By H.N. Burdett
In terms of candidates in the race for the 2012 presidential nomination, Republicans now find themselves in a spot not unlike the one they occupied four years ago: firmly wedged between a rock and a hard place.
Back in 2007, the conservative faithful were less than delighted with the front-runner, Rudy Guiliani. Yes, it was impressive that a Republican had got himself elected mayor of New York, an urban bastion of liberalism. And, yes, he had national recognition as a tough guy committed to the fight against terrorism in the wake of 9/11. But deeper right-wing thinkers wondered how much he had to bend and bow to progressivism to win the office. While he might know plenty about winning over liberal-leaning undecided voters, how would this transfer into national governance?
As it turned out, the Guiliani boom fizzled into ballot box bust once the state primary elections began. At that time, Arizona Senator John McCain was entrenched at around 15 percent in the polls. He was also having problems patching and re-wiring his faltering campaign. He fired some of his campaign staff and others were on their cell phones trying to learn what other campaigns might have a spot for them.
It is understatement to recall that McCain was hardly the darling of either the GOP hierarchy or its rank-and-file. Nor is it exaggeration to suggest that no elected official at that time raised the hackles of his party brethren more than he did.
His positions that ran against the grain of the party included support for gun control, liberalizing immigration policy and, most particularly, co-sponsoring campaign finance reform that would limit corporate contributions, thereby plugging the mother's milk of GOP candidates. Compounding his plight, McCain was viewed as a mite too friendly with the Senate's liberal poster twins Ted Kennedy and Hillary Rodham Clinton. Uttering McCain's name was, to put it mildly, enough to make avowed conservatives gag.
Then the Republican primaries got underway and a funny thing happened on the way to the Republican National Convention. McCain was winning. He won in Maine, which had been considered low-hanging fruit for either Guilani, an easterner, or Mitt Romney, a New Englander. McCain won in South Carolina, defeating Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee and Tennesse Senator Fred Thompson, though it was suspected that the latter two canceled out one another and opened the path for a McCain victory. And McCain won in Florida over Guiliani, the last hurrah for the New York mayor who turned around and endorsed the Arizona maverick.
What McCain had going for him was name recognition, by way of a compelling narrative as an American prisoner during the Vietnam war. He was repeatedly beaten when he refused his captors' offers to be released from the notorious Hanoi Hilton, recognizing that it would be used to both encourage United States anti-war sentiment and suggest that the son of a prominent U.S. admiral was treated in a manner different from other prisoners.
Moreover, McCain was a prominent supporter of the invasion of Iraq and Afghanistan, whose endorsement was seen as validation of the misguided foreign policy of the Bush administration. The drumbeat of war overpowered all other objections to his candidacy.
What remained of the anybody-but-McCain mantra among GOP conservatives was silenced by his victories in the Pine Tree, Palmetto and Sunshine states. If McCain's detractors had not been metamorphosed into cheerleaders, their objections at least receded at the unlikely prospect of a southwest senator showing clout at the polls both in the northeast and, even more significantly, below the Mason-Dixon Line, where the southern strategy had been a winning formula for the GOP since it was shaped nearly 40 years earlier by Richard Nixon and Strom Thurmond.
Today an anybody-but-Romney mentality persists among the dominant conservative element of the Republican party. Though Mitt Romney polls consistently high in the field of eight contenders for the GOP nomination, his numbers are more reflective of the 25 percent of Republicans who remain moderate. For this vanishing breed, the only alternative can hardly be mistaken for viable: former Utah Governor Jon Huntsman, who most recently plunged to a measly 1 percent in the polls and can in no way be considered a serious obstacle to Romney's race for the nomination.
Though Texas Governor Rick Perry seems to be the most logical choice of conservative Republicans, there's little evidence of pushing and shoving to board his sputtering bandwagon. They are not so much bothered by the fact that Perry was once a Democrat, or even that he headed the 2000 Texas campaign of Democratic presidential nominee Al Gore. Fundamentalists and born-agains, who still carry substantial weight in the Republican party, are known to embrace rather than revile converts.
