A Romney Pipe Dream

Alex Massie

Thursday, 27th August 2009

Anyone who wants to see Mitt Romney fail now should hope he follows the advice given by Lisa Schiffren and Peter Roff and runs for the now open Senate seat in Massachussetts; anyone looking forward to kicking Multiple Choice Mitt in a couple of years time should hope his political instincts haven't yet deteriorated beyond the point of no return and that, consequently, he'll decline this exciting invivation to failure.

As James Joyner suggests, this idea makes no sense at all, not least from Romney's perspective. The fact that it's being offered in a friendly spirit is quite astonishing. Here's Roff explaining why Rmney should run:

Such an announcement would likely be embraced immediately by the Republicans, who would like almost nothing more than to deny Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid of Nevada his new, hard-won, 60-vote, filibuster-proof majority. As a self-funding candidate who has already been elected once statewide, Romney has nearly 100 percent name ID. And, in an environment where President Obama seems to be dragging the Democrats down, he would be a serious threat to the Democratic hegemony in Massachusetts’s congressional delegation. Meaning Romney likely would win.

If he did, Romney would then have a platform to actually introduce legislation modeled on the proposals he put forward as a presidential candidate in 2008 and planned to put forward in 2012. No guesswork. No empty rhetoric. Real ideas, on the Senate floor, that could be evaluated, debated, and perhaps even voted on.

From the Senate floor, Romney could show his fellow Republicans, and the country, just what kind of president he would be. How he would approach national problems. As an added political benefit, it would give him the opportunity to establish true conservative bona fides allowing him to finally overcome the suspicions many conservatives in the GOP’s primary electorate still harbor about him. Rather than tie him down, Romney could actually use the Senate seat to lock up the GOP nomination in 2012.

Really? Mitt would win? You think so? Anyone who wants to offer me money on the proposition that Mtt Romney will be the Junior Senator from Massachussetts next year is welcome to get in touch. I'll offer you just about any odds you like.

Never mind the fact that even if (by some miracle) he were elected, Romney wouldn't be the Republican leader on anything, far less be passing legislation, the notion that Massachussetts voters will elect the chap they decided** didn't merit a second term in the governors office is itself absurd.

Sure, it's not 100% impossible that a good Republican candidate could win but I'd guess the GOP's prospects at no more than 5%. At best. And that's with an Obama-endorsing Republican such as William Weld running. That figure is reduced to close to zero if the candidate is Romney for the simple reason that there is no way on earth that the Commonwealth's voters are going to elect Romney just so he can have a (notionally) better platform from which to run for the Presidency.

One can understand why enthusiasts for Romney search for ways of making Mitt "relevent" but they should concentrate on ideas that might advance his prospects, not kill them off for good.

Unless of course, they are trying to be kind by getting the disappointment in early, before the voters have their final, crushing, say in 2012...

UPDATE: Steve Benen and Nate Silver offer still more reasons why this is daft pie-in-the-sky hilarity.

**UPDATE: This is sloppy. I should have been clearer. I know that Romney didn't seek a second term as governor. One reason for that may have been that his approval rating was, if memory serves down to about 30%. Yes, he enjoys statewide name recognition but, having reversed himself on abortion and any number of other matters it is exceedingly hard to see how he could win an election in a state that, in any case, continues to give Obama a 75% approval rating.

UPDATE 3: As expected, Romney sensibly declines this exciting career-ending opportunity.

Filed under: 2012 (12 more articles) , GOP (153 more articles) , Kennedy (3 more articles) , Romney (24 more articles)

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RW Rogers

August 27th, 2009 3:23pm Report this comment

I don't know what his poll numbers were on leaving office, but I do believe that Massachusetts voters did not reject Romney at the ballot box at the end of his term as governor as he didn't run for re-election. That said, I agree that Romney needs "friendly" suggestions like this like he needs another car-top dog carrier.

DS

August 27th, 2009 4:49pm Report this comment

The notion he should run for Dead Ted's seat is absurd, but so too is your characterization of the odds that he couldn't win it, not to mention his character itself as well.

It wouldn't take much research to learn that Romney was not denied a second term by the people of MA; he didn't run for a second term because he ran for president—while he didn't get the nomination, he remains the only viable candidate from 2008, hence the venom sent his way from critics like this article's scorn-addled author.

Secondly, not much more effort need be applied to learn that Romney is actually viewed more positively than Demcorat Governor Deval Patrick among Massachusetts voters. In fact, only Ted Kennedy polled ahead of Mitt Romney in name-ID and approval ratings among that state's voters.

True criticism of the notion he run for the empty seat lies in the brief time he'd have to actually tend to the business of the Senate before running again (a presumption most make) for President in 2012, which would mean he'd likely get pretty much nothing done as a legislator, but then again that never stopped our current President who accomplished nothing more than naming a Post Office and sending some taxpayer money to Africa in his brief stings as Senator and state senator.

Lastly, Multiple Choice Mitt, really? The fact of the matter is that labels are what is used when there are little grounds to criticize on one's merits and record. This is why Romney was attacked as a flip-flopper in 2008 (all based on not a flip-flop (which requires going from A to B and back again to A) but a change of the mind on abortion, a conversion many Republicans have made, including President Reagan), and his fiercest, vilest critics continue to chant that label and gleefully attempt to act as if he's irrelevant despite all the ink spilled over opposing him.

Maybe you aren't as lazy as you seem in your research and know, in fact, that Romney polls even head-to-head with Obama, and has a 7-8 point lead among Independent and unaffiliated voters, hence the incorrect statements about his election history, inaccurate characterizations, and abstract labels that ironically are more fitting for the man whose seat is now empty, given his life's last effort was not healthcare, but chaning the rules in Massachusetts, again, which makes it a true flip-flop, to secure that a Democrat remain in power as his dies out of it.

Ben

August 27th, 2009 5:09pm Report this comment

This article woudld be good if you weren't such an Obama lover.

Romney remains relevant, not that you'd know or acknowledge this fact. But anyway, no Romney should stay way from Taxachusetts.

Craig Strachan

August 27th, 2009 5:17pm Report this comment

Romney famously gave Kennedy a run for his money in the 1994 senate race, losing by a mere 17-points, in that year of the great Republican takeover of Congress.

Of course then he ran as a Weldian liberal Republican.

Maybe he'll do even better in '10 as a Helmsian conservative?

(The only way the Dems could lose is if they do something really dumb - like, say, nominating Patrick Kennedy.)

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