Romney v. Palin: When business gets personal

As I type this, I am watching former Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee on “The Wendy Williams Show” talking about his impending talk show on Fox and am reminded, not for the first time, that quite a few presidential candidates function as if they never expected or even wanted to be president in the first place. They ran to gain a media platform. But few have done so as brazenly as Huckabee, who typically ended his homespun stump homilies with pedestrian pluckings of his bass guitar.

Huckabee’s ultimate role in the 2008 race was to assist in the splintering of evangelicals away from Mitt Romney, who worked as hard as any candidate in the modern era to assure his nomination through securing the support of Republican Party insiders. Nothing wrong with Romney — he ran a textbook, if Stepford Candidate, campaign, and if it hadn’t been for an almost suspicious looking groundswell against him in the Miami-Dade area, Mitt may have won Florida and go on to win the Republican nomination. Not that he would have done anything more than McCain, but he could’ve won. If only.

If only Republican primary voters could bring themselves, in certain areas, to vote for a Mormon candidate. If only Romney had anything resembling the “common touch.” Those who remember his visit to Jacksonville for an MLK Day parade, where he attempted to lead a crowd of people in a chant of “Who Let the Dogs Out? Who? Who?”, know too well that Romney’s presentation was that of a genuine throwback, as unabashedly patrician and “elitist” as George H.W. Bush in 1980. He broke a cardinal rule of retail politics: never let the people believe you are superior to them. Americans don’t vote for role models anymore. They vote for people with whom they identify.

Which is where Sarah Palin comes in. From the moment she was picked for Veep by the McCain campaign, Palin provoked extreme responses — love, hate, but never indifference. Not so much for her ideology or her policy stands, which didn’t go much deeper than “Drill Baby Drill,” then or now; but for her persona, her shtick, her gimmick. Conservative women seemed to identify with her. Conservative men, in a few cases, saw her as the ultimate; a stateside Thatcher with sex appeal. And those on the left? They have vilified her from the moment she took the national stage. And they won’t stop until she’s gone.

If there were a way to fuse Romney’s competence with Sarah Palin’s shtick, the Republicans would have the ultimate candidate — a game changer, like Candidate Obama was for the Dems (Never mind that President Obama, for the Dems, has been a game loser — that is a subject for another time). As it is though, both Romney and Palin want the nomination, and their advisers and confidantes function as if the White House can’t be won without one of the candidates obliterating the other.

When Romney functionaries were quoted in TIME recently savaging Palin, saying “she’s not a serious human being” and “if she’s standing up there in a debate and the answers are more than fifteen seconds long, she’s in trouble,” they revealed something fundamental about what the Romney operation will do to defeat Palin. They clearly have no issue with taking memes popularized on the left by the late night talk show troupe and the Keith Olbermanns of the world and using them many months before the first primary votes will be cast. Nothing wrong with that, necessarily. This in all likelihood will be Mitt Romney’s last campaign, and so things will be said (especially by operatives) that can’t be taken back. Things that will be used against Palin should she become the 2012 Republican nominee.

And she likely will. Mitt Romney is the Willy Loman of Republican Presidential politics. Liked, but not well liked, he is the perpetual salesman, with artfully darkened hair, a ready smile, and shrewd eyes, forever looking to close the deal. But in terms of the Republican nomination, even if Mitt plays the perfect game with the insiders yet again, he won’t do any better than he did against the flaccid field in 2008. The grassroots doesn’t like Mitt and isn’t going to learn to like him. And these, fortunately for Palin, who is as much a totem as she is a candidate, are grassroots times.

So even if she isn’t a “serious human being”, the fact remains that people identify with her in ways they can’t with Romney. Incapable of reinventing himself, Romney thus is consigned to a fate very similar to the one he suffered in 2008.

Romney is NOT competent, except to help Democrats, over and over.

MITT ROMNEY - THE PROVEN BAD GOVERNOR

"As U.S. real output grew 13 percent between 2002 and 2006, Massachusetts trailed at 9 percent.
* Manufacturing employment fell 7 percent nationwide those years, but sank 14 percent under Romney, placing Massachusetts 48th among the states.
* Between fall 2003 and autumn 2006, U.S. job growth averaged 5.4 percent, nearly three times Massachusetts' anemic 1.9 percent pace.
* While 8 million Americans over age 16 found work between 2002 and 2006, the number of employed Massachusetts residents actually declined by 8,500 during those years.
"Massachusetts was the only state to have failed to post any gain in its pool of employed residents," professors Sum and McLaughlin concluded.
In an April 2003 meeting with the Massachusetts congressional delegation in Washington, Romney failed to endorse President Bush's $726 billion tax-cut proposal."
[Cato Institute annual Fiscal Policy Report Card - America's Governors, 2004.]