Besides, Perry has offered the startling revelation that the last Democratic presidential contender for whom he voted was Jimmy Carter. It was an admission that he failed to vote for Gore, a candidate whose statewide campaign he led. In the Lone Star state, it is well known that there is no love lost between Perry and his predecessor as governor, George W. Bush. So it is indeed possible that Perry just did not vote for either Bush 43 or Gore in the controversial 2000 election.
Perry's feud with Bush can both hurt and help him. Revisionist history may credit Bush's preemptive war policy with initiating the democratization of the Arab world, should that actually happen. At the same time, Bush's borrow and spend policy to pay for the war and his requesting and receiving higher and higher debt limits are precursors to today's global economic woes.
Furthermore, Perry has been less than a rousing success in the series of Republican campaign debates, to say the least. He compounds the fact that he is rhetorically challenged by announcing that he will be more selective in the future about the debates in which he will participate. By so doing, he could better use the time required to prepare for debates by capitalizing on his flesh-pressing forte. While this may be a wise move by a candidate who thrives on shaking hands, slapping backs and throwing red meat to a like-minded crowd, it also begs the question that if he is unable to tangle with the likes of Mitt Romney, how would he fare against Barack Obama? A chicken wearing a 10-gallon hat and genuine leather boots is less than an inspiring vision.
Meanwhile, conservative Republicans would still prefer not to be left with a choice between Romney, whose philosophical credentials they are unlikely to ever approve, and Perry, who gets slam-dunked routinely by Republican strategists all the way up to W.'s "brain," Karl Rove.
Even when the Texas governor leaves the debate podium, he is known to put his foot in do-do up to his boot tops. After Herman Cain's 9-9-9 abomination brought him back from the campaign exit door and atop the polls alongside Romney, Perry's attempt to roll out his own flat-tax proposal was pushed out of the headlines by his dunderheaded resurrection of the phony baloney about where Barack Obama, three years into his presidency, was born. Thinking Republicans, conservative and moderate, groaned in unison.
Conservative minions had earlier tried unsuccessfully to push New Jersey Governor Chris Christie into the race for their party's presidential nomination. Spurned there, they turned to Cain, who was already in the race. He is personable, a businessman and a motivational speaker adept at both kowtowing to deep-pocketed corporate interests and chiding African Americans for remaining on the "plantation" of the Democratic party. But Cain's staying power remains cloaked in genuine doubt.
There are now rumblings that the next GOP flavor-of-the-month will be Newt Gingrich. While Romney cannot seem to get traction beyond the one-quarter of his own party's rank-and-file, Gingrich has to dig out of a much deeper hole. He has been mired as a single-digit wonder. But Cain's unlikely skyrocketing gives hope to the former Speaker of the House of Representatives.
Yet, despite his loyalty to the memory of Ronald Reagan, whose name he invokes at each and every opportunity while conveniently bypassing the two Bushes; despite his authorship of the Reagan era Contract with America; despite his probable authorship of the Reagan re-election slogan about Americans being better off than they were four years earlier, Newt Gingrich is yesterday's news.
Now that might not be all that bad for a party that still worships Reagan, conveniently forgetting that the Great Communicator's supply-side "voodoo" economics jump-started our current economic catastrophe. But the atmosphere is very different from what it was when Reagan was at the helm.
From the diminishing Tea Party to the emerging Occupy Wall Street movement, the vox populi screams, "We're mad as hell and we're not taking it any longer!" By the grace of a Constitution mandating a nation ruled by law, if there is a revolution it is likely to be bloodless.
At another time, in another place, Gingrich, a former high-profile member of the ruling elite, would be less likely to be seeking to lead his country than he would be frog-marching to the guillotine.
###
Monday, October 31, 2011
Monday, October 17, 2011
THE REPUBLICANS' CAIN MUTINY
by H. N. Burdett
"For every problem, there is a solution that is simple, neat and wrong." H. L. Mencken
When your competitor or opponent in business or across the chess board or tennis net is self-destructing, the wisest counsel is to not get in the way. The same logic applies to Republican presidential candidate Herman Cain's too dangerous to be considered goofy 9-9-9 tax plan.
Democrats do not have to waste their time or breath on denouncing the former Godfather Pizza CEO's astoundingly regressive notion of tax reform. Other GOP presidential hopefuls are doing the job quite well, thank you very much.
