On Sunday, Fox's Chris Wallace read Mitt Romney his version of the riot act for being the only Republican candidate not to have gone on his show during the 2012 campaign:
With Governor Perry's appearance, we have now interviewed all the major Republican candidates in our 2012 one-on-one series except Mitt Romney. He has not appeared on this program or any Sunday talk show since March of 2010. We invited Governor Romney again this week, but his campaign says he's still not ready.
Romney's last appearance was March 8, 2010 on Fox. That means as of today it's been 633 days since Mitt Romney subjected himself to questions from a Sunday talk show host.
As Kaili pointed out yesterday, the Mittness Protection Program isn't a bad strategy for Romney—stay quiet while BachmannPerryCain mumble and bumble and stumble around like headless idiots. The last thing he wants to do is take questions that are subject to a follow-up, because the odds are pretty high that with anything Mitt Romney says, he's either flip-flopping from a previous statement, or saying something that he'll flip-flop on tomorrow or the next day. And as long as he isn't making news, Romney figures he can stay in his 25% holding pattern and emerge as the only candidate standing with the resources to win the nomination.
But at some point, the fact that Mitt Romney is refusing to take questions from reporters—even friendly ones like Chris Wallace—becomes a news story in itself. Sarah Palin's refusal to do big interviews in 2008 became a big deal, and her utter inability to carry her own crushed her reputation. Romney is much more verbally adept than Palin, so he won't flail in the same sort of way that she did. But given his record of unprincipled inconsistency, interviews could be as disastrous for him as for her—and he can't keep dodging them forever.