Mitt Romney and the wingnuts

Republican Mitt Romney has trouble connecting with everyday people and it may not be entirely his fault. Despite his mercurial and self-serving flip flops on everything from the health insurance plan he helped implement in Massachusetts, to immigration reform and gun rights, flip flopping is not the source of disconnect. The problem is he belongs to a political party where a vocal minority wants to tell us how to live. That is perhaps his biggest liability.

There are those who belong to the taxed enough already crowd. They say, “tax and spend must end,” and vociferously take their case to whoever will listen. They do not care for the decisions of our government, and seek to de-legitimize the 2008 election where 69.5 million people voted for Barack Obama, saying this was a minority of the population. They hope to awaken what they call the sleeping majority of Americans, to unburden themselves from the yoke of oppression imposed by the so-called minority.

Contrary to this, most people I know accept the process of American elections and hold it up as a beacon of light in a world where the darkness of dictators, despots and tyrants too often prevails.

Ironically, the vocal minority says, “it does not require a majority to prevail, but rather an irate, tireless minority keen to set brush fires in people’s minds.” This quote is sometimes attributed to founding father Samuel Adams, although there is no record that he ever uttered such words.

Rejection of majority rule and an overt goal of imposing a minority view on the populace renders whatever good the tax and spend must end crowd may do anathema to a healthy republic.

Romney’s association with these wing-nuts of conservatism, people who never really cared for him during the run up to the nominating convention, has liabilities among reasonable voters who don’t share their views. There are liabilities enough to deny Romney the presidency.

At the same time, Romney won’t be elected president unless he can build a coalition that includes vocal minorities who view him as a vehicle for their own ambitions, someone that can be molded in their image should he be elected president.

Historians Arthur Schlesinger Jr. and David Hackett Fischer observed there are cycles of history and the waxing and waning of political ideas. The question for this election cycle is whether Mitt Romney can be malleable enough to build a winning coalition, and whether the right wingers will surge enough in popularity to have their time in the sunlight. One hopes most Americans won’t stand for that in the general election, and that we re-elect Barack Obama president.