First in line was Jon Huntsman. In the recent debate on economic policy between the eight aspirants for the GOP nomination, the former Utah governor and U.S. Ambassador to China said he thought 9-9-9 was something that appears on a pizza box. Huntsman's evaluation gets my vote for the best intentionally humorous line of the debate cycle (which is short-changing the viewing audience in that respect) to be uttered thus far.
Michele Bachmann, no stranger to looking at the world upside down, noted that from her vantage point Cain's tax proposal translates into the satanic 6-6-6. Everyone understands that Mrs. Bachmann and Texas Governor Rick Perry have been lured into the race for the White House by a Higher Authority. But who knew that personable Cain, the self-made business executive, motivational speaker, tea party favorite and current darling of rank-and-file Republicans who shot up in the polls with rocket thrust, was sent to us by the nether world?
Credited with elevating Cain from an expected early primary campaign dropout into an overnight serious contender, his brainstorm calls for what on the surface seems to be simplicity itself: a 9 percent tax rate on personal income, 9 percent on businesses and a 9 percent federal sales tax.
Political back and forth aside, Bruce Bartlett, former U.S. Treasury official and economic adviser to Republican Presidents Ronald Reagan and George H. W. Bush as well as Texas congressman and current presidential nomination candidate Ron Paul and former New York Rep. Jack Kemp, has examined the 9-9-9 travesty more closely. And he has found it to be a nightmare.
"At a minimum, the Cain plan is a distribution monstrosity," Bartlett posited. "The poor would pay more, while the rich would have their taxes cut, with no guarantee that growth will increase and good reason to believe that the budget deficit will increase. Even allowing for the poorly thought through promises routinely made on the campaign trail, Mr. Cain's tax plan stands out as exceptionally ill-conceived."
As an example, the 9 percent rate would apply to personal gross income with deductions only for charitable donations, and no mention of personal exemptions. Thus, those who now pay no federal income taxes - 47 percent of all taxpayers - would now pay 9 percent of their total income. The earned income credit would be eliminated, offsetting both their income tax liability and their payroll payment.
Crafted by a Cleveland accountant rather than egghead economists, Cain's plan would have everyone pay a 9 percent sales tax on all purchases - food, rent, health care, automobiles, even pizzas. No exemptions. The result would increase the cost of living by 9 percent, Bartlett reminds us.
The appeal of the 9-9-9 formula is that at first blush it seems so eminently fair: everyone pays the same rate. But just as simplistic campaign rhetoric has been in the past and will be in the future, the devil - and I categorically refute the innuendo that the affable Mr. Cain was coaxed into this race by the prince of darkness - is in the details.
When the smoke has cleared, and the flat-tax scuttled or at very least revised, there is something quite wonderful about the prospect, unlikely as it may be, of two African Americans squaring off next November for the highest office in the land - 144 years after the passage of the 14th Amendment to the United States Constitution that recognized persons of color as human beings rather than property. Only a dyed-in-the-wool bigot could fail to appreciate the delicious irony.
Such a face-off could well be the tipping point that will lead Americans to once and for all judge fellow citizens as individuals rather than by the color of their skin. The ghosts of Abraham Lincoln and Martin Luther King, Jr. would be delighted.
# # #
"For every problem, there is a solution that is simple, neat and wrong." H. L. Mencken
When your competitor or opponent in business or across the chess board or tennis net is self-destructing, the wisest counsel is to not get in the way. The same logic applies to Republican presidential candidate Herman Cain's too dangerous to be considered goofy 9-9-9 tax plan.
Democrats do not have to waste their time or breath on denouncing the former Godfather Pizza CEO's astoundingly regressive notion of tax reform. Other GOP presidential hopefuls are doing the job quite well, thank you very much.
First in line was Jon Huntsman. In the recent debate on economic policy between the eight aspirants for the GOP nomination, the former Utah governor and U.S. Ambassador to China said he thought 9-9-9 was something that appears on a pizza box. Huntsman's evaluation gets my vote for the best intentionally humorous line of the debate cycle (which is short-changing the viewing audience in that respect) to be uttered thus far.