“The Massachusetts Republican Party died last Tuesday.
The cause of death: failed leadership.
The party is survived by a few leftover legislators
and a handful of county officials and grassroots activists
who have been ignored for years.
Services will be public and a mass exodus of taxpayers will follow.
In lieu of flowers, send messages to Republican voters
warning them about a certain presidential candidate named Romney.”
- Boston Herald, 11/12/2006

"In 2006, while Romney was chairman of the National Republican
Governors Association - a group dedicated to electing more
Republican governors - his own hand-picked Republican successor
as governor lost badly to the Democrat, despite the fact that Republicans
have held the governorship in Massachusetts since 1990. Romney largely
ignored the Massachusetts elections and spent most of the time
during the campaign out of state building his presidential campaign.
He came back and publicly campaigned for the Republican candidate
the day before the general election!
“Locally, this is a rebuke to Mitt Romney and checking out within six months
after being elected and having accomplished almost nothing,”
[Jim] Rappaport [former chairman of the state Republican Party]."
- Boston Globe, 11/8/2006

"Governor Mitt Romney, who touts his conservative credentials to out-of-state Republicans,
has passed over GOP lawyers for three-quarters of the 36 judicial vacancies he has faced,
instead tapping registered Democrats or independents -- including two gay lawyers who
have supported expanded same-sex rights, a Globe review of the nominations has found.
Of the 36 people Romney named to be judges or clerk magistrates, 23 are either registered Democrats
or unenrolled voters who have made multiple contributions to Democratic politicians
or who voted in Democratic primaries, state and local records show.
In all, he has nominated nine registered Republicans, 13 unenrolled voters,
and 14 registered Democrats."
- Boston Globe 7/25/2005

Romney Rewards one of the State's Leading Anti-Marriage Attorneys by Making him a Judge
Romney told the U.S. Senate on June 22, 2004, that the "real threat to the States is not the
constitutional amendment process, in which the states participate,
but activist judges who disregard the law and redefine marriage . . ."
Romney sounds tough but yet he had no qualms advancing the legal career of one
of the leading anti-marriage attorneys. He nominated Stephen Abany to a District Court.
Abany has been a key player in the Massachusetts Lesbian and Gay Bar Association which,
in its own words, is "dedicated to ensuring that the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court decision
on marriage equality is upheld, and that any anti-gay amendment or legislation is defeated."
- U.S. Senate testimony by Gov. Mitt Romney, 6/22/2004 P>

"Romney announces he won't fill judicial vacancies before term ends
Despite his rhetoric about judicial activism, Romney announced that
he won't fill all the remaining vacancies during his term - but instead
leave them for his liberal Democrat successor!
Governor Mitt Romney pledged yesterday not to make a flurry of lame-duck
judicial appointments in the final days of his administration . . . David Yas,
editor of Lawyers Weekly, said Romney is "bucking tradition" by resisting the urge to
fill all remaining judgeships. "It is a tradition for governors to use that power to appoint judges
aggressively in the waning moments of their administration," Yas said.
He added that Romney has been criticized for failing to make judicial appointments.
"The legal community has consistently criticized him for not filling open seats quickly enough
and being a little too painstaking in the process and being dismissive of the input of the
Judicial Nominating Commission," Yas said.
- Boston Globe 11/2/2006

Good analysis of Romney and his upcoming campaign against Palin. If Romney clings to his sneering disrespect for Sarah Palin and insists on stupidly duplicating Democrat smears against her, he will fail early. I expect him to do both.

Mitt Romney will be seen by motivated Republican primary voters for what he is: a political 'insider' who spits at anyone who isn't Ivy League-educated, lives in a major American city and admires some Democrat policies - but thinks he can implement them better and cheaper. He's a businessman y'know. This will fall flat with Republicans sick of the 'old boy' BS that helps Democrats and screws the average worker.

If Sarah Palin is a totem, as the article's author claims, she represents the average, middle class American. You know, the people who do the work and pay the taxes in this country. Sarah Palin is genuine and the bitter disgust some of these 'elitist' Republicans have for her is palpable and matched only by the anger and resentment she gets from the left, who've always hated what they consider the bourgeoisie.

That noted, I believe that, if she chooses to run for the 2012 GOP presidential nomination, Sarah Palin will triumph over her foes on the left and the right. I know that she'll have my vote.

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