Jewish Odysseus: HOW HARD WAS ROMNEY'S TASK?

Tuesday, February 5, 2008

HOW HARD WAS ROMNEY'S TASK?

Well, if history is any guide...VERY hard.

In 2000, George W. Bush was chosen as the nominee of the Republican Party on his first attempt. He was the incumbent re-elected governor of one of the most Republican, wealthy states in the nation, and his father and brother were both influential Republicans.

Before George W., when was the last time a Republican won the nomination on his first try? And let's leave aside Gerald Ford, who was already the incumbent President before he was the nominee.

Folks, we have to go back 44 years, to 1964--Senator Barry Goldwater, an Arizonan of a decidedly different stripe-- to find the last Republican nominee who had NOT tasted bitter defeat before finally winning the nomination.

So from the ashes of this defeat, let us carefully draw out the embers to kindle a blazing fire four years from now (and I'm very confident it will be four years, not eight). If a demagogic septuagenarian egomaniac like John McCain can do it, why not us?

Hang in there, people! I'll leave you with a little picture of another well-known Republican a few months after he was beaten for the Party's nomination. Does this man look depressed?:

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The Odyssey by Homer, Chapter 21:

For long Odysseus stood with the bow in his hands, handling it as a minstrel handles a lyre when he stretches a cord or tightens a peg. Then he bent the great bow; he bent it without an effort, and at his touch the bow-string made a sound that was like the cry of a swallow. The wooers seeing him bend that mighty bow felt, every man of them, a sharp pain at the heart. They saw Odysseus take up an arrow and fit it to the string. He held the notch, and he drew the string, and he shot the bronze-weighted arrow straight through the holes in the back of the axe-heads. Then as Eumæus took up the axes, and brought them outside, he said, ‘Thou seest, lord Telemachus, that thy guest does not shame thee through foolish boasting. I have bent the bow of Odysseus, and I have shot the arrow aright. But now it is time to provide the feast for the lords who woo thy lady mother. While it is yet light, the feast must be served to them, and with the feast they must have music and the dance.’ Saying this he nodded to Telemachus, bending his terrible brows. Telemachus instantly girt his sword upon him and took his spear in his hand. Outside was heard the thunder of Zeus. And now Odysseus had stripped his rags from him and was standing upright, looking a master of men. The mighty bow was in his hands, and at his feet were scattered many bronze-weighted arrows.