Michele Bachmann, no stranger to looking at the world upside down, noted that from her vantage point Cain's tax proposal translates into the satanic 6-6-6. Everyone understands that Mrs. Bachmann and Texas Governor Rick Perry have been lured into the race for the White House by a Higher Authority. But who knew that personable Cain, the self-made business executive, motivational speaker, tea party favorite and current darling of rank-and-file Republicans who shot up in the polls with rocket thrust, was sent to us by the nether world?
Credited with elevating Cain from an expected early primary campaign dropout into an overnight serious contender, his brainstorm calls for what on the surface seems to be simplicity itself: a 9 percent tax rate on personal income, 9 percent on businesses and a 9 percent federal sales tax.
Political back and forth aside, Bruce Bartlett, former U.S. Treasury official and economic adviser to Republican Presidents Ronald Reagan and George H. W. Bush as well as Texas congressman and current presidential nomination candidate Ron Paul and former New York Rep. Jack Kemp, has examined the 9-9-9 travesty more closely. And he has found it to be a nightmare.
"At a minimum, the Cain plan is a distribution monstrosity," Bartlett posited. "The poor would pay more, while the rich would have their taxes cut, with no guarantee that growth will increase and good reason to believe that the budget deficit will increase. Even allowing for the poorly thought through promises routinely made on the campaign trail, Mr. Cain's tax plan stands out as exceptionally ill-conceived."
As an example, the 9 percent rate would apply to personal gross income with deductions only for charitable donations, and no mention of personal exemptions. Thus, those who now pay no federal income taxes - 47 percent of all taxpayers - would now pay 9 percent of their total income. The earned income credit would be eliminated, offsetting both their income tax liability and their payroll payment.
Crafted by a Cleveland accountant rather than egghead economists, Cain's plan would have everyone pay a 9 percent sales tax on all purchases - food, rent, health care, automobiles, even pizzas. No exemptions. The result would increase the cost of living by 9 percent, Bartlett reminds us.
The appeal of the 9-9-9 formula is that at first blush it seems so eminently fair: everyone pays the same rate. But just as simplistic campaign rhetoric has been in the past and will be in the future, the devil - and I categorically refute the innuendo that the affable Mr. Cain was coaxed into this race by the prince of darkness - is in the details.
When the smoke has cleared, and the flat-tax scuttled or at very least revised, there is something quite wonderful about the prospect, unlikely as it may be, of two African Americans squaring off next November for the highest office in the land - 144 years after the passage of the 14th Amendment to the United States Constitution that recognized persons of color as human beings rather than property. Only a dyed-in-the-wool bigot could fail to appreciate the delicious irony.
Such a face-off could well be the tipping point that will lead Americans to once and for all judge fellow citizens as individuals rather than by the color of their skin. The ghosts of Abraham Lincoln and Martin Luther King, Jr. would be delighted.
# # #
Friday, October 14, 2011
ROMNEY'S AUTHENTICITY DEFICIT
By H. N. Burdett
In a presidential campaign, a month is a lifetime, a year an era. With little less than 13 months remaining before the 2012 election, we now know perhaps more than anyone ever wanted to know about the Republican candidates. But which one will be anointed is still anything but a sure thing.
First it was Bachman. Then it was Romney. Then it was Perry. Then it was Romney again. Now it is Herman Cain. Tomorrow, who knows? Paul? Santorum? Huntsman? Gingrich? Republican voters have an apparent equal opportunity policy when it comes to selecting their nominee in this flavor-of-the-moment farcical sitcom that the party's presidential debates have become.
The one constant is Mitt Romney. The good news for him is that he is solidly entrenched. Well, sort of. He is either at the very top or near the very top of the post-debate polling. The not-so-good news is that he has been unable to rise above 23% in these ratings.
Former Godfather pizza CEO Herman Cain, until recently mired in a single-digit rut and expected to be headed for the nearest exit, is now a full five points in front of second-place Romney.
But during this Cinderella phase of the primary season, the smart money is on the slipper not fitting the purveyor of the 9-9-9 tax policy. It is a reasonable assumption considering that Cain frankly admits he knows nothing of the nitty-gritty, the small print beneath the tax plan that has elevated him into the magnet of the moment for the GOP tried-and-true. And one can hardly wait to learn the pizza guy's thoughts on foreign policy.
