Posted on 08/19/2007 8:35:07 PM PDT by restornu
DES MOINES, Iowa - Amid the sweaty crowds at Iowa's sweltering state fair recently, Mitt Romney was a sight to behold shaking hands and ambling toward the Iowa Pork Producers building.
Looking freshly scrubbed in his long-sleeve shirt and creased white trousers, the former Massachusetts governor drew gasps from throngs of reporters awaiting his arrival.
"The man must have no pores," marveled one sodden journalist.
"He can't be human."
Just another meaningless photo op in a presidential election off to a ridiculously early start. But it also encapsulates one of the biggest questions surrounding Romney, who is looking more and more likely to become the Republican presidential nominee:
Is this guy for real?
* * *
The 6-foot-2 multimillionaire is often described as "matinee-idol" handsome. Truth be told, with his angular, tan face, jutting chin, and temples graying just so, the 60-year-old Romney is more soap-opera handsome or game-show-host handsome.
Which is to say Romney's improbably good looks can be off-putting at a time when "authentic" is the new thing in politics.
"With that perfect hair and those bright white teeth, Mitt is exactly the kind of polished politician I'm tired of," said Mark Zlab, a Republican doctor outside of Des Moines. "People want a candidate they can trust to talk truth."
Well maybe, Dr. Zlab. But a lot of solid Iowa Republicans see Romney, a proven problem-solver in the private sector, as the antidote to Washington's problems.
Hours after Zlab dismissed him as a phony, Romney solidified his position as the front-runner in Iowa's crucial first-in-the-nation caucuses by handily winning the GOP presidential straw poll. Never mind that he more or less bought the win, spending at least $2-million, he won.
"Pleased as punch," declared Romney, who is worth about $200-million and actually sounds natural saying things like "gosh" and "pleased as punch."
* * *
You probably know little about Willard Mitt Romney, the wholesome Mormon who has been married 38 years and never in his life had a glass of wine, let alone a hangover.
Based on most polls of Republicans nationally, and in Florida, he's an also-ran rival to Rudy Giuliani and likely candidate Fred Thompson, the actor and former Tennessee senator.
Forget that. Modern political history suggests Romney is the real front-runner. Gradually and methodically, he has built strong campaign organizations and comfortable poll leads where it really matters: Iowa and New Hampshire.
Winning the nomination is all about momentum. Success in those crucial states could catapult Romney to the top in the big contests that follow, South Carolina on Jan. 19 and Florida on Jan. 29.
Early on, Romney secured some of the best political operatives to be had in the Sunshine and Palmetto states, though he is showing little traction in the polls so far.
Unlike Giuliani, John McCain or Thompson, Romney is still unknown to most voters. Florida, where Romney has held 13 public campaign events compared with 200 in Iowa, is so big that poll numbers rarely move without significant TV advertising.
"We wanted to prove the point that when voters got to know Mitt Romney they liked him a lot," national campaign manager Beth Myers said of the heavy emphasis on Iowa and New Hampshire. "We focused laserlike on a couple states. I would not say we've played very hard in South Carolina or Florida yet at all."
His standing in Iowa and New Hampshire is partly due to him loaning his campaign $9-million from his personal fortune and spending more than $32-million in the first six months of the year. Giuliani has spent $17-million.
Still, those lead positions also are built on grass roots campaigning and are all the more impressive given the attacks Romney has taken for transforming from moderate Republican to social conservative as he began looking at a run for national office.
The man who once had undocumented Guatemalans cutting his lawn and praised the contributions of such workers to America's economy now campaigns as an immigration hard-liner. The Massachusetts candidate who promised to do more for gay rights than Ted Kennedy, who backed laws restricting gun ownership and firmly supported abortion rights, now casts himself as the strongest social conservative among the leading Republicans.
"Can't you just hear the Democratic convention if he's the nominee? Can't you hear the 30 speeches? 'He was here then, but he's here now. ... He said this then, but he says this now,' " said Kansas Sen. Sam Brownback, an underdog presidential candidate who argues Romney's inconsistent positions would doom him in the general election.
Romney repeatedly faces questions about his abortion evolution.
"In the public sphere that's probably my greatest mistake," he told a white-haired questioner in cinder block meeting room in Grundy Center, Iowa, the other day. "The prolife movement that I'm part of wants to change people's hearts and minds, and I'm one of those that got changed."
