Dear Mitt,
History doesn't repeat itself exactly, but there are lessons to learn from other people's mistakes. Al Gore had a lot of advantages going into the 2000 election against George W. Bush, yet he lost for a variety of reasons. One of the key mistakes he made was letting his handlers prevent him from coming across as human. There were countless opportunities for Gore to have directly challenged much of the fiction that was being espoused by the Bush candidacy but Gore failed to challenge the falsehoods. He nodded, pandered and ignored his way to defeat. If you want to wrap this up and move to challenge President Obama in the fall, you need to learn from Gore's mistakes.
Step 1: Embrace who you are instead of trying to pander to whoever is nearby. You are a moderate Republican who inherited wealth and power from his family but you built on this. You are well educated and succeeded at using your education and connections to create wealth for yourself and your family. Later you led a liberal state to develop meaningful health care reforms. You have a clear understanding of what the Constitution includes and doesn't include. Don't try pretending you are a Southerner when you are around Southerners or that you are a tough Westerner when you aren't. You are a terrible actor and awful at ad-libbing to connect with crowds, so focus on the fact that you have a good track record of leadership in both politics and business and that success has followed you wherever you have gone.
Step 2: Recognize that ultra-conservatives as well as the religious right within your party are not going to like you but that there are plenty of moderates within your party who would like to believe that you are electable. Call out the falsehoods that spout from your opponents mouths, like Ron Paul boldly does. Ron Paul is unelectable but people on all sides of the political spectrum at least respect him for being straightforward about who he is and what he believes. Make Republicans understand that America is not a theocracy so candidates should stop pretending that it is. Show Republicans the track record of your major opponents so they understand that these candidates have extremely weak records of leadership and questionable conservative credentials. Make them understand that we don't have a national language or national religion for a reason, because America strives (though don't always succeed) to be a society open to other cultures, not just to one group within our nation of over 310 million people.
Step 3: Explain to all Republicans why you are the better Republican candidate to challenge President Obama than divisive candidates like Santorum and Gingrich. Let the moderates of the party bring you the candidacy. Yes, you are often criticized for being unconnected with regular people. You are. A few photo-ops won't correct that but at least you can convince people that you will be a good leader. You want to connect with regular people. Don't try putting on shades and playing the saxophone -- that's not you and everyone will see through it as another fake performance. Definitely don't put a helmet on and climb onto a tank either. Instead, talk about your vision for America and show them that it is similar to theirs. Talk about your track record of success. Talk about how you understand what America is and is not.
Step 4: Don't let your handlers run your campaign. They have done a great job of making you look unelectable so far... maybe you need to think about contacting Bain for some help in doing a re-organization.
What about getting those ultra conservatives to vote for you in November you ask? Mitt, first you have to become the Republican candidate. Once you do that, then you can relax. After all do you really think that hard-core conservatives in your party are going to vote for a socialist Indonesian Muslim who faked his birth certificate then ran up the biggest deficit-to-GDP ratio since World War II?
Sincerely,
I can't believe that these are the best candidates America can produce