The volatile trajectory of the Republican primary at this juncture still favors Romney. With the perpetual yo-yoing of his opponents, consistent support from nearly one quarter of his party's voters is a position to be envied rather than scorned. It is sufficient to bring into his camp a few of the hesitant high rollers who have been persuaded that an eleventh hour entry of a perhaps more acceptable alternative such as former Florida Governor Jeb Bush or current Mississippi Governor Haley Barbour is about as likely as a snowball fight in Key West. To say nothing of Romney's winning the coveted endorsements of such astute practitioners of the political arts as New Jersey Governor Chris Christie, himself fresh from spurning fervent invitations to the Big Dance, and Mississippi Senator Thad Cochran. (Favorite sons of the Magnolia State keep popping up in this narrative with frightening regulatory.)
But really now, it is not over until it is over. And Texas Governor Rick Perry's sudden long and loud energy policy pitch is crudely crafted to bar the door and prevent his arsenal of oil industry cash cows from stampeding off and into Mitt's corral.
More evidence of precarious fissures in the solid ground under the boots of the pride of the Lone Star state became even more obvious when his wife was moved to deliver her soul-stirring confession that hubby wanted no part of going to Washington until she got a personal message from You-Know-Who that the presidency was his destiny.
The rift between the Bushes and the Perrys has not prevented the latter from pilfering a few pages from the former's well-worn playbook. When the Word comes from Upstairs, one simply doesn't mess with Texas - not with all those bible thumpers spread throughout the South and beyond. So far not much cowboy shows under the Perry 10-gallon hat, but in this wacky campaign season don't be too hasty to kick in with long odds that he's strictly yesterday's news.
Indeed the smart money is sharply divided in what may well boil down to an apocalyptic showdown for the heart and soul of the Republican party. There are still untold numbers of Republicans preferring to identify with their only two standard-bearers enshrined on Mt. Rushmore, Abraham Lincoln and Theodore Roosevelt, neither of whom might find himself entirely comfortable in today's incarnation of the GOP. There are many more Republicans who view Romney as a pseudo-conservative.
Romney earned the distrust of the right as the pro-gun control, pro-gay marriage, pro-choice governor of the People's Republic of Massachusetts. Intractable right-wingers can be excused for their skepticism regarding Romney having seen so much light that he has been moved to reverse all three of these positions and for good measure even backtracked a mite on his 'socialized medicine' state health plan.
Romney now finds himself in a position not unlike that occupied by the once moderate George H. W. Bush in 1980 after he was clobbered by Ronald Reagan in the GOP primary. To mollify remnants of Republican centrism, Reagan chose the elder Bush to be his vice president. Eight years later, Bush 41, previously a dedicated advocate of government-supported family planning and opponent of "voodoo economics," as he labeled Reagan's supply side agenda, rolled over and embraced conservative philosophy in a manner that would have embarrassed the fiercest of grizzlies.
But during the four years of his own presidency, Bush the Elder first taunted the electorate and the press to "read my lips: no new taxes," and later raised taxes. Furthermore, after soaring in popularity with his Desert Storm operation to liberate Kuwait from the Iraqi onslaught, he pulled up short of the gates of Baghdad allowing Saddam Hussein to continue his madness. Consequently, H. W. justified his conservative doubters and for him it was four years and out.
Presidential candidates are all about convincing voters that they will transform their stump rhetoric into Oval Office action. To paraphrase that sage for the ages, George Burns, authenticity is the key and a candidate who can fake that has it made.
Therein lies the rub for Citizen Romney. His most challenging task is to mesmerize Republican voters into believing that when they peel back his layers of liberalism - his previous stands on gun control, gay marriage, abortion and state-sponsored health care - at the core he actually is one of them.
It is not an easy sell. Maybe right-wingers could give Romney a Mulligan for going off course on an issue or two, reasoning that a couple of compromises were a fair trade-off for getting himself elected governor of a hardcore blue state. But opposition to an entire package of Republican anathema begged the question of whether he, as Bush 41 did earlier, would at some point during his presidency revert to his old lefty ways.
