Hey Romney, You Built This Campaign

by Stuart Shapiro

As I said earlier this week, the campaign still has a long way to go.  However that hasn’t stopped the Republicans from already issuing “what went wrong postmortems.” Fred Barnes is one of the first, and he blames the media and the polls. Ben Jacobs rightly takes him to task.

There are understandable reasons for Republicans to be befuddled. Obama is poised to become the first incumbent President since Franklin Delano Roosevelt to win re-election with unemployment above 8%. But Obama isn’t going to win because the press is in the tank for him or because of conspiracy among pollsters. Right now, Obama is running a much better campaign and Romney has not been a very good candidate. For a party that focuses so much on individual responsibility, it’s ironic that Barnes is blaming others, rather than Boston, for Romney’s faults.

While the best thing about and Obama victory will be saving the country from the Republicans, watching the GOP recrimations may rank a close second.

By: Stuart Shapiro

Stuart is a professor and the Director of the Public Policy
program at the Bloustein School of Planning and Public Policy at Rutgers
University. He teaches economics and cost-benefit analysis and studies
regulation in the United States at both the federal and state levels.
Prior to coming to Rutgers, Stuart worked for five years at the Office
of Management and Budget in Washington under Presidents Clinton and
George W. Bush.