In 2008, the Des Moines Register endorsed then Senator Barack Obama for president over Senator John McCain. For largely inexplicable reasons, this year the Register endorsed former Governor George Romney over President Obama. This is the first time that the Register has endorsed a Republican for president since 1972, when it urged readers to give Richard Nixon a second term, rather than supporting Senator George McGovern and his efforts to end the Vietnam War.
MSNBC’s Lawrence O’Donnell shows the absurdity of the Register’s thinking. He reveals how the very reasons that the paper endorsed Obama in 2008 are even more apropos in 2012. He shows how the reservations that it had about Nixon in 1972 in many ways apply to Romney in 2012.
Below, you can read a short summary of O’Donnell’s comments of Tuesday, October 30. The full presentation is available in the following video.
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…O’Donnell accused The Des Moines Register of “adopting Mitt Romney’s magical thinking” by endorsing the Republican candidate for president.
In the Rewrite segment on Tuesday’s edition of The Last Word, he called their decision one of the “most embarrassing endorsements in the history of that newspaper.”
His bone to pick with the Iowa paper’s editorial board revolved around how they argued the case for Romney, not their specific choice of candidate. It’s “not because they chose Romney,” O’Donnell said. “Not because they chose a Republican, but because they gave absolutely no rational reason for it.”
The Register justified its entire endorsement on the basis of consumer confidence.
The op-ed main’s rationale for Romney: “Consumers must feel more confident about their own economic futures to begin spending on the products and services that power the economy. A renewed sense of confidence will spark renewed investment by American companies. Industry will return to full production and hiring will begin again.”
O’Donnell said it’s the result of “pure magical thinking that the very sight of Mitt Romney taking the oath of office will suddenly make consumers run out to Best Buy and load up on TVs made in Japan.”
The last time the paper got behind a Republican candidate for president was in 1972, when they endorsed Richard Nixon.