People, Not Bumps

Speaking to a Faith and Freedom Coalition conference, former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney sounded an awful lot like former Minnesota Governor Tim Pawlenty and like former Godfathers Pizza CEO Herman Cain.

With Pawlenty's message resonating so well with participants at the FFC conference, it's only natural that Pawlenty's competitors would like to emulate it. With Cain's message resonating so well with conservative voters, it's only natural his competitors would like to emulate it, too.

Like Pawlenty, Romney does a fantastic job of connecting the economic crises being faced by the United States with what fellow competitor Herman Cain would deem to be emerging moral crises.

President Barack Obama may be content to dismiss the millions of Americans who are out of work as "bumps in the road". As Romney points out, those aren't bumps. They're people. People feeling increasingly desperate, and being driven to increasingly-desperaate actions.

Economic hardship brings great personal hardship. Families break down. Communities corrode. To a child who sees their family break apart under economic duress, it's more than a mere bump in the road. It's a life-altering event. To a child who sees families in their neighbourhood break apart, it leads to great uncertainty and fear.

It leads to a breakdown of confidence.

Mitt Romney declares that he's confident in the spirit of the United States. That's a massive improvement over Obama, who seems to hold confidence in his own ideological agenda.

There's a reason why Mitt Romney, Tim Pawlenty and Herman Cain are carrying a message that is so similiar: it's because the challenge America is facing is so clear, and the failure of Barak Obama to meet them equally so.