Like the most of the progressive netroots, I'm pulling for Mitt Romney in the Michigan Primary. But my support of Mitt Romney runs deep. I'm a Romney man through thick and thin, through caucuses and primaries and all the way through to the Republican Convention.
Mitt Romney will deliver the United States of America the President it so desperately needs: Barrack Obama, Hillary Clinton or John Edwards.
Why Mitt Romney is the best man to lose to a Democrat in November below the fold.
- Romney is the ultimate flip flopper.
In 2004 the Republican smear machine made John Kerry out to be political atheist who could not utter a single sentence without contradicting himself. This, of course, was not true. Kerry was no more a flip flopper than any highly experienced politician. Sure, he held a number of nuanced positions, but not more than any serious person who has given serious consideration to serious issues. But voters drank spiked kool-aid.
Mitt Romney, on the other hand, has been flipping and flopping all over the political spectrum for over a decade. He didn't just cast a few senate votes which could be construed as contradictory. He flipped, at just the right political time, on all the major conservative wedge issues: abortion, gun control, gay rights, immigration and stem cell research. He declared himself independent of Ronald Reagan and has flipped flopped on most of the non-wedge issues as well.
Anyone with even a vague memory of the 2004 Presidential election is bound to note the irony. These frequent "changes of heart" turn off independents and scare social conservatives.
- With a Mitt Romney nomination, Democrats would have the most likable candidate.
While most Kossacks are hard-core issues voters, unfortunately, many Americans, are not. The so-called swing voters are especially likely to vote for a President much like they pick an American Idol winner. Look at every Presidential election going back to World War 2. Americans, with the exception of Richard Nixon, have picked the more likable candidate every time. Despite exit polls showing broad support of progressive ideals, Americans have turned to the more likable candidate.
John McCain, Mike Huckabee, Rudy Giuliani and Fred Thompson pass the likability test. The storyline on Mitt Romney will be he is a pandering, opportunistic, elitist who sees the Presidency as a good career move. However false the narrative about good 'ole boy George W. Bush may have been, Republican spinnsters won't be able to turn Mitt Romney into a guy the average American can relate to.
Republicans can't run on issues in 2008 and with Mitt Romney, they won't be able to run on personality, either.
- The hypothetical general election match ups look especially bad for Romney.
While hypothetical match ups are mostly meaningless at this point, Romney has consistently done the worst among the Republican front runners.
- Romney is not a media darling.
The mainstream media has been in love with John McCain for 8 years and has been propping up Giuliani, Thompson and Huckabee off and on for a year. Romney doesn't get the same buzz. Perhaps, like John Kerry and Al Gore, he's a little too boring for the mainstream media's taste.
- Any Mitt Romney victory is going to be messy.
John McCain and Mike Huckabee have clear paths to the nomination. But, if Mitt Romney wins, it will have been the result of a long bloodbath in which he takes out stronger opponents one by one until he is last man barely standing.
- Romney is the most likely candidate to produce a "macaca moment."
This is just a gut feeling, but John McCain and Rudy Giuliani are extremely disciplined campaigners and Mike Huckabee and Fred Thompson are extremely polite and non-threatening with their speech. Mitt Romney seems the most likely to get a little too full of himself and utter something he thinks is cute, but is actually offensive.
It's clear. America needs Mitt Romney for about the next 10 months.