Contrary to what Garance writes here, notwithstanding the irrelevance of the "real" Mitt Romney, I continue to stand by the view that I'd prefer President Romney to President Rudy Giuliani, President Fred Thompson, President John McCain, President Tom Tancredo, etc. A lot of people seem resistant to the basic logical point that one of the Republicans has to be preferable to the other Republicans. And that person is Mitt Romney.
« Singled Out? | Main | Greed Is Good (In the Appropriate Context) »
Still a Mitt Man
23 Oct 2007 09:46 pm
Comments (46)
Please read your colleague Mr. Sullivan's "Quote for the Day", for today, October 23rd. Do you really think a person willing to "mispeak" in such a cunning and cynical manner would make for an even tolerable President? I'm a proud progressive, but if I had to pick among the Republicans, I think Huckabee or Paul would serve the country better.
Please read your colleague Mr. Sullivan's "Quote for the Day", for today, October 23rd. Do you really think a person willing to "mispeak" in such a cunning and cynical manner would make for an even tolerable President? I'm a proud progressive, but if I had to pick among the Republicans, I think Huckabee or Paul would serve the country better.
I'm down with Tucker on this one, except that I'd probably opt for McCain, even though he's a colossal phony. Look, they're all wingbats.
Romney would go along with torture.
Giuliani would join in the torture.
Seriously, with a Dem Congress, Romney would attempt to find some common ground.
Giuliani would be confrontational from day one, demand total executive powers in war, and shred the Constitution for sport.
He is demented. Romney is merely opportunistic.
I'm also a bit confused as to why you think this is largely a Romney-Giuliani race.
These are the candidates about which I've most recently read interesting magazine profiles. I don't happen to have anything interesting to say about Fred Thompson or John McCain at the moment.
I'm also a bit confused as to why you think this is largely a Romney-Giuliani race.
Also I think Romney would be the best president of the major contenders whereas Giuliani would be the worst. Again, about Thompson and McCain I have only uninteresting views, though if liberal enthusiasm for McCain pops up again I'm ready to go to war.
Agreed. By the same token, I'd prefer a swift kick in the crotch to disembowelment, terminal cancer, a case of herpes, a kidney stone, etc.
A Hillary Clinton Presidency is likely to be more along the lines of an awkward family reunion that culminates in a drunken argument. Not something I'm looking forward to, but still preferable to all of the above.
"though if liberal enthusiasm for McCain pops up again I'm ready to go to war."
Be nice if you could express a definite opinion on Iran while you're expressing definite opinions.
Giuliani is the man. After he's screwed up both America's national security and international standing, we'll be in for a long, long line of Democrats (preferably not of the Clinton dynasty either). Plus, no one will want us here on earth any more so we will have extra incentive for renewed vigor in our exploration of space.
I will admit that I have a perverse longing for a Guiliani Administration--he would probably irreparably tarnish the Republican brand and drive the Socio-Cons out of the party, and after four years of his nonsense we could get a good, progressive Democratic President. Hillary's okay, and would probably be good at getting a big health care or global warming bill passed, but my faith in her stops at the water's edge, if you know what I mean.
Romney would be the most likely to flip to opposing the war when in office. He probably wouldn't flip on social issues, but I'm guessing he'd play some Nixon-type games and end the war right before Election Day, 2012. Still, his stances on social issues are identical to, say, Mike Huckabee's, and Huckabee is good on a lot of issues. He is, as much as I can tell, the only Republican in the past 20 years to make any sense at all on crime and prison issues, and his style, experience and demeanor would be a welcome departure from Bush conservatism. That's who I'd prefer, but McCain would probably be decent as well.
"though if liberal enthusiasm for McCain pops up again I'm ready to go to war."
I think you wrongly confuse McCain's pro-soldier anti-hippie schtick with true neo-con ideological belief.
Do you really think that if McCain had been elected President in 2000 that we'd be in Iraq?
I agree that McCain won't be in any more of a rush than Hillary Clinton would be to end the occupation, but I also trust him to not to compound the situation by making the kind of bravado-driven future errors that a Giuliani, and perhaps a Romney, would make.
The best conceivable outcome we're going to get out a Republican administration is someone who believes in Broder-ism. And that's McCain.
I suspect that if Romney were elected he would try to work with the Democratic congress on passing popular legislation, because he'd have a national constituency and if there's one thing consistent about Romney it's that he'll always claim to be exactly what his current constituents want.
