The American Spectator

Jiminy Christmas, that Romney video is awful. There are about five objectionable things in that one small clip — but I won’t parse it, just because I don’t want to give the Left any MORE ideas, in case they missed some of what was objectionable.

The time has come to say this: Mitt Romney needs a transfusion of grit and leadership, NOW. I’ve said things similar to what he said about why the political terrain is difficult right now in part because of the 49 percent statistic he was citing. But the point is not to write off the 49 percent: #*+dammit, the point is to persuade them. That’s what political leadership is about: persuading people. But it’s what Romney failed to do in his acceptance speech, instead choosing, just as he said in the Mother Jones video, to try  to make people like him more. He’s going all Saturday Night Live/Stuart Smalley on us, trying to convince us (and maybe himself) that he is good enough, smart enough, and doggone it, people like him, or at least should like him. Doggone it, doggone it, doggone it.

But back to grit. This is what Rick Santorum understood in his appeal to blue collar workers, etcetera: People want to know not that the candidate is a nice guy, but that he actually cares about and will work hard for them — so they can in turn achieve good things if they work hard too. They don’t mind a leader who breaks eggs to make an omelet, who takes no prisoners, or who lives out any other similar cliche about ignoring barries in order to achieve good results. The proper answer to the 49%-non-taxpayer/government dependent problem is not to write off those people, but to make them really really want to, and believe they can, become among the 51 percent. This takes grit — from them, and from the would-be president who would lead them.

More on this later. But Romney needs to change his outlook. Now. Obama is a disaster. If Romney can’t convince us he will provide something better than disaster, than shame on him. 

I believe he can. But only if he stops calculating and starts finding some honest human emotions and letting us see them.