Marco Rubio: It's Time To Concede That Mitt Romney Is Our Candidate

Via Hot Air, the Shark Tank reported the statement.

“I actually think we’re going to have a very good nominee. I think Mitt Romney’s going to be the next president of the United States. And by their own admission, the folks running against Mitt Romney have admitted that they cannot win the primary, that the only way they can win is a floor fight at the convention, which I think would set us back in terms of our goal of replacing Barack Obama.

“So I do believe it’s time now to concede that Mitt Romney has won the Republican nomination, that he’s going to be the Republican nominee, and that if we all get behind him he will be the next president of the United States.”

The way he phrased it, it's not necessarily an instruction to Gingrich or Santorum. It seems like more, "We should all concede this."

For what it's worth, I don't think politicians should say this. It's counterproductive. Every statement like this makes people want to dig in their heels more.

People should just be permitted to come to terms with this on their own schedule.

It's one thing to think you lost a big game. If you think you were outplayed, you accept it.

If you decide that the refs took the game from you, now you have a grievance, and a sense of unfairness, and an anger towards The Whole Corrupt System.

Romney supporters should be very wary of giving anti-Romney Republicans that sense of grievance.

"We lost" is one thing; "We wuz robbed!" is another. And the whole Narrative among some conservatives (yes, conservatives have Narratives too) is that a hostile and corrupt power structure has denied them a great true-blue conservative candidate who'd have an advantage in a general election, which turns out to be, improbably, either Santorum or Gingrich.

Anyone believing "We wuz robbed! It's a rigged game!" by November will probably just stay home and not vote (and usher Obama into an End of America presidential term), so it is imperative to not do anything to provoke feelings of disenfranchisement.

Those feelings are already there. No point throwing gas on that particular fire.

I believe Romney is indeed inevitable. So let him be inevitable. Let the inevitability take care of itself.

Rather than make the case for Romney in this way, why not make the affirmative case for him?

He actually does have some good things going for him.

My own experience with coming over to Romney's side is this: Once you get past hating his guts, you kind of... like him.

Is he a great candidate? No, but he's quite good. Look at him again, just on a superficial basis: What's here that you wouldn't want in a candidate?

Is he ultra-conservative? No, but I do believe he is conservative. And while people largely ignore this, he has endorsed the Ryan Budget. Democrats are currently trying to make that a central issue in this campaign, Romney's "extremism" in embracing this budget.

And yet embrace it he did.

I'm not going to nominate him for a Medal of Honor, but it's a positive sign, surely.

But people need the space and time to discover that for themselves. Pushing them towards that conclusion only encourages further resistance.

No one, especially those who wave a Gadsden Flag, wants to be pushed towards something.

I always say this: It's a standard principle of persuading someone, or, frankly, of conning them, to let the target (or, um, "mark") come to the conclusion himself.

That way, he has ownership of it. It wasn't forced upon him. He put together the bits of data and made a conclusion himself.

Now I'm talking about conning people, and that's not really a good thing to be discussing here, but the fact is, con artists employ this principle because they know it's how people actually think.

People are rankled that Romney is likely to win. They're comparing him, I believe, not to Santorum and Gingrich, but to hypothetical candidates they would really prefer, for whom Santorum and Gingrich are substitute place-holders only for basis of comparison.

And when you compare Romney to Your Absolute Favorite Choice, hey, he kind of sucks.

But that'll be ending soon, because the calender compels it. The real choice will soon (probably) be between Mitt Romney and Barack Hussein Obama.

I think that's a pretty easy and painless call. I am not worried that my judgement on that will be rejected by a significant number of conservative voters.

Let people get there on their own. Most will get there.

posted by Ace at 03:54 PM

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