GOP Must Nominate Real Person to Win Presidency

So Jeb Bush all but announced he is running for president today. I think I'm going to puke. This is a good day to republish my December 2012 letter to the editor, hoping it allows me to keep my dinner down.


The replays of and commentaries on Chris Wallace's interviews with Mitt Romney popping up here and there reminded me of a letter to the editor I sent to the Bozeman Chronicle in November.

The Chronicle published my letter under their (not my) headline "GOP must nominate real person to win presidency" where I offered unsolicited political advice on how an opposition party has to define itself and nominate someone who can take on the destructive Democratic juggernaut. That was before my blogging, so I thought I'd republish the letter, in full, here:

Posted: Tuesday, November 20, 2012 12:15 am  

  There are plenty of Romney “campaign failure” post mortems. But I think Romney did about as well as he could. The problem was the person and his experience. 

  This election was about the economy. But Romney never labored, operated a business or was an entrepreneur; he was a financier with drive-by exposure to working, operating and entrepreneurial guys. Romney’s resume helped him grasp the value of capitalism but not so much the power of free markets and the value creating-proposition of economic process. 

  In contrast, Ronald Reagan learned economic lessons from working independently as an actor, years of touring the country to speak with legions of ordinary people, and pull-himself-up-by-the-bootstraps life experience. He learned what doesn't work as a union activist and president of the actors’ guild. Reagan knew that individuals, not big government and big labor, are the driving force behind the U.S. economy. The great communicator spoke of economic issues in personal terms that connected with people. 

  Listening to Romney on economics was like eavesdropping on a conversation among options traders about puts or calls – strange and off putting. Romney wasn’t prepared to communicate with ordinary people. 

  Republicans, get smart. Nominate someone who is neither MBA nor lawyer (or is not defined by that education). Choose someone who led a real life – a nominee who can speak sincerely and confidently on how nanny-state government gets in the way while free market economic processes work. Messages delivered from a candidate’s heart on the debilitating impacts of dependency and debt, and in favor of the real economy over the hollowness of the monetary establishment (ala Ron Paul), are messages that resonate. This candidate believes in the people. Then you might have a chance, and if you won, would actually make a difference. 

  Grady Foster

  Bozeman