Romney is doing his doggonedest to show that his chameleon tactics are over and done with, that he will toe the line and do their bidding. He is at very least a far different candidate today than he was when he sought his party's nomination four years ago.
Maeve Reston of the Tribune Newspapers recently caught up with the erstwhile Bay State governor in New Hampshire, where he has a commanding lead in state polls, 38% to 20%, over Herman Cain. Reston recalled that in 2007, Romney was not only defensive about his switches on all of those aforementioned conservative issues but that he had "irritated voters by spending lavishly on television commercials long before anyone cast ballots" and that "some dismissed him as scripted and robotic."
By contrast, the reporter described him as "loose and confident" and "rather than rush out the door after events, he now often mingles with voters until just a few stragglers remain." Reston concluded that Romney is running a more financially prudent campaign with a smaller entourage, even boasting of flying budget airlines.
This time around Romney has apparently taken seriously Coco Chanel's observation that "hard times arouse an instinctive desire for authenticity."
The extent and validity of his transformation may be problematic, but his heretofore inability to push his poll numbers northward and the difficulty in determining the true strength of moderate Republicans make it all but impossible to judge how well he might do as his party's candidate to upend President Obama, whose favorability rating has slipped below 45% - a position from which no incumbent president has been re-elected.
In the end, Republicans, who are getting a whiff of the enticing aroma of victory, might just be in a mood to cast their ballots for a feline carcass if it were the party nominee.
###
In a presidential campaign, a month is a lifetime, a year an era. With little less than 13 months remaining before the 2012 election, we now know perhaps more than anyone ever wanted to know about the Republican candidates. But which one will be anointed is still anything but a sure thing.
First it was Bachman. Then it was Romney. Then it was Perry. Then it was Romney again. Now it is Herman Cain. Tomorrow, who knows? Paul? Santorum? Huntsman? Gingrich? Republican voters have an apparent equal opportunity policy when it comes to selecting their nominee in this flavor-of-the-moment farcical sitcom that the party's presidential debates have become.
The one constant is Mitt Romney. The good news for him is that he is solidly entrenched. Well, sort of. He is either at the very top or near the very top of the post-debate polling. The not-so-good news is that he has been unable to rise above 23% in these ratings.
Former Godfather pizza CEO Herman Cain, until recently mired in a single-digit rut and expected to be headed for the nearest exit, is now a full five points in front of second-place Romney.
But during this Cinderella phase of the primary season, the smart money is on the slipper not fitting the purveyor of the 9-9-9 tax policy. It is a reasonable assumption considering that Cain frankly admits he knows nothing of the nitty-gritty, the small print beneath the tax plan that has elevated him into the magnet of the moment for the GOP tried-and-true. And one can hardly wait to learn the pizza guy's thoughts on foreign policy.
The volatile trajectory of the Republican primary at this juncture still favors Romney. With the perpetual yo-yoing of his opponents, consistent support from nearly one quarter of his party's voters is a position to be envied rather than scorned. It is sufficient to bring into his camp a few of the hesitant high rollers who have been persuaded that an eleventh hour entry of a perhaps more acceptable alternative such as former Florida Governor Jeb Bush or current Mississippi Governor Haley Barbour is about as likely as a snowball fight in Key West. To say nothing of Romney's winning the coveted endorsements of such astute practitioners of the political arts as New Jersey Governor Chris Christie, himself fresh from spurning fervent invitations to the Big Dance, and Mississippi Senator Thad Cochran. (Favorite sons of the Magnolia State keep popping up in this narrative with frightening regulatory.)
But really now, it is not over until it is over. And Texas Governor Rick Perry's sudden long and loud energy policy pitch is crudely crafted to bar the door and prevent his arsenal of oil industry cash cows from stampeding off and into Mitt's corral.
More evidence of precarious fissures in the solid ground under the boots of the pride of the Lone Star state became even more obvious when his wife was moved to deliver her soul-stirring confession that hubby wanted no part of going to Washington until she got a personal message from You-Know-Who that the presidency was his destiny.