And FWIW, I hope Romney gets the nomination because he'd clearly be the easiest to beat in the general.
Petey,
When all of the GOP candidates spoke in a 24-hour period at the Americans for Prosperity conference a couple weeks ago, Giuliani and Romney were by far the best received. Huckabee got some love as did Ron Paul, but McCain and Thompson were generally regarded as awful by those I talked to. Enlighten me.
Mike Huckabee would be an ok president. No better than mediocre, but better than Romney or Guiliani.
Why leave him out?
Ron Paul is the only Republican on the right side of the Iraq war and Bush's parallel war on the constitution. For those reasons He'd get my Republican vote.
His wacky social views would be largely irrelevant given that they are mostly legislative proposals and would be DOA with a Democratic congress.
Of the others? Huckabee and McCain seem to be the only candidates with any semblance of a conscience or soul. Romney makes my skin crawl.
A lot of people seem resistant to the basic logical point that one of the Republicans has to be preferable to the other Republicans.
Not true; they could be all equally bad (or good, for that matter). I'm not saying none of them is preferable, but it's not logically impossible for that to be the case.
"When all of the GOP candidates spoke in a 24-hour period at the Americans for Prosperity conference a couple weeks ago, Giuliani and Romney were by far the best received. Huckabee got some love as did Ron Paul, but McCain and Thompson were generally regarded as awful by those I talked to. Enlighten me."
If you go to a lefty assemblage these days, you'll find Edwards and Kucinich as the best received, with Obama a distant third and Clinton nowhere to be found.
In other words, the activists are different than the voters.
I think it's overwhelmingly likely that the GOP race comes down to a two man race between a red-state candidate and a blue-state candidate, with the red-state candidate winning.
At the end of the day, I don't see how Giuliani really is able to get much above 35% - 40% of the GOP primary vote, given his deviations on the social issues.*
(* In the Dem race, which I'm more familiar with, you need to actually get above 50% in primaries if you want to accumulate a majority of the delegates. In other words, you can't be a plurality candidate and still win the nomination without a brokered convention. In contrast, the GOP has some winner-take-all contests, which could theoretically allow a plurality candidate like Giuliani to win the nomination without ever getting more than 35% support. I haven't really looked at the detailed delegate allocation numbers to know for sure.)
Hm. Romney or McCain. Romney or McCain. I used to be solidly with Matt on this one: Romney seemed the least bad. Panderfest 2007, though, has reminded me that at least with McCain, you pretty much know what you're getting. With Romney, it's increasingly hard to tell.
Romney or McCain. Romney or McCain...
If you go to a lefty assemblage these days, you'll find Edwards and Kucinich as the best received, with Obama a distant third and Clinton nowhere to be found. In other words, the activists are different than the voters.
I'll say. They're different than the Democrats.
Kucinich plays the role of Alan Keyes for Democrats. A lunatic, but one with a significant base of support.
A Hillary Clinton Presidency is likely to be more along the lines of an awkward family reunion that culminates in a drunken argument.
Should be fun to watch. I just hope no one brings a gun.
"I'll say. They're different than the Democrats."
No. They're just the activists.
Winning the activists in either party doesn't guarantee you the nomination. But it does get you a seat at the table if you're otherwise nominatable.
Both Edwards and Romney are trying to parlay their lead in activist support into early state wins, and then the nomination.
One of the reasons I like having the Iowa caucus go first is that given the low participation rates, activists have a larger voice in shaping the race than they otherwise would.
Yes, it did wonders for Howard "I Have A Scream" Dean. I guess you have to keep telling yourselves you somehow matter to avoid just throwing in the towel now and going with Hillary or Obama.
I'm solidly with MY on this. Daniel Gross in Slate has a great article on how Romney's executive background:
People suspect, perhaps correctly, that Romney really doesn't believe all the things he's saying... such hypocrisy, which turns off voters, is something like a job requirement for CEOs.
"The CEO Candidate.", 2//26/07
"Yes, it did wonders for Howard "I Have A Scream" Dean"
Dean, like Romney, was only marginally nominatable.
Edwards, on the other hand, is acceptable to wide swaths of the party if he can score early wins.
Again, winning the activists only gets you a seat at the table. If your candidacy has problems among large blocs of the party that are willing to veto you, the activists won't win it for you alone.
