And there goes Electability by N. Richard Greenfield
THE GOP DEBATES ARE MORE AKIN TO MUD WRESTLING THAN TO SERIOUS DISCOURSE. HERE IS RICHARD GREENFIELD’S TAKE SO FAR….THE GOP WILL BE SINGING “GLOOMY DAYS ARE HERE AGAIN”….RSK
N. Richard Greenfield owns Ledger Publications in Hartford, Connecticut, which publishes weekly and monthly newspapers in Connecticut and Massachusetts. He has been active in politics for many years and has worked on a number of campaigns around the country.
It was at the CPAC conference a few weeks ago that former governor Mitt Romney threw out the comment that his time in office in Massachusetts was “severely conservative.”(1) Richard Viguerie(2), the lion of the conservative right, immediately countered that no serious observer of the governor’s tenure ever used the word conservative in describing it.
No doubt, Republicans who gain high office in very liberal states like Massachusetts have a great deal of difficulty governing, but Governors Kasich in Ohio and Walker in Wisconsin(3) are rising to the task as they enunciate core principles and work hard to move their states in the right direction. Governor Romney showed no such initiative. He got along with the legislature, did deals and ended up with a record that boasted Romneycare(4) as its crowning achievement.
If Governor Romney’s campaign for the presidency can’t gain traction from his record as governor, the positions he took while running for various other offices don’t serve him well either. As John Kerry(5) found out during his failed run for higher office. changing positions on major issues, while not a problem in Massachusetts, doesn’t go over well elsewhere. Governor Romney is foundering on the same truth and here is how former Bush speechwriter, Michael Gerson(6), describes his dilemma. “Romney’s main political vulnerability is a serious one. Running for Massachusetts’s governor in 2002, he was a pro-choice, economically centrist, culturally liberal, business-oriented Republican. Running for president in 2008, he was a thoroughly pro-life, orthodox supply-side, culturally conservative, Fox News Republican. Romney’s shape-shifting 2008 campaign only reinforced the impression of a consultant-driven candidate.”