* * *
The one-term governor selling change does have a track record: a Republican who has won over liberals in deep blue Massachusetts; a product of the private sector who made millions turning around troubled companies like Staples and Domino's Pizza and who took over the 2002 Winter Olympics mired in scandal and debt and turned it into a success.
He understands 2008 will be a tough year for Republicans. In an interview with the St. Petersburg Times, Romney sounded more like a bridge-building general election candidate than red meat primary contender.
"There's a great commonality of concern in this country. People are very frustrated that Washington is unable to deal with the challenges we face or take advantage of our opportunities, and that concern has reached a crescendo," Romney said. "People are angry and want to see change. It's not Republican, it's not Democrat - it's Washington."
Romney campaigns as a Washington outsider, but the privileged son of former American Motors Corp. chairman George Romney is no political newcomer. His gregarious dad was a moderate governor of Michigan, and at 21 Mitt watched his father's formidable presidential candidacy crumble after saying he had been "brainwashed" into supporting the Vietnam war.
"Gotcha media was just getting going at that point, and there were a couple of campaigns that blew up over things that in retrospect seem awfully small," said Romney, noting that ultimately his father was proven right about American being misled about Vietnam.
Romney is a much more careful and usually predictable stump speaker than his father was. In small gatherings, the former governor sometimes responds to questions instead of people.
In small town Tama, in an area of the state shedding manufacturing jobs, an elderly woman said she worried about all the jobs heading overseas. Romney cheerfully offered that American productivity is rising and that he's a fighter for jobs.
Beneath that unflappable polish, though, come flashes of humanity, if not outright weirdness.
As when he named Battlefield Earth, by Scientology founder L. Ron Hubbard, as his favorite book. Or in Virginia when, for reasons unclear, he answered a question about nuclear power by noting that Adolf Hitler had pioneered liquefied coal.
Romney is still living down a vignette one of his five sons shared with a reporter about Dad strapping their late Irish setter, Seamus, in a carrier to the car roof for a cross-country drive.
Animal rights activists howled, but Romney made no apologies.
"They're not happy that my dog loves fresh air," Romney said.
People will trust various candidates based on their opinions of them. But the message, the platform, is there on every candidate's website.
Thompson is a Federalist. By default that means Romney's message is more socially conservative.
“So... we all agree that there’s obviously some hilarious and telling point to be made about Romney, based on his enjoyment of “Battlefield Earth,” but none of us can figure out exactly what that point is? I, for one, get suspicious when pundits agree to trash something. What is so threatening to everybody about “Battlefield Earth,” anyway?
Dickerson is honest enough to admit that he hasn’t actually read “Battlefield Earth,” and I strongly suspect that none of these other folks have, either. I, on the other hand, have read the whole thing. In 1983, when I was 15. Yes, it’s badly written, for the most part. But as post-apocalyptic science-fantasy novels go, it’s not the worst one I’ve ever read. (That honor goes to: the 1971 Roger Zelazny novel “Damnation Alley.” Or maybe Michael Crichton’s “Andromeda Strain.”) Romney’s high school English teacher should have turned him on to “On the Beach” or “A Canticle for Leibowitz,” maybe, but if enjoying schlock fiction means you’re crazy, I don’t want to be sane.
What does it mean that Romney likes “Battlefield Earth”? Here’s an answer: IMHO, people who enjoy post-apocalyptic novels have a reactionary and/or utopian streak running through them; they enjoy narratives about the collapse of Western civilization because they’re unhappy with the state of that civilization and would like (or imagine they’d like) to see the slate wiped clean. Once upon a time, James Fenimore Cooper novels thrilled educated Frenchmen for the same reason. Romney’s brand of idealism may be jejune, but he’s no more crazy than are the readers of other 1982 post-apocalyptic novels: “God’s Grace,” by Bernard Malamud; “The White Plague,” by Frank (”Dune”) Herbert; or the first installment of Alan Moore’s “V for Vendetta” comic book series. If this sort of thing holds absolutely no appeal for Tucker Carlson and Michael Dirda, perhaps it’s because they’re (worryingly) satisfied with the current state of affairs?