And FWIW, I hope Romney gets the nomination because he'd clearly be the easiest to beat in the general.
Posted by Petey
Not really. Hillary is in the lead because the public is saturated with her over two decades...Part of her vote is that she is the anti-Bush, she deserves it after how badly Bill treated her, and various women who want dynastic politics and a WOMAN in charge.
Rudy leads Romney on name recognition and the unthinking hero-worship America gave Rudy and his timing to leave the mayoralty at the artificial top of 9/11 popularity as "America's Greatest Mayor" was impeccable. Plus 20% of America is still rabidly pro-war, another 7-8% believe no amount of American deaths or sacrifices is too much for our "Special Friend" - Israel.
Romney's great 3 advantages head to head with Hillary are:
1. He is a Washington outsider. Hillary (and McCain for any thinking the Old Man is ideal) - is a quintessential DC insider.
2. The man has 30+ years of executive experience and leadership in business, government, and international projects (business-gov't ones in 20 countries, then the turnaround of the troubled 2002 Olympics). 9 out of ten times, Romney made what he set out to do a success. 3 out of 10 times, a spectacular success beyond all expectations. A leader, too in his Church when he was selected to run the missionary effort in France and Benelux as a teenager, then a leader in his church like Huckabee...only a little higher in rank.
Hillary, on the other hand, has no executive experience and more failures than successes with her "Projects". Whitewater, Rose Law, Hillarycare.....and Bill.
Head to head, the experience and executive competence gap is profoundest between Romney and Hillary.
3. By the time the candidates are settled, Conventions over, who hates Bush more and the war won't matter since Bush will be gone soon and both have committed to stay in Iraq. But voters will be looking for authenticity, freshness, looks, faith, someone they can envision being comfortable with in the White House. (This is the area where Rudy and McCain fall flat...McCain for being yesterday's candidate past his shelf life, batshit crazy Rudy for being the "I'm twice as warlike and dismissive of people as Dubya is...On to Iran! For Israel! On to Syria! )
Both have problems in authenticity. Mitt is plasticky...HIllary is a shrieker and she has the Hillary laugh, and all her emotes seem to be coached...
Romney beats her on freshness and looks, by far.
Romney beats her on on faith. It may be a nutty faith, but better than a secular Progressive that returns now and then to her Methodist roots to pray in a crisis - like when one of her lesbian Praetoran Guards caught Bubba and Eleanor Mondale doing the deed. Romney lives the core values of his faith. Hillary's values came from a 1994 Focus Group study of what values she should have, refreshed every year or so.
Who would be the most comfortable, as seen by voters, for 4 years in office? A return to dynasty, leaving Jeb Bush a chance if Hillary doesn't work out to stretch out the 2-Family rule over 30 years?
Rudy walking through Andrews, then Norfolk looking at his warplanes and nuke warheads each weekend?
Or Mitt with project management flowcharts saying how he will fix several problems with bipartisan Congressional help. Acting relatively normal but capable of doing something "WTF?" now and then. Tie his dog carrier to the landing gear of Marine 1 and claim the dog loves it..
I feel the same way about Hillary that Matt does about Mitt: She's the most tolerable candidate of a group.
Agreed -- Romney seems like a triangulator, which is better than the authoritarian Giuliani. Although I also insist no one could have foreseen how bad Bush was going to be.
Mike Huckabee would be an ok president. No better than mediocre, but better than Romney or Guiliani.
Why leave him out?
Posted by glasnost
I think Huckabee has gotten a pass so far from the media who regarded him as a 3rd tier candidate. Now is the time to crunch up the scrutiny level.
Unlike Romney and Giuliani who faced financial crisis and held the line on taxes, Huckabee raised them considerably.
Huckabee also wants nationwide nanny state laws against junk food for kids. He wants a national smoking ban. He wants to use large Federal taxes on beer, wine, liquor, and fast food to pay for health care.
Huckabee favors Open Borders and federal and state scholarships set aside for young illegal aliens.
The guy's nice and speaks well, and seems to speak honestly, but he has the huge liabilities of tax-raising, nanny statism, and mass illegal immigration being welcomed that puts him out of the mainstream of both Republicans and moderates. While he is "with the Party" on God,abortion and guns, he will have a heck of a time getting votes when people know what his actual record is.
