But in all of those cases, the polls were right.