Mitt The Candidate

It's not a good sign when you announce your candidacy on a New Hampshire farm that gets government subsidies and your theme song "Here I Go Again" by Whitesnake is seen by the artist as a rip-off of intellectual property. It also doesn't help when only 15 minutes away Sarah Palin shows up in her bus and starts opining on your health reform policy. And a little further away Rudy Guiliani shows up to say you should just apologize for your only policy achievement. You know you're not hitting the road in style when you can't make the top story in the local newspaper.

Over the past week, alot of Republican pundits have been open about how much Republicans dislike Mitt Romney. He sometimes acts like Richie Rich. He's wooden. He's a Mormon. Fill in the blank. Basically, Mitt Romney isn't a good politician. After people instinctively determine they dislike him, then they make up the reasons. And columnists are begging Romney not to even pretend to be cool or with it. His admission on Jay Leno that he read the Twilight novels because his granddaughter like them soon devolved into political calibrations about whether he should admit he did or did not like vampires. And he finally admitted he didn't know any.

Sometimes it's best for me not to read the full text of a politicians' announcement. Romney seemed to pack a punch by saying, "Obama Failed America." But that was really the headline writer's doing. The whole speech was listless--in fact the Obama line was buried-- and you have to really wonder why he is running for President. He tells us he is an expert in turning around companies and that's what's needed know. Except his whole history of turning companies around meant trimming costs by laying off thousands of people and then selling off the companies for a profit. Is that really what is needed now? Aside from believing in America, Romney speech did not have any vision thing. He accused Obama of making the recession worse, apologizing for America abroad and bringing the free market system near extinction. I guess he was trying to show he would be an attacker except all the fact-checkers immediately corrected all his statements.

Or is Mitt Romney the bland politician chosen to make truly radical change acceptable? His statements about cutting the deficit and balancing the budget if taken literally would result in something far more destructive than the Ryan Plan. But there is so little heart in this that we tend to gloss over the implications of his statement. Then his great jobs program is more boilerplate GOP with getting rid of regulations on business and lowering taxes.

But once Mitt was out of the gate, his other side comes out. He wants to end America's dependence on oil so he wants to develop alternative energy sources and encourage ways Americans can conserve energy. His items were identical to Obama's. There was no Drill Baby, Drill. In another statement, he violated the now universal Republican belief by stating that climate change was real and that humans are partially responsible for it.

Then we get Mitt Romney as a pro-lifer. The next hurdle for Republican Presidential candidates will be to answer what criminal penalties will they impose on women who get abortions and abortion providers. Mitt waffled on this saying that he did know of anyone proposing "criminal charges" but he opined there should be penalties. However, across country, Tim Pawlenty made it clear that there would have to be criminal charges brought--but he thought only against doctors.

In all the years of watching Mitt Romney, he was most empathetic and compassionate in his answer during his Senate debate with Ted Kennedy when asked about whether he was pro-choice. He said he was personally against abortion but recounted a story of a cousin who went through a botched abortion when it was illegal and said that experience made him pro-choice. Ted Kennedy got off the wisecrack that Mitt was multiple choice.

While Mitt Romney has been running without interruption for the presidency since 2007, it's important to realize that he has won only one election in his life. There has always been this air that he's entitled to the Presidency. Or that the presidency is the missing position on his family's resume. In the 2008 elections, the entire Republican roster hated Mitt Romney. Even though McCain himself had over 14 homes and was married to an enormously wealthy woman, he thought of Romney as being a pampered rich kid. He emphasized that while he was a POW, Romney was a missionary in Paris--Paris of all places. In fact, the premise of the Huckabee candidacy was to block Romney from gaining any advantage on McCain. During the 2008 race, President George W. Bush was asked about Romney's chances, he said,"He's not going anywhere. He's a member of a cult."

Romney's ambition and his problems can be traced back to his father George Romney. If you remember George Romney, you'll remember a moderate to liberal Republican Governor, who wanted to challenge Richard Nixon. George Romney had the true self-made man story, working his way up in the auto industry and then moving into the state house. George Romney was a popular governor and a national figure. He was a handsome man who exuded gutsiness. To his credit he also pressured the Mormons' to abandon the racist tenets in their religion and embraced to some extent Martin Luther King. But George was done in--and this seems to be a family trait--by saying he changed his position on the Vietnam War because he had been "brainwashed" by our government when he had been a hawk. And his presidential campaign was effectively finished.