Adam - Panderfest 2007, though, has reminded me that at least with McCain, you pretty much know what you're getting.
Until he shows up at a newsconference with his "dear friends" Teddy, Russ Feingold, Arlen Spector, and Lindsay "the Human Weasel" Graham to announce yet another McCain stab in the back of Republicans. McCain-Feingold, Gang of 14, S&L bailout, Amnesty Plan, No Child Left Behind. No one trusts McCain other than on war leadership.
"Romney's great 3 advantages head to head with Hillary are..."
Romney definitely has a shot against Hillary because her ceiling is so low.
But he's still the easiest Republican to beat.
And Romney would get absolutely slaughtered by Edwards, for some reasons that should be somewhat obvious.
An Edwards-Romney race would give us 60 Senate seats.
"And Romney would get absolutely slaughtered by Edwards, for some reasons that should be somewhat obvious."
Although it's essentially moot, since Edwards has a snowballs chance of winning the Dem nomination, why don't you give us the reasons why you believe the former ambulance chaser would 'absolutely slaughter' Romney, the man with the best resume among either party's candidates.
"why don't you give us the reasons"
I really would think it would be obvious to even a casual viewer of politics.
Because pretty much every scrap of polling data out there is showing it. Match up the top 3 Dems against the top 4 Republicans nationally, and the biggest margin is pretty much always Edwards - Romney.
Because Romney's LDS problem and (to a lesser extent) region are going to cause him to lose significant numbers of voters in groups that the GOP needs to overwhelmingly carry. And because Edwards is the Dem most likely to pick up disaffected voters among those groups.
I mean, seriously, Edwards is beating Romney 53 - 32 in Oklahoma! I don't think Edwards would actually win Oklahoma by 20+ points in November '08 - some Republicans would come home - but he'd make Oklahoma highly competitive against Romney. And if you understand anything about Presidential politics, that ought to mean something far larger to you.
If it ends up being an Edwards-Romney race, we're going to win bunches of Senate seats in abnormal places like Alaska.
-----
"Although it's essentially moot, since Edwards has a snowballs chance of winning the Dem nomination"
If he wins Iowa, he's going to be the nominee. Winning Iowa is not going to be easy, but you dismiss the idea at your peril.
When the activists' consensus candidate is also the party's strongest general election candidate, interesting things can happen.
Let me vouch for this -- if you look at any 3 x 3 general-election head-to-heads, the Edwards lead over Romney usually towers over everything else.
I think the story here is partly that moderate conservatives weirded out by the LDS thing are willing to seek safety in a Protestant with a southern accent. So Edwards ends up converting voters that you might think a Democrat has no business converting.
Monkey with a box of handgrenades as a write in GOP choice.
Clearly supperior, and likely to get a lot fewer americans killed.
His wacky social views would be largely irrelevant given that they are mostly legislative proposals and would be DOA with a Democratic congress.
This year alone has shown how good a Democratic congress is at resisting the lunacy of a Republican president.
I'm not sure I see the logic in Matt selecting Romney as the least bad GOP candidate. Romney is 100% willing to support very bad policies if it will get him elected/re-elected. Give me Fred Thompson instead. He has no passion for anything and actually almost sounds like a reasonable proponent of Federalism on issues like gay marriage and pulling the plug on people in vegetable states. Of the GOP candidates, he's probably least likely to do great new harm to the country or the world.
Petey: It seems to me that you frequently rely on polls to argue Edwards' strength in a general election, but discount the polls to argue Edwards' viability in the primary. Can you explain this apparent inconsistency? (I ask this as a legitimate question.)
"A lot of people seem resistant to the basic logical point that one of the Republicans has to be preferable to the other Republicans."
In the same sense that gonorrhea is preferable to syphilis or HIV.
He has no passion for anything... Of the GOP candidates, he [Thompson]'s probably least likely to do great new harm to the country or the world.
No. Thompson would be another GW Bush -- so uninterested in the details of governing that he lets sinister underlings run riot and do great harm.
I take Matt's point that the least scary Republican is the one who doesn't believe in anything, but I am more sympathetic to Huckabee--who has deeply held religious beliefs that I consider clinically insane (I know that I'm consigning a good chunk of the American population to the loony bin here--sorry!), but whose practical social and economic policies, with the marked exception of abortion rights, are more Democrat than Republican. And at this point, his relative (perhaps even absolute) indifference to foreign policy, and to other countries in general (except to the extent that they send us too-cheap goods), would be an improvement.
