Political Interest

Romney No Longer Hedging His Bet

If you follow the money, Mitt Romney is clearly telegraphing his next political move.  It is obvious he intends to attempt to take his particular brand of governing by hair gel and photo op national as he as virtually stopped, according to the Boston Globe.

Romney started the year with $1.3 million in his campaign account, but the balance had fallen to $612,000 in his most recent report, filed in mid-September. During most months, Romney has spent far more than he has raised, such as April, when he took in $178,000 and spent $360,000.

Were the governor to run for president, a cash balance in his state account would be useless because federal law prohibits him from transferring leftover money to a presidential account.

I'd expect pressure to grow on Romney to declare his intentions after the current session of the Massachusetts legislature is over and an official announcement after a family navel gaze over the Christmas holiday.

Boxers, Briefs or "Special"?

Amy Sullivan thinks Mitt Romney's Mormonism will be a major problem for Mitt in the primaries. 

How Mormon are you?" Sridhar Pappu asked Romney for his Atlantic Monthly profile. Romney's answer sounded like it could have come from George W. Bush: "You know, the principles and values taught to me by faith are values I aspire to live by. [They] are as American as motherhood and apple pie. My faith believes in family, believes in Jesus Christ. It believes in serving one's neighbor and one's community." That kind of vague answer works for Bush, but Bush is a Methodist. In his interview, Pappu continued to press Romney about the particulars of Mormon practice. Cornered, the governor replied tersely. I'll just say those sorts of things I keep private." At that point, Pappu dropped the issue. But the next reporter won't, nor the next, nor the next.

By now, reporters are used to Protestant candidates, but they eat up any chance to explore a new religious angle. They peppered Lieberman with questions in 2000 about whether he could campaign on the Sabbath and followed John Kerry to mass every week during the 2004 campaign to probe his views on the Eucharist. As the first serious LDS presidential candidate, Romney is an oddity. News outlets will feature charts comparing Mormon theology to Christian doctrine, and stories detailing various dietary and clothing restrictions. Again, this may help demystify Mormonism for average voters who may be generally uneasy about the faith, but it will only serve to remind evangelicals of the differences between the two religions. Indeed, Romney faces an unwinnable dilemma: The more information that circulates about the specifics of his faith, the more hesitant evangelical voters will be to support him.

I think she's probably right, which is too bad.  There are so many other reasons to oppose Romney; his lack of leadership as Governor, his cynical flip-flop on social policy, his trail of Governing by cronyism. 

But given his recent comments on Muslims, if religious prejudice keep him out of the Oval Office, so much the better.

Delusional Romney takes a potshot at HRC

Is the irrelevant obstruction in the corner office on Beacon Hill losing touch with reality?  It appears so.

Thursday taping Hardball with Chris Matthews, Romney declared he would win reelection in a landslide, according to the Boston Globe.  This despite the overwhelming poll numbers against him.  Perhaps, he meant lose in a landslide, that I'd believe.

He then went on to say that having Hilliary Clinton as President would be the worst thing he could imagine.  The silly Hilliary posturing, however, gives away the lie to his silly posturing on the 2006 Governor's race:  candidates for Governor in a very blue state don't take potshots at the Democratic Senator from a neighboring state, unless they have a different audience in mind like Republican primary voters. 

Make no mistake, Romney wants to be President in the worst way.  Not because there is anything he particularly believes in or wants to do, he just thinks the title would be nice. 

However, he has a quandary: he can't run an election appealing to the Massachusetts electorate and the South Carolina Republican primary electorate at the same time. He also, given his thin resume, can't go out of office with his tail between his legs, hence the landslide comments.

Moderate Field in 2008 Race Forcing Romney to the Right

The New York Times points to an early oddity in the 2008 Presidential race on the GOP side: the majority of likely candidates are varying degrees of moderate.  They list Giuliani, Pataki (hard to believe, but it looks like it), McCain, Frist, and, of course, Mitt Romney, supposed Governor of Massachusetts.

It's tough enough for a moderate to have shot at winning in Republican primaries given the conservative dominance of the process, but splitting the moderate vote would make it nearly impossible.  A moderate would need to be the moderate candidate against a split field of conservatives.

So far some of the candidates such as Frist and Romney are trying to rectify their situations by changing their positions.  Luckily for Frist he's had a head start, switching his posture once he became Majority Leader.

For Romney the problem is much harder.  He started in elective office only of  2 1/2 years ago, which he won by campaigning as a prochoice social moderate.  His conversion seems to have started after the absolute failure of his campaign to add more Republicans to the state legislature in 2004.  It culminated last week in his veto of an emergency contraception bill, a veto almost sure to be overridden.  His ability to convince the conservatives that his latest "evolution," as he puts it, is legitimate will be the test that determines whether he'll be a credible candidate.

Romney Evolution Not Flying

So far Mitt Romney's self described evolution doesn't look like it's going over so well, at least from the quotes in this Globe piece.

Gary Glenn, president of the American Family Association of Michigan, a staunch opponent of legalized abortion, suggested that antiabortion voters would see Romney's new position as a transparent attempt to to curry favor with conservative voters in a presidential primary.

''Pro-family voters don't believe in evolution," Glenn said in a telephone interview. ''It's nothing a lot of other politicians haven't tried to do."

