Superconservatize Me

Mitt Romney will announce today that he is dropping out of the race for the presidential nomination of the Republican Party. My first reaction? YES!!!! But you kind readers need more of an explanation for my dislike for Romney the candidate than "YES!!!!" so here goes. Be forewarned - my relationship with Mitt Romney has been love and hate and more hate. But let me put that aside and try to be objective

It seems strange now but I was intrigued by Mitt Romney when I first heard he may be running for president. All I knew about him then was that he was super-duper rich and that he had saved the Olympics. (Shades of me saving the Jewish Law Students Association at my law school. That I packed it with gentiles is another story.) I knew that Romney was instrumental in passing a health care plan that tried to reach every citizen of Massachusetts, the state where he was governor.

Huh, I thought. Is Romney a different kind of Republican? The old paradigm of what made a Republican needed to be updated for the 21st century. The old tropes just weren't exciting enough people anymore. (How many times can you cry wolf about the horrors of gay marriage anyway?) There were legitimate problems facing our country and there wasn't that much time to waste when Romney first let it be known he was running for president a few years ago. For example, health care. And Romney seemed to have a plan for that.

But something happened on the way to the convention. Romney made a huge mistake when he decided to become the latest guy to try to assume Ronald Reagan's mantle. (Guys, it can't be done.) Instead of being the problem-solving moderate he had always been, Romney decided to hold the most conservative position on every issue. He wanted to be the most conservative candidate ever. I am not a Rudy Giuliani fan by any means but he did get off a good line about Romney when he said Romney would probably have put Ronald Reagan in one of his commercials that criticized Giuliani and McCain and Huckabee for being soft on immigration if Reagan was still alive because Reagan had signed an amnesty bill in 1986.

Also, it seems that neither Romney nor his advisors had ever heard of YouTube. Because there was a wealth of clips of Romney pontificating his views of just a few years ago. Views that were moderate and, in my opinion, where most people were. He showed some tolerance towards gays and lesbians. He wasn't happy about abortions but said it was something that was needed. He wanted some kind of gun control. He showed some humanity toward illegal immigrants. He recognized that there were some excesses during the Reagan/Bush I years.

Romney didn't think who he actually was was enough to to get him elected. He didn't have enough faith in the voters. He didn't think we would see him as a slightly dorky but highly competent individual. It is as if one day he decided to model himself after Rush Limbaugh. As of today, Rush Limbaugh has never won a race for public office. I know Rush's ego is big enough that if he thought he could run for president and win, he would have done that already. So far, no Limbaugh presidency. Romney chose a poor model to copy. The irony is the real Romney would have demolished the phony Romney.

Back in 2006, Romney probably thought his main competition would come from Senator George Allen of Virginia. Back then, Allen was supposed to be the new Reagan. Romney thought he would have to out-right wing Allen. Again, irony shows it lovely head when Allen macacized his chances for his Senate reelection and a subsequent run for the White House. By this point, Romney has committed himself to a rightward tilt. There was to be no turning back. Romney was stuck.

Other problems emerged in Romney's attempt to Reaganize himself. He wasn't the charismatic presence that Reagan was. He wasn't as believable when talking about conservative values. (One of the knocks on Reagan when he was running for president was that he was too tied to his beliefs. Romney had the opposite problem.) Reagan was believable as the common man due to his humble and troubled upbringing. Romney is not a common man; he doesn't look like one. (I wish I was "common" enough to have vacation homes in four states.) When Reagan was running for president, people weren't going around quoting his net worth like a pejorative.

Reagan had a long history in the conservative movement when he won the presidency, going all the way back to "The Speech" of 1964. Romney has been a member of the conservative movement for about two years. There will be rumblings that Romney will run in 2012. I don't see it. Nobody seemed to really like Romney except people making more than $100,000. There aren't enough of those people to ever create a Romney movement.