Who's the most maligned candidate?
February 9, 2007
I must admit, I thought Rudy Giuliani, because of his liberal social values, would be the run away winner as the guy who comes under the most criticism from conservative Republicans in the buildup towards 2008. That still may happen but he’s not the most maligned right now.
I thought John McCain may suffer too yet so far nothing urgent there either. People will go after him. It’s coming but it hasn’t galvanized yet.
The winner here, as of February 2007 (unfortunately for him) is Mitt Romney. It seems like everybody is going after him. His opponents are determined to paint him as a flip flopper on almost every issue from campaign finance reform, to taxes, to abortion, to marriage.
Recently, Romney talked about supporting President Bush’s tax cuts. But take a look at this from the Boston Herald back in 2003:
In 2003, Romney stunned a roomful of Bay State congressmen by telling them that he would not publicly support Bush's tax cuts, which at the time formed the centerpiece of the president's domestic agenda. He even said he was open to a federal gas tax hike.
It leads to this editorial the other day from Howie Carr at the Boston Herald:
Look, I like Mitt, but don’t you get the feeling that among the rank-and-file GOP primary voters, he’s slowly morphing into the Republican John Kerry? Maybe that’s unfair - Mitt made his money, after all. He didn’t marry it (twice). He’s not a fop, he never dissed the troops, and Mitt’s a lot more adept at doing the old soft shoe around his flip-flops than Kerry.
But Mitt better be ready for his close-up next week when he officially announces his candidacy for president. He did a good job in Act 1, getting himself into third place on the Republican side, behind McCain and Giuliani. But what does Mitt do for an encore now?
Here’s what I think is really going on. Romney’s critics are concerned. They know he could immediately morph into the front runner here. Let’s face it. He looks like a President, talks like a President, has been raising tons of money, collecting key endorsements and is running his campaign in a very professional way with competent people who know what they’re doing. He’s looked Presidential from the start and his opponents know it. They figure they must take him down early. They want to have him lose control of his image. Let’s remember here: Americans, for the most part, don’t really pay attention to the particulars of issues. So Romney’s critics are going to try and paint him as this flip flopper and hope it sticks. If it does, he’s in trouble. Romney’s challenge will be to calmly, easily explain this away without losing his cool or seeming so defensive. He’ll need to take a page from Ronald Reagan’s playbook and poke a little fun at himself and not take this all so seriously. It’s challenging but what’s a race without a challenge.
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