Lost

Ideals win elections.

Big ideals. Larger than life ideals.

Idealism is what puts politicians in power during difficult and dangerous times. It can be good idealism or bad idealism. Either way, the candidate who sells his idealism best wins just about every time.

More significantly, when one candidate uses emotion/passion/unexpurgated populism to sell his ideals and the other candidate doesn't, the populist is a lead-pipe cinch to win, 100 percent of the time.

Mitt Romney has now assured an Obama win in November. He has done so by selecting as his running mate someone who not only is not the "bold" choice so many conservative pundits are claiming, but someone who compounds Romney's own image problem and plays right into the hands of the Obama campaign's relentless assertion that conservatives are nothing but rich men who want - and I stress this - want - to hurt the "average" American, especially minorities and women.

That's the message, and it's not hidden at all. It's part and parcel of a larger populist push toward socialism that insists that there is no such thing as a wealthy person who desseves to be wealthy. It's bad idealism being sold by phenomenally effective populist methodology.

And what have the Republicans offered? A blank-staring autocrat who exudes plenty of common sense but absolutely no passion or even the body language to infer passion. And as his running mate? An accountant who is passionate only about explaining why we're falling into a fiscal pit.

Which is true, of course. But telling the electorate how bad things are does not translate into electoral victory. What wins is - hold on, wait for it - hope. A vision of the future that rings in the heart and opens the tear ducts; that sears into the mind and body the desire to be part of something bigger than oneself.

It is beyond baffling to me that the Republican establishment doesn't understand this. The one conservative candidate in their lifetime who won the presidency during a national fiscal crisis - You Know Who - did so not by telling us how much medicine we had to take or how steady at the wheel our leaders needed to be, but by reminding us of our greatness. Of the difference between America and every other civilization in the history of humankind. By inspiring us toward a shining city on a hill, for crying out loud! That's populism selling a good ideal.

We are once again at a time when the most important thing we need to be as a citizenry is inspired. We desperately need something to believe in. Barack Obama offers a dreamy mirage filled with easy answers, easy money and convenient bad guys to make it all feel easy to get. "Hope" in 2008 was "change." "Hope" in 2012 is the tearing down of American entrepreneurship so that we can all imagine that by destroying those who create and make our wealth, all the "rest of us" will get more free stuff, the debt will be paid down and all will be right with the world.

Now that is populism selling a very bad set of ideals. But just like in 2008, it is being sold exceptionally well by a master populist.

And instead of meeting the challenge with a Marco Rubio or a Chris Christie - two men who know how to inspire people to action through the positive conveyance of the great American ideals of liberty and capitalism, the Republicans are about to nominate Mitt Romney - who is Bod Dole all over again - and Paul Ryan - who not only is a one- trick pony (the budget) but easy prey for an Obama attack machine that will paint Ryan's budget ideas as the destruction of the middle class and the elderly for the benefit of the wealthy.

It matters not one whit that Ryan's budget ideas are exactly what the country needs. What matters is that people don't want to hear about all the pain they're going to have to go through to make things better. What Americans need to hear right now is why we are great. Because a citizenry confident in its greatness is willing to make the necessary sacrifices without having to be told to.

The Republicans don't undersand this.  They are - and have - lost.  May God spare us the worst.  Hold on.  A very painful four years are about to unfold.

A version of this post appears on Mark's personal blog, Smoggy Don's Loudmouth Soup.