If Romney had named the Book of Revelations as his favorite apocalyptic fiction, then there might be reason to worry. But “Battlefield Earth” has a happy ending: Rugged, never-say-die humans from around the planet join forces, educate themselves, work hard, and finally restore democracy on Earth, and in the rest of the universe. That’s not so worrisome, is it? So cut the guy some slack about his taste in literature. Let’s get back to bashing him about his flip-flopping on abortion, shall we?”
http://www.boston.com/news/globe/ideas/brainiac/2007/05/romney_and_batt.html
Meh, I never read it or heard about it so I will pass on slamming him for it.
Romney is clearly the best of the moderate wing candidates. The conservative wing needs a candidate, however.
I left Hunter, Brownback, Tancredo, and Paul out.
In my opinion they aren't well-rounded enough candidates. Each is very strong on one or two issues but they seem to draw their strength from those issues rather than having inherent strength from which to apply to the issues. It might be the reason they aren't polling well...in addition to MSM bias.
I guess my question is, if the 'conservative' base of the Republican party is so large, why is Guiliani leading all the national polls? and why does McCain do better than Hunter, Tancredo, etc.? If MSM bias is blamed, it doesn't matter, that's a given quantity candidates have to deal with and can't be magically eliminated.
“The man must have no pores,” marveled one sodden journalist.
“He can’t be human.”
Dangit, don’t get the Paulistinaians started on the “space alien” conspiracy theories.
In a nutshell: Too many conservatives are allowing the enemedia to annoit the front runner because, like the polls showing Kerry could beat Bush in January 2004, polls show Rudy could beat Hillary.
Too many are also waiting for Fred Thompson to ride to the rescue. I'm just not convinced he would be any better than Romney. Slightly more conservative on the issues, probably, but a lot less willing to work his tail off from what I've seen so far.
You can leave Paul out, because he's a moonbat. Ditto for Brownback, because he's a weasel. I see a natural alliance between Tancredo and Hunter, because of their solid positions on a wide range of issues. Tancredo, right now, is on a mini-wave due to the immigration issue. He's really no better than Hunter here, who has actually got some of the fence built.
Nah...
Bwahahahaha....
I Like it!
A) I love your tagline
B) I’m jealous I didn’t think of it first.
“He’s an arrogant Constitution hating freak.”
You got that from a movie? What is next from your bag of wisdom pearls, 60 foot ampibious reptile attacks Tokyo?
“America to be attack by space alien on “Independence day?”
Maybe a man dresses like a Bat and fights crime vigilante style?
It is more than a movie Grunthor it is a lesson about our Nation!
These are things that Romney holds dear seem more than you!
Your are uneducated in the state of a Union and your phony Ron Paul group
“These are things that Romney holds dear seem more than you!
Your are uneducated in the state of a Union and your phony Ron Paul group”
Once again please, this time in english?
Thanks for your objective impressions.
I like what I am hearing from Duncan Hunter, Fred Thompson, and Mitt Romney.
But I’m puzzled why Hunter seems so invisible.
I am concerned that Thompson doesn’t show more energy or urgency for the task ahead.
And I am concerned that so many are bent on destroying Romney with over-the-top exagerations about flip-flopping that he will be destoyed as a candidate, and we will not have the opportunity of using his skills to help solve America’s financial problems. On another of your points, if one looks at Romney’s background other than as a business man, I think one can see some support for a view of constitutional originalism. That is, Mormons belive that the original Constitution was inspired by God.
Romney admires Duncan Hunter. After the first GOP debate when asked about the other candidates he only mentioned Hunter and praised him. He said he learned from him.
Which is why, as a conservative, Romney is my favorite of the "moderate-wing" candidates. I think he would handle her royal highness far better in a debate than Rudi, who would be pilloried as a bully.
Romney seems to have the ability like the joke about a great diplomat-- he'll tell her to go to hell but have her looking forward to the trip.
He has addressed it quite extensively as one of the few candidates who actually understands how to manage a budget. Here is the short and sweet version.
Gov. Romney said he would increase the military budget, from 3.6 percent of our GNP to 4 percent. He said he would increase troop levels from 1.5 to 1.6 million people, an increase of 100,000, this is where his budget savings would go.
In MASS he raised tons of benefits for the National Guard. His focus on helpinghte military is consistent with his term as Governor.
Ron Paul sucks, what’s your point?
I can’t stand Rockefeller. If that were Romney’s vision, I wouldn’t be supporting him.
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