Apart from the healthcare thing and the Mormon thing and the whole not-always-coming-across-as-an-actual-human-being thing there’s the Private Equity thing. Romney, sensibly in my view, began the “official” leg of his Presidential campaign with a pitch about jobs. That, much more than arcane-seeming debates about the deficit, is the key to blue collar America and, by extension, the vital battleground states. The difficulty is that Romney’s record at Bain Capital is awfully easy to attack.
Think Progress highlights one problem:
Politico has more here. No matter how much private wealth can impress some voters it’s also easy to see how you can write an attack ad pointing out that Romney became a vastly wealthy man by purchasing ailing companies, firing half the workforce and stripping any assets that could be used to turn a profit.This isn’t entirely fair. Some of those companies might have failed anyway and others were doubtless saved by private equity. If that meant a smaller workforce so other jobs could be saved and the business resurrected then so be it. A price worth paying and so on but a tougher thing to sell during an election campaign.
This won’t matter yet because the GOP primary is not likely to worry about this too much (though Mike Huckabee might attack Romney on these grounds). But it could become a problem in a general election. As Intrade confirms, Romney remains a more credible November candidate than most (all?) of his rivals in the primary but you can see how his private equity past could become a problem in, say, Ohio and, more generally, with the high-school educated white voters who are such a vital part of the Republican coalition.
So Romney finds himself in an odd position: the technocratic, can-do, problem-solver who is also reinventing himself as a latterday populist and nationalist. These horses can be hitched together but they will often want to run to different places and keeping them running smoothly without abrupt lurches or sudden, jarring, changes of direction will be quite a task. Is Romney a good enough driver to keep them on the road?
There’s another problem too: the more Romney portays himself as a culture and values kind of guy the more he draws attention to the Mormon problem. Perhaps that too is unfair and perhaps it wouldn’t matter as much against Obama as it might in opposition to another kind or type of politician. Nevertheless, while Romney has plenty of advantages against the pygmy field currently assembled for the primary you can see why, though he should be respected, he could be quite a fun guy to run against too. A target-rich environment. And that’s before you even consider the dog-owning vote.
Imagine what, say, a Lee Atwater would do if asked to run an anti-Romney campaign…
[Thanks to Liz Mair.]
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