Romney Gets the Last Gaffe

In his defense, it must be incredibly difficult for someone like Mitt Romney to fail.

He has, really, only ever done it twice before: once in 1994, when he challenged Ted Kennedy—and no matter how tough someone finds defeat, surely he can forgive himself for losing to the brother of J.F.K. and R.F.K.—and once in 2008. Now, having lost in what he knows must be his final shot at the ultimate achievement, he has to find a reason why. And surely he can’t blame himself, or the campaign he ran and the staff members he hired, despite its and their obvious deficiencies: who could, looking back at that record of success? So he casts about, looking for some other explanation, and he lands on one: “gifts” that, to sway voters, the Obama Administration handed out to the President’s key demographic groups—“especially the African-American community, the Hispanic community, and young people.”

“With regards to the young people, for instance, a forgiveness of college-loan interest, was a big gift,” he reportedly said during a conference call with his campaign’s national finance committee held this Wednesday afternoon. According to the New York Times’s Ashley Parker, he went on to explain:

Free contraceptives were very big with young college-aged women. And then, finally, Obamacare also made a difference for them, because as you know, anybody now twenty-six years of age and younger was now going to be part of their parents’ plan, and that was a big gift to young people. They turned out in large numbers, a larger share in this election even than in 2008….

You can imagine for somebody making $25,000 or $30,000 or $35,000 a year, being told you’re now going to get free health care, particularly if you don’t have it, getting free health care worth, what, $10,000 per family, in perpetuity, I mean, this is huge. Likewise with Hispanic voters, free health care was a big plus. But in addition with regards to Hispanic voters, the amnesty for children of illegals, the so-called Dream Act kids, was a huge plus for that voting group.

There are, as there were after the release of the “forty-seven per cent” video, some people asking whether this is really what Romney believes, or whether he thinks it’s what his audience wants to hear. In this case, though, we have prior evidence that this is in fact what Romney thinks—indeed, that it is the explanation that his campaign as a whole has settled on. At the end of last week, in an article about the reasons why the Republican nominee’s team simply hadn’t expected to lose, Slate’s John Dickerson reported:

Romney advisers … envy [Obama’s] ability to leverage the presidency for his campaign. Young voters were told about new provisions for student loans and Obama’s support for same-sex marriage, an issue that appeals to young voters. Hispanic voters were wooed by the president’s plan to waive the deportation of children of illegal immigrants. One Romney aide also included the much-debated changes to welfare requirements as a policy aimed to win over African-American voters. “It was like they had a calendar,” said one Romney aide. With each month, the Obama administration rolled out a new policy for a different segment of their coalition they hoped to attract.

The Romney people weren’t entirely wrong to think this way—not exactly. The Presidency is a powerful tool, and any incumbent who didn’t use that tool to at least some extent would be foolish. And there were clearly times when Obama used policy announcements to great political effect. To reduce the whole election—not to mention a significant part of the Administration’s policies—to such things, though? That’s just absurd. At the very least, the man responsible for the health-care reform plan on which Obama’s is based should know better.

In the same conference call, Romney talked about plans for the future. He wanted to keep his donors together somehow, he said—“to meet perhaps annually, and to keep in touch with a monthly newsletter or something of that nature”—so that they could help steer the G.O.P. and, presumably, the country. Which just makes the whole thing sadder: he still can’t see it.

Romney seems to think that newsletters and meetings and money can solve the Republican Party’s problems, that it can win the White House when it doesn’t have to run against a President who’s bribing voters. He doesn’t see that he’s the problem: what he believes, what he says. Conservatives have constructed a myth that says certain groups—blacks, Hispanics, women, young people—vote Democratic because they’re stupid, because they’re lazy, and because they can be purchased with trinkets and baubles. It’d be one thing if they kept that myth a secret, but instead they shout it from the rooftops. Then, when it’s over, they wonder why those people voted Democratic again.

Romney was never the worst offender on this score; he never delighted in it, as people like Matt Drudge and Rush Limbaugh do. But he certainly participated. Indeed, part of his problem throughout this campaign, and the one before it, is that he’s never been good at disguising his lack of respect for the American electorate. His changing positions, his evasions about them, his misrepresentations—they all, ultimately, came off as a challenge: I think you’re too stupid not to fall for this. And there are very few people who appreciate being told they’re dumb, or the person who said it.

There are, of course, other, larger problems for the Republican Party to grapple with over the next few years. But they’ll have trouble solving many of them if they can’t get past this and realize that Democrats don’t have to bribe voters—not when their opponents are so interested in insulting them.

Photograph by Joe Raedle/Getty.