Mitt always acts like he wants to right the wrong done to his father. He'll become President to vindicate his father. In my view some of the opposition to Mitt stems from the background of many Republican operatives who worked for Richard Nixon. The Romneys are politically unreliable. They are closet liberals. Dad was seen as part of the Rockefeller wing of the party. Does anyone remember those fights? Think about Roger Ailes, who made his mark for Nixon, and now is the arbiter of the GOP nomination process. Yes, Mitt gets to appear to slam Obama but he's been given less time than even pretend candidates.

If Obama is exotic, Romney is very exotic. A Mormon who lives in the liberal Northeast and was governor of Massachusetts. Unlike Obama, who has maintained a fairly consistent position on the issues, Romney's postions on issues have been all over the map. And even when he sensibly explains his change like his pro-life stance, he bungles it. He said in the last presidential election that he changed his position on stem cell research because he held discussions on the issue with professors at Harvard--Harvard! So the tactical gain in explaining his position to the Republican base is more than offset by him changing it at Harvard. You can take almost any issue and Romney has held every political position imaginable. So no one knows what if anything he really believes.

I am one of the few people I know who believes that Romney's religion will hurt him this time around. The Pew poll indicates that there is more resistance among the American voter against a Mormon candidate. While racist sentiment has increased against President Obama and will hurt him in the next election, the same sources for this--nativism, Christian nationalism, and xenophobia--have a flip side which is suspicion of Mormons. I believe this is more of a factor today than when George Romney ran in the 1960s. The reason for this is the rise of the Christian Right and particularly its more radical elements, which still fly under the radar. On the independent and moderate side of things, the Pew poll shows significant numbers are skeptical about Mormons in public office. And that number must have risen with the rise of Glenn Beck, the most visible Mormon in a generation.

During the last election, the Christian Right engaged in dirty tricks against Mitt Romney in South Carolina, which seems to be home to the most vile dirty tricks in the Republican camp. Voters received Christmas cards from Mitt and his wife Ann with outrageous quotes from the Book of Mormon. You might remember George W. planted rumors in South Carolina that McCain had fathered a black child, which really was an Indian child adopted by Cindy. McCain always thought that turned the 2000 election toward W and he remained steamed about it. Sensing that this was getting ugly, Papa Bush invited Mitt Romney down to Rice University in Texas to do his version of Obama's Rev. Wright speech and talk about religious freedom.

Mitt the Systems Guy has adopted all the recommended modes of bridge-building to the Christian Right but it looks like he has linked up with remnants of the old Christian Right and not the new virulent strain. Learning from the last campaign, he has established an extensive national network and instead of spending his own considerable future he has developed a huge financial base. In other words, he is approaching this all as a business problem. One example is that he moved to New Hampshire and also to California. But look at what moving to Iowa did for Chris Dodd's presidential campaign.

So the system is in place. But we saw this week that systems sometimes break down. Like last election,2012 will be decided in the Midwest. And the one bright spot in the Midwest is the recovery of the American auto industry, which McCain in 2008 told people in Michigan wasn't coming back. Against a wall of GOP resistance, Barack Obama bailed out the auto industry and the companies are turning a profit and actually gaining market shares for the first time since the mid-1990s.

When the GOP resistance went up, Mitt Romney, son of the auto industry, agreed with his Republican cronies and went on frequent television shows lamenting the dark day for America when the government took over the auto industry. Last week his handlers suggested that the success for the recovery was that President Obama took Romney's idea. But the chairmen of the auto companies have gone on television accusing Romney of "smoking something illegal" if he thought the auto industry could come back without the government. Challenged on this, Romney got snippy and looked like he was pouting. At the time of the auto bailout, I was stunned that Romney would come out so openly against it because it would be political suicide in the Midwest.

Romney has also been the only Republican candidate to avoid backing the Ryan Budget Plan, which seems to be another litmus test for all candidates. But from my take on his announcement, Romney's plan would be more draconian and would ensure another Depression. It's just he doesn't mention Medicare.

Will Romney be acceptable to the Republican Party? He is a successful man, having accumulated massive wealth through Bain Capital. The Businessman as the Highest American Hero outside of the military has been enshrined in the new Republican party as witnessed by the elections of Rick Scott in Florida, Rick Snyder in Michigan and John "Lehman Brothers" Kasich in Ohio, and the billionaire Club owned by Karl Rove for endless campaign funding. Yet, the base of the party is fixated on social issues. I disagree with Michael Steele when he says that primary voters will be interested primarily in jobs. I think the new economic model for the GOP is intertwined with an assortment of cultural and social issues where Romney is suspect.

