With a vast American flag suspended behind him, Mitt Romney took the stage full of pride last night after a sweep of the evening’s three GOP primaries. Romney scored large wins in Maryland and Washington D.C., and captured the much-contested state of Wisconsin – after a week of campaigning alongside Paul Ryan – by a substantial seven percentage points. With the victories, last night perhaps represented Romney’s first speech as the undeniable GOP nominee. Because of this, it is important to pay special attention to the words of this victory speech. While Romney has been speaking all along as if he was already the nominee and was campaigning against President Obama, I believe that last night was the first night that he actually was.
So what did he say? Two themes of the speech stood out to me more than any others. In his attempt to draw clear lines between himself and Obama, Romney included many pro-business innuendos throughout the speech. Secondly, in a more fundamentally conservative move, Romney attacked Obama’s “government-centered society,” repeating that phrase five times in the 13 minute speech. What Romney failed to do, however, was to differentiate how a pro-business government is different than a “government-centered society.” But it was a victory speech, after all, and I predict that Mitt’s ability to clearly highlight the differences between these two ideas is what will ultimately decide the general election.
Look for these themes as you listen to Mitt’s first speech as the GOP Presidential nominee. Also, note how his tone differed from that of Rick Santorum, who warned his party last night that they were making a catastrophic mistake.
“Time and time again the Republican establishment and aristocracy have shoved down the throats of the Republican Party and people across this country, moderate Republicans because ‘We have to win by getting people in the middle,’” remarked Santorum. “There was one person who understood that we don’t win by moving to the middle. We win by getting people in the middle to move to us and move this country forward.”
That’s right. Rick Santorum is the modern-day Ronald Reagan.
