Republicans have had it up to here with Mitt Romney

By Michael J.W. Stickings

They don't like me. They really don't like me.

TPM:

If Mitt Romney has any friends left in the Republican Party, they're in hiding.

On the Sunday talk shows, senior Republicans, former Romney surrogates and prominent conservatives piled on their defeated presidential nominee for telling donors that he lost because President Obama bought off minorities and young voters with "gifts."

And of course it should come as no surprise that The Newt is taking advantage of the opportunity to pile on as well (as if he bears none of the blame, despite a long record of insensitive deeply remarks (like calling Spanish the language of the ghetto, saying there should be a poll test for voters, saying poor children don't know how to make money unless it's illegal, and drumming up bigotry to oppose Park51) -- he's even making sense, whatever the gross hypocrisy, while doing so:

"It's nuts," said former House Speaker Newt Gingrich on ABC's "This Week." "I mean, first of all, it's insulting... The job of a political leader in part is to understand the people. If we can't offer a better future that is believable to more people, we're not going to win."

This in addition to all the Republican governors slamming Romney last week, led by Bobby Jindal.

This comes down to something we were saying here not just throughout the campaign but all the way back through the Republican primaries and even last year during the pre-primary shuffling: Romney is a really, really unlikeable guy.

Maybe not unlikeable to those of his plutocratic ilk, and maybe not unlikeable on a personal basis, but unlikeable as a candidate, as a politician, at least since he left Massachusetts.

Back in February, for example, Richard wrote a post called "Mitt Romney: consistently out of touch." More bluntly, setting the tone for the year, I wrote one in January called "Privileged rich douchebag: The Mitt Romney narrative for 2012," then one in March called "Money, it's a gas: Mitt Romney, car elevators, and out-of-touch super-rich douchebaggery."

To name but three. This was a dominant part of the narrative of our election coverage. And it wasn't just because we disliked him (and still do). It was because that's who and what he really was. It came out in his "47%" remarks, of course, but it was a dominant part of his own campaign, however much he may have tried to disavow any such out-of-touch elitism/douchebaggery. It kept coming up again and gain, unforced error after unforced error. It's like he couldn't help himself. There are a number of reasons why he lost, including President Obama's strong re-election campaign, but it didn't help that he was frequently his own worst enemy.

(Remember "Romneying"? He did it all the time. Like when he said America should be a place where people can get all the education they can afford. Like when he said that laying people off is hilarious. Like when he said that people who lack health insurance don't die? Like... oh, there are so, so many examples.)

Of course, it's easy to criticize a loser. Where were all these "in-touch" Republicans when Romney was being Romney during the campaign. Obviously, they kept their mouths shut.

But it certainly says a lot about Romney that so many prominent Republicans are turning on him so quickly. His support even among die-hard Republicans was always fairly soft, and now the party is trying to move on by scapegoating him, by blaming him for their ills, and by trying to dispense with him altogether.

Yes, he and everything he represents are just that toxic, even in a party bubbling over with toxicity.