Sun column ping
No Rx for Mitt Romney’s Bay State headache
By Howie Carr | Sunday, March 6, 2011 | http://www.bostonherald.com | Columnists
Photo
Photo by Jim Cole
The good news for Willard Mitt Romney is that his religion won’t knock him out of the Republican race for president next year.
The bad news is, he’s got an even bigger problem now than the magic underwear jokes — Romneycare.
“That’s the question he has to address,” Sen. Kelly Ayotte (R-N.H) was saying Friday afternoon. “Not just in New Hampshire, but nationwide.”
You know how big a headache this is when even Mitt’s highest-profile supporters are dodging brickbats over the chaos that is Massachusetts health care.
On Friday, Sen. Scott Brown was halfheartedly trying to defend Romneycare, which he supported as a state senator in 2006 — one of the votes he never seemed to mention during his 2010 Senate race. A caller to my radio show was working Brown over, asking him about the 54,000 Massachusetts residents who’ve been fined for the crime of having no dough to buy the health insurance that illegal aliens still get for free. Sen. Brown didn’t get where he is by defending the indefensible.
“Hey,” he told the caller, “I voted against that fining mechanism.”
Mitt keeps trying to explain how it seemed like such a good idea at the time. But Romneycare follows him around like a dark cloud over his head, just the way Chappaquiddick haunted Ted Kennedy’s 1980 presidential campaign. If only those rascally Democrats hadn’t ruined it, Mitt keeps saying, as the crowd uneasily makes its way toward the exits.
No, Mitt says, really, I mean it, seriously, please, come back . . .
As Ralph Waldo Emerson once put it, “The louder he spoke of his honor, the faster we counted our spoons.”
Ramesh Ponnuru of National Review pointed out this week that Mitt’s primary base in 2008 was rich people. Yesterday, before he jetted off to New Hampshire, Mitt was on his real home turf — Palm Beach, Fla., speaking behind closed doors to the Club for Growth at the five-star Breakers Hotel.
Palm Beach — in 2008 Mitt had a fund-raiser at the gated mansion of one of the Koch brothers, just up Barton Avenue from the posh Episcopal church where Donald Trump got married on TV. This election cycle Mitt can have his Palm Beach time at the home his lieutenant governor, Muffy Healey, just bought for $17 million cash.
After addressing the Club for Growth, Mitt spoke last night in Bartlett, N.H., to the Carroll County Republicans. Bartlett is the home of Attitash (Mitt’s ski chalet is in the much tonier Park City, Utah) and Story Land. Carroll County is thick with the kind of Republicans who’ve never warmed up to Mitt, except for that one election for governor of Massachusetts in 2002, when he drew the hapless Shannon O’Brien in the final.
An old putdown of a politician was to say that he reminds every woman of her first husband or worst boyfriend. Now the joke is that Mitt Romney reminds every worker of the boss who fired him. When the New York Post, in a devastating story about Bain Capital, describes Mitt as a “working class zero,” you definitely have a class problem.
Is it too soon for Muffy to throw a fund-raiser for Mitt at her new mansion in Palm Beach?
Article URL: http://www.bostonherald.com/news/columnists/view.bg?articleid=1321340
By the time Howie gets all buffed up for his next contract talk, he will be unmarketable. You can turn off the radio for the first 15 minutes of his show and not miss anything.
I know where Olsen Cadillac is already, Howie.
I wish there were somebody else on in that time slot.
Howie’s show has become really weak and boring over the past 6 months - he spent TWO entire shows (last Thursday and Friday) talking about compensation paid to board members of non-profit Blue Cross Blue Shield.
Boring.
Howie has a face for radio, and it’s even more so, after his latest surgery.
Is Howie Carr getting ready to leave WRKO, very soon?