Kellie Rose Ferguson, executive director of The Republican Majority for Choice, said Romney's Op-Ed article and veto constitute an ''entire reversal" of the positions he espoused in 2002, earning the endorsement of her group. She said she believes Romney is changing his position to position himself as he ponders a presidential candidacy.

It Is Unofficially Official

Mitt Romney is running for President, and to hell with any concern of Massachusetts citizens (his present employers) that gets in the way.  While that wasn't in the text of his message to the state legislators, it was loud and clear in the political subtext as Romney spun rightward to veto an emergency contraception bill.

The move puts Romney well out of the mainstream in Massachusetts, so much so that it will have little legal effect, since the legislature is sure to override it.  However, it means his already uphill fight to get reelected is now much more difficult, if not impossible.

If he wants to run for President, not only can he he not afford to lose in 2006, he can't afford to raise and spend all of his money campaigning in Mass, where he would surely have to trim his conservative sails only a year before voting in outh Carolina and New Hampshire.

After spending the spring bashing the state, Romney had seemed to come back hedging, and playing nice with the legislature. 

But, his cooperation and healthcare proposal were due Romney's need to accomplish something beyond symbolic vetoes and anti-gay rights protests in order to run for President.  So, any state legislator thinking about cooperating with Romney should think hard whether what's being proposed is in the interest of the commonwealth, because it is clear Romney won't.

Mitt's Choice

It looks like Mitt Romney's little Hamlet act may be at an end, and he will have to unofficially declare his political intentions in a few days.  The Massachusetts legislature has passed an emergency contraception bill, which the anti-abortion forces in the national GOP are urging him to veto. 

Leaving aside the pro-lifer's curious claim that Plan B is abortion, apparently, life begins at ovulation, the political problem for Romney is that vetoing the bill would make his already shaky reelection chances shakier, and signing it would make his Presidential aspirations for 2008 disappear.

But, one should never underestimate Mitt's ability to hedge his bets:

A third option is to send the bill back to the Legislature with an amendment that would allow individuals or hospitals to refuse to dispense the contraception pill if it offends their morals, a so-called conscience clause.

The House had included a conscience clause in its version of the bill, but the provision was taken out of the final version of the bill in negotiations with the Senate.

The Lion Roars and Mitt Squeeks

Massachusetts's senior Senator took the floor to defend the state from the libel coming from the junior jackass from Pennsylvania Rick Santorum.  Teddy skewered Santorum, who has long and ever expanding history of ignorant statements for blaming Massachusetts's liberalism for the Priest Sex Abuse scandal.

The statement is wrong on so many counts, it's hard to no where to start.  Beyond the obvious speciousness of the connection between say strong tenants rights laws and sexual abuse, the idea that Boston is an east coast Sin City is laughable and ill informed. 

Teddy characteristically went straight at the buffoon:

In a rare personal attack on the Senate floor, Sen. Edward M. Kennedy accused Sen. Rick Santorum on Wednesday of being self-righteous and insensitive for a column he wrote three years ago linking Boston’s liberalism to the sex abuse scandal in its Catholic diocese.

...In a speech, Kennedy, D-Mass., called for Santorum to retract his remarks and apologize to the people of Boston and Massachusetts and the nation.

“The people of Boston are to blame for the clergy sexual abuse? That is an irresponsible, insensitive and inexcusable thing to say,” said Kennedy.

Our current Governor, Mitt Romney, ever covering his bets for '08.  Called Santorum's statement, through a spokeman, of course, unfortunate, but would not go further than that.  Gee, thanks Mitt, your quite a stand up guy.

Romney's Choice

Mitt Romney may get a chance to make his decision about running for reelection publicly official, the state legislature is about to pass a bill that would make emergency contraception more readily available and mandate it's availability for rape victims.  According to Eileen McNamara, the authors are girding for a veto, despite Romney's pledges in his 2002 campaign:

That advocates are worried about a veto is a reflection not of the merits of the bill, but of the duplicity of the governor. In 2002, when he was a candidate for the office he now holds, he answered ''yes" to a question posed by Planned Parenthood about his support of ''efforts to increase access to emergency contraception." In the past few weeks, however, as he has repositioned himself to appeal to a more conservative national audience, he has declined to restate that commitment.

The House vote will bring an end to Romney's haughty refusal to discuss reproductive health issues with the voters who elected him. Ignoring the inquiries of advocacy groups and disregarding the questions of journalists has become standard operating procedure for the governor when the issue is women and their reproductive rights. Typical is the nonresponse response of press secretary Julie Teer: ''With regard to e.c., the governor will review any emergency contraception bill if and when it reaches his desk."

Well, yes, that is his job, after all. How he does that job, whether focused on the health of the women of Massachusetts or distracted by the primary voters of South Carolina, is about to be seen.

A Charlatan's "C"

The conservative Boston Herald has again splashed a Mitt bashing alliterative headline across its front page.  And this time the article backs it up, giving a point by point analysis of Romney's ample failures as Governor, in contrast to his slick new brochure.

The Herald's best:

      Unemployment is down under Romney, from 192,000 just before he took office, in December 2002, to 160,556 last month. But that doesn't mean jobs have risen. Non-farm payrolls in December 2002 were 3.42 million. Last month: 3.37 million.

     The labor force has simply shrunk by about 800,000, or one sixth, during that time. Indeed, Massachusetts has lost a net 11,000 jobs since Romney took office.