Tuesday, August 7, 2012

An Election That's About Pure, Undistilled Loathing?

an-email I sent to Andrew Sullivan's blog:
A personal observation on Mitt Romney's likeability problem: I live in Maryland and have yet to see a single Mitt Romney bumper sticker. Oh, don't get me wrong, I see plenty of NObama stickers (often poorly executed designs that appear, on first glance, to be pro-Obama signs, and I suspect are frequently mistaken as such) but I have yet to find myself behind a single vehicle sporting a sticker affirming support for Mitt Romney's presidential run. To be fair, most (but not all) of the Obama stickers I see are from the 2008 campaign, but I have, at least, seen a handful of Obama 2012 signs. It's pretty clear to me that, while many Republicans loathe Obama, they have little regard for Romney (yes, Maryland is a Democratic leaning state, but isn't that where you'd expect to find the greatest support for a moderate Republican?) So then, it would seem that this is a contest that, perhaps more than any previous one, will answer the question: is it possible to defeat a candidate on pure loathing alone, with no positive alternative vision to counter-balance it?