I like Ron Paul more as a secularist who keeps his religion out of politics, and as an enemy of US imperialism (to give his views a leftist gloss), but his economic views are nutty in a way that even Huckabee's theology can't rival, in terms of practical effects on the lives of Americans.
Romney right now is pretty horrible on basically every issue.
However, given his history, I bet that if he gets the GOP nod, Romney will move hard back to the center, more so than any other GOP candidate, and dare his base to leave him.
I like Huckabee right now, among the candidates with a chance to win, but a huge amount will ride on who his foreign policy advisors are. I don't include Fred Thompson in that group with a chance to win.
Funny that Giuliani's insanity trumps his agreement on social issues, but it definitely does.
Ron Paul is the only Republican on the right side of the Iraq war and Bush's parallel war on the constitution. For those reasons He'd get my Republican vote.
I have to agree with Kent from Waco. Paul gets us out of Iraq. Abortion rights are pretty much toast even with Giuliani. If Paul isn't R enough then Huckabee because he isn't mad about it and may be willing to deal with the D's honestly.
I hope Romney gets the nomination because he'd clearly be the easiest to beat in the general.
Am I the only one seeing a disconnect here? Romney is considered the least bad Republican by Matt Yglesias, Ezra Klein, Scott Lemieux. M.J. Rosenberg and doubtless most other left leaning columnists.
Then we're told he'll also be the easiest to beat.
Politics just doesn't work that way. If Romney can convince political junkies that he doesn't really mean half the things he says (just kidding about bombing Iran), then he can convince moderates and independents in the general election. This will improve his polling against any Democrat.
"Petey: It seems to me that you frequently rely on polls to argue Edwards' strength in a general election, but discount the polls to argue Edwards' viability in the primary. Can you explain this apparent inconsistency? (I ask this as a legitimate question.)"
The primary polls are perfectly legitimate. Senator Clinton's strength should not be understated. One of the things they tell us is that if there were a national primary, Edwards would have no chance whatsoever to win.
But we don't start with a national primary. And Edwards is in position to leverage an early win in Iowa to be able to gain massive free media and dramatically increase his national strength.
If you look at previous nomination races, national polls taken before IA and NH generally bear very little relationship to national polls taken after IA and NH.
Edwards is an acceptable candidate to wide swaths of the Party who receives relatively little national media attention. That's the exact profile of a candidate who can ride early states wins to the nomination.
"Edwards is in position to leverage an early win in Iowa to be able to gain massive free media and dramatically increase his national strength."
There's a Pew poll out today which asks respondents to name Presidential candidates without any prompting.
For the Dems, 78% can name Clinton, 61% can name Obama, and only 28% can name Edwards.
An Iowa win will dramatically shift those numbers, with Edwards gaining similar mindshare to Senator Clinton. The state of the race the morning after an Edwards Iowa win will look quite different than it does today.
I'm a Republican who will, in fact, be forced to make this very choice in my state's February primary. I've been agonizing about it, frankly, and for the first time am considering changing my party registration.
Romney changed his positions too dramatically and on too many issues to be taken seriously.
Giuliani had some successes in New York, but I don't really see how the experience of being a big city mayor translates to the presidency where you have to deal with far more threatening bodies than the city council.
If forced to, I'd probably vote for McCain in the hope that his maverick instincts will return and the ideological panderer will go away. That's probably wishful thinking, but with this field of candidates, that's all I've got at this point.
Comments closed November 06, 2007.
| 
Heads in the Sand
"I continue to stand by the view that I'd prefer President Romney to President Rudy Giuliani, President Fred Thompson, President John McCain, President Tom Tancredo, etc"
While I follow the logic of your case, in terms of policy outcomes, Democrats would obviously get the best deal from a President McCain.
McCain is Lieberman-esque in his willingness to poke his party in the eye.
Romney, on the other hand, subscribes to the Rovian strategy of pleasing the base above all.
You let he fact that Romney's base in Massachusetts was far to the left of what his base will be at the national level badly throw your analysis off the mark.
------
I'm also a bit confused as to why you think this is largely a Romney-Giuliani race. That's the horserace as understood by the least informed viewers...
Posted by Petey | October 23, 2007 10:08 PM