Vote Fred '08
Posted on 04/16/2007 9:23:04 AM PDT by areafiftyone
That is the sad story of Mitt Romney, the movie-star handsome former governor of Massachusetts. Romney registers a dismal fourth in Republican opinion polls. Yesterday's LAT/Bloomberg poll put him at 8% approval among Republicans.
A year ago, Romney looked like an emerging Republic star. He had rescued Massachusetts from a large budget deficit without raising taxes. And he had engineered a state-wide health insurance plan that delivered universal health insurance coverage to all of Massachusetts' residents--again without raising taxes. A hugely successful businessman, he had rescued the 2002 Olympic games from a corruption scandal.
In small-group sessions in 2005 and 2006, Romney dazzled elite audiences with his command of fact and easy, humorous speaking style.
He would begin by talking about the importance of data--of checking your assumptions--and of keeping the discussion open to dissenters. He was talking about state governance of course. But everybody heard the implied criticism of President Bush's management style. And after he left, his audiences would nod their heads over their coffee cups and say, "If only somebody like that had been running this war ? "
But sometime in the summer or fall of 2006, Romney reached a strategic decision. He would not run as a pragmatic problem solver. He would run as the conservative in the race: the tax-cutting, pro-life, pro-gun, pro-traditional-marriage heir to George W. Bush.
He even dropped hints that if nominated, he would choose Florida governor Jeb Bush as his running mate.
And this past week, he chose the George H. W. Bush presidential library as the site of his first major foreign policy address.
At the same time, he has given short shrift to his breakthrough health-care achievement. In fact, he rarely refers to it in his speeches, apparently fearing that one ingredient of his plan--a requirement that every non-poor state resident buy a health insurance policy or face a tax penalty--will offend the antigovernment sensibilities of Republican primary voters. None of this is working.
In part, Romney's difficulty in gaining early traction can be traced to his own vulnerabilities: He has become more conservative since his first political race, and (as I noted in last week's column) YouTube is now crowded with clips of him saying one thing in 1994 and very different things in 2004, 2005 and 2006.
But it seems to me that something bigger is going on.
Had you asked a shrewd Republican observer in, say, 2004 to guess who the party's next nominee would be, he or she would probably have named George Allen, the senator from Virginia--a popular former governor, son of a legendary football coach, famous for his cowboy boots and chewing tobacco. Allen was a solid, down-the-line conservative on everything from taxes to guns to abortion. He was hiring all the top consultants, raising money, making friends and seemingly cruising to an easy re-election win in 2006.
Instead, he lost. Lost in Virginia, where Bush had beat Kerry by nine points! If Allen could lose in Virginia, then no conservative was safe anywhere.
In some shrewd instinctive way, the Republican party is sensing that the United States has changed. And just as the Grand Old Party of Lincoln and Grant eventually ran out of Civil War generals to nominate to the presidency, so perhaps time has run out for the old Nixon-Reagan coalition that came together to vote against the social upheavals of the 1960s and the 1970s. The 1960s and 1970s were, after all, a very, very long time ago.
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In some shrewd instinctive way, the Republican party is sensing that the United States has changed. |
Romney seized on Allen's defeat as an opportunity to position himself as the authentic Reagan conservative in the race--in a year when the Republican party may for the first time in a generation be looking for something other than a Reagan conservative.
Rudy Giuliani, the Republican frontrunner, is not exactly a moderate, of course. But he's not a traditional conservative either. He appeals to Republicans, not by running against government but precisely because of his record in making government work. Above all, his success in fighting crime recommends him. Under Mayor Giuliani, the number of murders in New York declined from over 2,000 per year to under 700. With government again providing safety to the people, the city recovered its economic strength.
Mitt Romney had an equally compelling story of executive leadership to tell. He chose not to. He chose to run as Bush's heir in a year when even Republicans are looking for Bush's opposite. That choice is looking more and more misguided. It may soon look fatal.
David Frum is a resident fellow at AEI.
((((PING)))))
Romney is losing because he is a shameless flip flopper not because the public and suddenly fallen in love with big government and Wilsonianism overseas.
I’m sorry but this article is RIGHT ON THE MARK! Look at the 2006 election for clues to why this is on the mark! The U.S. is changing and unless we realize that - we will lose in 2008. This is not the 1990’s or 2000 anymore.
Romney’s problem is that he has not been a lifelong advocate of the principles he now espouses. Reagan Republicans are very good at sniffing out Reagan wannabe’s.
“engineered a state-wide health insurance plan that delivered universal health insurance coverage to all of Massachusetts’ residents...”
Maybe THAT’S his problem.
This has absolutely nothing to do with Reagan, Mitt belongs to a cult.
Vote Fred '08
Reaganism was a hiccup, dependent upon Reagan himself. It was a personal political movement, not a true philosophy.
Or worse, winning with a liberal republican from NY
‘Just not a lot of positive news for the good guys this morning!!
It’s not even noon, and I need a drink.
I’ve already read in another article that we are headed for a Socialist, anti-globalization world.
Then we get this friendly column saying that Conservatism and the Reagan Revolution is in the tank.
Make that a double on the rocks.
Neither was Reagan.
I'm not a Romney person, but I find it absurd that some candidates are automatically dismissed because they didn't come out of the womb spouting conservative tenets. People evolve.
Maybe THAT’S his problem.
Exactly. The article makes it seem that just because he did it without raising taxes, that he is somehow a Reagan revolution candidate. A Reagan revolution candidate would have cut taxes and privatized health care.
I just sent off my tax returns, and I had to write a check for each of them. Consider how much larger a check we'll all have to write if HILLARY becomes president and the Dems control the White House!
iraq has killed the republican party, and it will continue to kill them for years to come. the US hasnt changed that much in 4 years.
Only if you think the solution is for the GOP to run leftwards. That ain't gonna sell on a conservative website.
Look at the 2006 election for clues to why this is on the mark!
I don't see the 2006 election as vindication of the "leftward, ho!" agenda pushed by big-government Republicans.
2006 was a repudiation of the leftward drift of the GOP. You solution to 2006 is the same as liberal's solution to public schools - do more of what failed in the hopes that it eventually works.
Both are absurd.
Reagan espoused his principles for decades before he bacame president. Romney’s conversion appears to be fairly recent and rather convenient wouldn’t you say?
After being betrayed by Bush I and Bush II, we’re just a little distrusting of people who keep changing their views. I personally have no problem with Mitt but to be honest, I just didn’t trust him.
I very much agree with you. The U.S. has not undergone this fundamental change at all. It’s all about Iraq. Some freepers tried to warn about Iraq to no avail. They didn’t listen then and they will never listen. Some people can’t admit they are wrong. Bush is one of those and he is killing the Republicans.
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