U.S Presidential Elections 2012: Why Romney Won The Republican Primary

“You will never find a more wretched hive of scum and villainy”
– Obi Wan Kenobi

With Mitt Romney’s campaign looking dead in the water a full six weeks away from Election Day, there are already retrospectives being run in the press about how we ended up with this weird Machiavellian squillionaire as the Republican nominee.  It bears repeating that Obama is not a well liked president and has consistently polled at less than a 50% approval rating for over a year now.  When polled against a Generic Republican, he would lose the presidency.  All the Republican party had to do was find someone who matched the believes of this Generic candidate who wouldn’t have too much personal baggage that people might find…off-putting.  Then The White House would be theirs.

The result was a colourful star-studded Republican primary that featured almost all of the major candidates taking a turn at being a front runner against President Obama.

Let’s look back at the people who were tapped on the shoulder from God and told to run for president (He has a unique sense of humour).

Rick Santorum

Rick Santorum is a far right Pennsylvanian senator and a prominent family values campaigner who fights hard against the gay rights movement.  Such was the tenacity of his political career that the gay community coined a lurid sexual term from his surname.  This lead to the expression that Rick Santorum has a ‘Google problem’ because if you look him up on search engines, well, its not pretty.

Santorum is a hardline Christian who doesn’t believe in the seperation of Church and State.  He believes homosexuality is comparable to beastiality.  He is aggressively anti-academia and believes colleges are “liberal indoctrination centres” and that Obama is a snob for wanting all Americans to aspire for a college education.  He does not believe in climate change or evolution.  He is a Young Earth Creationist that believes that Earth is 5,000 years old.  He spoke recently about his belief that intellectual elites and smart people don’t belong in the Republican party.

He ran his 2012 presidential campaign rallying against Obama’s fiscal irresponsibility.  Unfortunately, his campaign came to a premature end when it finished several million dollars in debt.

Newt Gingrich

Newt Gingrich made his name in politics in the Nineties when he lead the impeachment against President Bill Clinton for his affair with Monica Lewinksy.  A proudly religious man, Newt is against gay marriage and wants to protect and promote the sanctity of marriage.

Newt is thrice married.  He cheated on the first two wives that he married when they inconveniently became terminally ill.  He at least made attempts to reconcile his second marriage by trying to convince her to have a three-way with his mistress.

On the plus side, Newt is a cool dude who wants to build a moon base in eight years.

He ran his 2012 presidential campaign rallying against Obama’s fiscal irresponsibility.  Unfortunately, his campaign came to a premature end when it finished several million dollars in debt.

Michele Bachmann

Michell Bachmann is a member of the U.S House of Representatives from Minnesota.  She raised 23 children (all women) and is a champion of the Tea Party movement that swept conservative politics in 2010.  A true patriot, Michele is a little suspicious of the Democratic party and wants a McCarthy style witch hunt to be held to uncover who is pro-America and who is anti-America.

She also doesn’t put up with any shit from the unions and would like to abolish minimum wage entirely.  Her reasoning?  “If we took away the minimum wage — if conceivably it was gone — we could potentially virtually wipe out unemployment completely because we would be able to offer jobs at whatever level.”

Bachmann believes medical vaccinations cause ‘retardation’ (her words) and that hurricanes are signs from God that American government is too large.  She also does not believe that carbon dioxide is harmful.

Rick Perry

Texas governor Rick Perry is sometimes described as ‘George Bush on steroids.’

The man has a proud no-nonsense approach to criminal justice with a record of consigning 234 people to the chair under his tenure.  This awkwardly  drew raucous applause during the Republican primary amongst the (blood-thirsty?) conservative faithfuls when it was brought up during a televised debate.

Perry is a born and bred Texan, having spent time growing up at his father’s ranch, rather inconveniently named ‘Niggerhead Lodge.’  He does not believe in evolution or climate change.

Perry lost the Republican primary campaign in a moment that was eerily reminiscent of George Bush’s verbal blunders.  During a debate, while rattling off the names of government agencies he would close, poor Rick had a brain freeze.  For fifty seconds on live television.  He couldn’t quite remember how many agencies he would close or what they were.  ‘Oops.’  The campaign was done.

Herman Cain

I won’t hear a bad word about Herman Cain who at one stage was the front runner in the Republican primary.  Cain made his fortune selling pizza as the CEO of Godfathers Pizza.  A foreign policy expert, he boasted that it didn’t matter whether he knew trivial details such as the name of the president of Uzbeki-beki-beki-stan-stan.

The reason Herman will go down as one of the all time greats is that in his speech announcing the suspension of his campaign, he quoted an entire passage of lyrics from the Pokemon movie.  What a major dude.

Jon Huntsman

Huntsman is a conservative politician who has experience working as a diplomat and a businessman prior to becoming a politician.  He served as a U.S Ambassador to China and Singapore and has worked in four presidential administrations.  He can speak Mandarin.  As a moderate Republican he finished his term as Governor of Utah with an 80% approval rating.  He considers himself a centre-right politician who is willing to work with the Democrats and can appeal to independents.  He believes in global warming and supports immigration reform.

He barely polled greater than 5% in the Republican primary and famously had a poorer approval rating than comedian Stephen Colbert in South Carolina.  Speaking multiple languages became a political liability for his conservative audience.  None of the major Republican voters seem to want anything to do with him.

Why Romney Won

So what made Mitt Romney successful against this motley crew?  He’s not really any better or worse.  Sure he hates poor people and has a flagrant disregard for facts but he’s far from the only guy with those short comings.  Consider that he’s the least popular candidate to run for presidency since they started polling for this sort of thing.  His own party hates him.  Yet he still won the nomination.  How?

The reason he won was that he had the most money.  Romney had an astronomical war chest to dip into which he used to barely squeak by his more savvy opponents.  Despite being a hate-filled insufferable prick, you have to credit Rick Santorum for providing value for money.  Bachmann, Cain, Huntsman, Perry, Gingrich…they all dropped out early in the race but Santorum hung in there till the bitter end and if he had the money to campaign harder in a few key battleground states, he would’ve beaten Romney.  Consider the following:  Rick Santorum spent $2.54 for every vote he got in his campaign.  Mitt Romney spent a whopping $17.14 every time he had to convince someone to vote for him.

So it seems kind of silly when we get into speculation as to who the next GOP candidate will be in 2016.  Will it be Paul Ryan?  Will it be Jeb Bush?  Unless there is significant campaign finance reform (there won’t be), the answer will be whoever has the most money.  Whether they’re electable or not in the presidential campaign seems immaterial.