Given our discussion this morning about the presidential campaign and Romney's struggles as a candidate, I think you will be interested in this blog post by a New York Times coumnist. He points out that because of his presidential failures, we forget about George W. Bush's successes as a candidate, especially in 2000, but also in 2004. The columnist is interested in what a center-right coalition would look like, and he thinks Romney and the Republican party missed an opportunity to develop one. As he puts it, Bush's "failures and [their] backlash did not change the basic realities of national coalition-building." The blog post makes for fascinating reading in light of the recently released video recording of Romney dismissing 47% of the population (and, in his reasoning, the electorate). What might this campaign look like if Romney had run to the middle instead of the right?