The rift between the Bushes and the Perrys has not prevented the latter from pilfering a few pages from the former's well-worn playbook. When the Word comes from Upstairs, one simply doesn't mess with Texas - not with all those bible thumpers spread throughout the South and beyond. So far not much cowboy shows under the Perry 10-gallon hat, but in this wacky campaign season don't be too hasty to kick in with long odds that he's strictly yesterday's news.
Indeed the smart money is sharply divided in what may well boil down to an apocalyptic showdown for the heart and soul of the Republican party. There are still untold numbers of Republicans preferring to identify with their only two standard-bearers enshrined on Mt. Rushmore, Abraham Lincoln and Theodore Roosevelt, neither of whom might find himself entirely comfortable in today's incarnation of the GOP. There are many more Republicans who view Romney as a pseudo-conservative.
Romney earned the distrust of the right as the pro-gun control, pro-gay marriage, pro-choice governor of the People's Republic of Massachusetts. Intractable right-wingers can be excused for their skepticism regarding Romney having seen so much light that he has been moved to reverse all three of these positions and for good measure even backtracked a mite on his 'socialized medicine' state health plan.
Romney now finds himself in a position not unlike that occupied by the once moderate George H. W. Bush in 1980 after he was clobbered by Ronald Reagan in the GOP primary. To mollify remnants of Republican centrism, Reagan chose the elder Bush to be his vice president. Eight years later, Bush 41, previously a dedicated advocate of government-supported family planning and opponent of "voodoo economics," as he labeled Reagan's supply side agenda, rolled over and embraced conservative philosophy in a manner that would have embarrassed the fiercest of grizzlies.
But during the four years of his own presidency, Bush the Elder first taunted the electorate and the press to "read my lips: no new taxes," and later raised taxes. Furthermore, after soaring in popularity with his Desert Storm operation to liberate Kuwait from the Iraqi onslaught, he pulled up short of the gates of Baghdad allowing Saddam Hussein to continue his madness. Consequently, H. W. justified his conservative doubters and for him it was four years and out.
Presidential candidates are all about convincing voters that they will transform their stump rhetoric into Oval Office action. To paraphrase that sage for the ages, George Burns, authenticity is the key and a candidate who can fake that has it made.
Therein lies the rub for Citizen Romney. His most challenging task is to mesmerize Republican voters into believing that when they peel back his layers of liberalism - his previous stands on gun control, gay marriage, abortion and state-sponsored health care - at the core he actually is one of them.
It is not an easy sell. Maybe right-wingers could give Romney a Mulligan for going off course on an issue or two, reasoning that a couple of compromises were a fair trade-off for getting himself elected governor of a hardcore blue state. But opposition to an entire package of Republican anathema begged the question of whether he, as Bush 41 did earlier, would at some point during his presidency revert to his old lefty ways.
Romney is doing his doggonedest to show that his chameleon tactics are over and done with, that he will toe the line and do their bidding. He is at very least a far different candidate today than he was when he sought his party's nomination four years ago.
Maeve Reston of the Tribune Newspapers recently caught up with the erstwhile Bay State governor in New Hampshire, where he has a commanding lead in state polls, 38% to 20%, over Herman Cain. Reston recalled that in 2007, Romney was not only defensive about his switches on all of those aforementioned conservative issues but that he had "irritated voters by spending lavishly on television commercials long before anyone cast ballots" and that "some dismissed him as scripted and robotic."
By contrast, the reporter described him as "loose and confident" and "rather than rush out the door after events, he now often mingles with voters until just a few stragglers remain." Reston concluded that Romney is running a more financially prudent campaign with a smaller entourage, even boasting of flying budget airlines.
This time around Romney has apparently taken seriously Coco Chanel's observation that "hard times arouse an instinctive desire for authenticity."
The extent and validity of his transformation may be problematic, but his heretofore inability to push his poll numbers northward and the difficulty in determining the true strength of moderate Republicans make it all but impossible to judge how well he might do as his party's candidate to upend President Obama, whose favorability rating has slipped below 45% - a position from which no incumbent president has been re-elected.
In the end, Republicans, who are getting a whiff of the enticing aroma of victory, might just be in a mood to cast their ballots for a feline carcass if it were the party nominee.
###
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