Romney-Too many shifts
In some ways, I would like to support Mitt Romney, if my favored candidate Rudy Giuliani doesn't run.
(1) He has an amazing resume. Romney was an excellent student who got in to Stanford before transferring and graduating first in his class at BYU and then obtained a JD/MBA from Harvard. He proceeded to advance up the corporate ladder at Bain, one of the top consulting firms in the world before starting up Bain Capital, a very successful venture capital firm. He did by most accounts a very good job managing the 2002 Olympics games and then went on to win election as a Republican in a very blue state.
(2) He looks extremely presidential. In this day and age, where a picture is in many cases more valuable than a speech, Romney has a commanding presence and seems to be straight out of Hollywood casting.
(3) He and not McCain has picked up the better economic advisors for his campaign including Harvard Professor Greg Mankiw (who btw has an excellent blog). I believe Romney is the most knowledgeable credible candidate about ways to create economic growth, which to me is right after national security/foreign policy in importance.
However, Romney is a difficult guy to support. In the last two elections, Republicans portrayed (correctly) the Democratic candidate as a flip-flopper who stood for very little but winning. Romney, so far appears to be the epitome of this.
Romney campaigning in 1994 for the Massachusetts Senate was a liberal Republican in the mold of William Weld. He is now campaigning to be the conservative candidate in the primaries. He has gone on social issues (to paraphrase one Republican) from being Jerry Nadler to being Jerry Faldwell. Yet, unlike many who become more conservative with age or because of some profound event/events in their life, he has never plausibly explained the switch in positions. For example, what motivated his recent switches on guns?
Many candidates modify or switch a position or two to win a primary but his problem is it appears that on almost every important social issue he has modified his position in the last two years. While in 2002, he was more of a moderate than a liberal Republican, he still held most of the same positions he had stated in 1994.
Given his dearth of political experience, a one-term governor who has very little in the way of accomplishments to run on and would have most probably not been re-elected, I would be hard-pressed to support someone like Romney in the primary without some kind of explanation for this drastic shift. Even with an explanation, I am not sure I would want him as the Republican nominee (I believe you should be popular enough in your own state to win re-election before seeking the presidency) but I would be more amenable to doing so if he could given a more plausible explanation for his shift on so many issues other than political positioning.
The 2002 Romney struck me as an improved version of George H.W. Bush, the new Romney strikes me as an improved version of John Kerry.
(1) He has an amazing resume. Romney was an excellent student who got in to Stanford before transferring and graduating first in his class at BYU and then obtained a JD/MBA from Harvard. He proceeded to advance up the corporate ladder at Bain, one of the top consulting firms in the world before starting up Bain Capital, a very successful venture capital firm. He did by most accounts a very good job managing the 2002 Olympics games and then went on to win election as a Republican in a very blue state.
(2) He looks extremely presidential. In this day and age, where a picture is in many cases more valuable than a speech, Romney has a commanding presence and seems to be straight out of Hollywood casting.
(3) He and not McCain has picked up the better economic advisors for his campaign including Harvard Professor Greg Mankiw (who btw has an excellent blog). I believe Romney is the most knowledgeable credible candidate about ways to create economic growth, which to me is right after national security/foreign policy in importance.
However, Romney is a difficult guy to support. In the last two elections, Republicans portrayed (correctly) the Democratic candidate as a flip-flopper who stood for very little but winning. Romney, so far appears to be the epitome of this.
Romney campaigning in 1994 for the Massachusetts Senate was a liberal Republican in the mold of William Weld. He is now campaigning to be the conservative candidate in the primaries. He has gone on social issues (to paraphrase one Republican) from being Jerry Nadler to being Jerry Faldwell. Yet, unlike many who become more conservative with age or because of some profound event/events in their life, he has never plausibly explained the switch in positions. For example, what motivated his recent switches on guns?
Many candidates modify or switch a position or two to win a primary but his problem is it appears that on almost every important social issue he has modified his position in the last two years. While in 2002, he was more of a moderate than a liberal Republican, he still held most of the same positions he had stated in 1994.
Given his dearth of political experience, a one-term governor who has very little in the way of accomplishments to run on and would have most probably not been re-elected, I would be hard-pressed to support someone like Romney in the primary without some kind of explanation for this drastic shift. Even with an explanation, I am not sure I would want him as the Republican nominee (I believe you should be popular enough in your own state to win re-election before seeking the presidency) but I would be more amenable to doing so if he could given a more plausible explanation for his shift on so many issues other than political positioning.
The 2002 Romney struck me as an improved version of George H.W. Bush, the new Romney strikes me as an improved version of John Kerry.
posted by The partisan moderate at 11:57 AM
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