CNN host Piers Morgan, who is not generally high on Republicans’ list of favorite talk show hosts, wrote a very lengthy editorial for the UK Daily Mail over the weekend, in which he lambasted Mitt Romney as “Mr. Flip Flop” and called him “the least principled politicians I’ve ever met”… but says that unprincipled flip-flopping son-of-a-gun might just be the man who can “save America.”
This might not be the most eagerly embraced endorsement to float across the transom over at Romney HQ, but given Morgan’s audience among American liberals, it’s an interesting development. Morgan’s characterization of Mr. Flip Flop’s adjusted political positions is not entirely fair – Romney was never “firmly pro-choice,” for example, and Morgan unreasonably oversimplifies the Romney critique of ObamaCare by saying that “On healthcare, he was the first governor to bring in a compulsory ‘mandate’ health insurance scheme. But when Obama did the same thing, he lambasted it as a terrible idea.” And I doubt the Tea Party feels quite as pampered by Romney’s outreach efforts as Morgan thinks they should.
But the conclusion Morgan reaches is that Romney’s personal character is so impeccable that he can be forgiven for a bit of political maneuvering. (Obama’s not exactly innocent of adjusting his positions, after all.) Morgan calls Romney “the squeakiest-clean man ever to run for the presidency in any country in the world,” hails his enormous personal donations to charity, and is particularly convinced that Romney’s proven ability to turn failing ventures around makes him the right man to clean up after Obama:
But how much does Romney’s flip-flopping actually matter to the result of the election? The main concern for Americans right now is the economy, after all. I asked Bill Clinton recently if he felt Romney was a ‘principled man’ and Clinton smiled: ‘That’s not the issue to me.’
And I suspect it’s not for most voters either. They just want to know which man, Romney or Obama, is going to revive the economy faster.
Obama is not a hated figure among most Americans by any means, which is why he may still scrape home. But there’s definitely a distinct disillusionment about his performance, even among many of his diehard supporters.
The great messianic tidal wave of optimism Obama swept in on has been replaced by harsh reality.
He promised Americans tremendous ‘hope’ and ‘change’ and, frankly, they don’t feel he’s given them much hope, or changed very much.
Morgan sums up his estimation with a quote from a “senior Republican figure,” who told him during the Republican convention, “Mitt’s not the kind of guy you’d go for a beer with, mainly because he doesn’t drink beer. But he’s the kind of guy who gets stuff done.” If his editorial reflects a growing sentiment among Left-leaning persuadable voters, Obama is in deep trouble.