There is another little fact that Republicans are aware of and hold against Mitt Romney. The election of Scott Brown in Masschusetts was touted by the teabaggers as their greatest triumph since he took Ted Kennedy's seat,a public repudiation of liberalism. But Scott Brown has become a disappointment to teabaggers and in a big way. Now teabaggers are finally admitting that it was the Romney organization behind the scenes that propelled Brown to victory. And that actually may be unforgiveable when you are dealing with ideologues.

I have no idea how Romney's constant vacillation on issues will affect his electoral fortune. Almost every Republican candidate now has changed their entire worldview in a short time. Newt does it every day. But what Republicans want is someone who will attack President Obama 24/7 and say anything about him. Obama's Presidency is seen as an affront to them because Republicans are entitled to the Presidency. They want their George Wallace wing to be the vanguard of attack politics. And so far Romney hasn't excited the bloodlust of the base. And whenever he does attack, it always ends up looking awkward. Basically, the Republicans want a hater and he is not one. This is not the time for "Morning in America" with a genial figure trying to sell the conservative platform. This is an election that will be based on revenge.

There is something about Romney that makes me think he is a hologram of a WASP. There is something not quite right about his visuals. He tries to do the LL. Bean casual look, but even his unbuttoned shirts don't quite unbutton right or his rolled up sleeves are too precise. In a suit he looks like those floorwalkers in the old department stores. In older days, people would call him an Empty Suit, which wouldn't quite be accurate either. Richard Nixon did his "Sock it To Me" moment on Laugh-In and Romney did his list of ten on Letterman. Nixon pulled his moment off because of the juxtaposition of our image of him against the performance. Romney came off professionally but totally nondescript. The more visible he is, the less of an impression he makes.

Mitt Romney would be the perfect guy Obama could appoint to revive the old Clinton Re-Inventing Government program. He would develop all the PowerPoints,analyze inefficiencies and propose to government agencies how to implement better procedures. That's what he's good at and good for. Let Mitt be Mitt--the systems analyst.

The other aspect of this is that Republicans are going to all the effort to restrict voting rights in key electoral states like Florida,Michigan, Ohio, Wisconsin and Missouri. If you go to all the effort to pre-rig an election, would you really do it for Mitt Romney? Don't the Koch Brothers and DeVos want more this time? This may be why Romney is not perceived warmly by the Republican fatcats as of yet and why they were scrambling around to find someone who wouldbe their minion.

As for the teabaggers, Freedomworks has already launched a stop Mitt campaign. And in the western states, former teabagger Joe Miller, former Senate candidate in Alaska, has already launched a regional effort to stop Mitt because he wants a constitutional conservative.

Mitt Romney not only has to win New Hampshire but he has to mount a string of primary victories to get him to Michigan. Last time he couldn't get there with sufficient strength. And he has to avoid getting de-railed in South Carolina, the graveyard of candidates not perceived as conservative enough.

While Santorum has a unique Google problem, Romney does also because his Google pages refer you to all his past policy stances. In his campaign website this year, he omits his Romneycare, while it is all over Google. And this stuff will be fodder for the other candidates.

While Romney is the front-runner--more because of name recognition than anything, he is going to need political savvy to buy off competitors as the process moves along. So far in his career, he hasn't shown any knack at trench fighting and hand-to-hand combat. It will be interesting to see the first few dirty tricks his campaign tries. They are likely to be too transparent.

In my mind, Obama eliminated the most serious rival to a second term when he choose Jon Huntsman as his ambassador to China. Of all the would-be candidates, Huntsman would have been the most attractive to independents. He has been too far out of the loop and now is linked to Obama that even his tack to the right is not sufficient to get back in the game. Oabam also has saddled Romney with his biggest liability, his only policy triumph, the healthcare reform in Massachusetts. Republicans forget that throughout the 2008 primary campaign the GOP debated the extent of healthcare reform they would propose when elected. They never foresaw the avalanche from their own base when a black man achieved it.

House Republicans are seriously committed to reversing all economic recovery with the intent to defeat Obama in 2012. That's what all their actions are about. For Romney, he needs the recovery to stall so that the public would be conditioned to accept a businessman savior in the White House. But if the recovery can not be reversed, then Republicans will have to bring out all the social and cultural issues in the main event. And there Romney doesn't stand a chance.