Romney's Seinfeld Campaign

Why does Mitt Romney want to be President? In his heart of hearts, what does he want to accomplish with 4-8 years in the Oval Office? On issue after issue, he has held views across the spectrum, as previously discussed here and here and here.

In a recent interview, Romney said the following:

“One of the things I found in a short campaign against Ted Kennedy was that when I said, for instance, that I wanted to eliminate the Department of Education, that was used to suggest I don’t care about education,” Romney recalled. “So I think it’s important for me to point out that I anticipate that there will be departments and agencies that will either be eliminated or combined with other agencies. So for instance, I anticipate that housing vouchers will be turned over to the states rather than be administered at the federal level, and so at this point I think of the programs to be eliminated or to be returned to the states, and we’ll see what consolidation opportunities exist as a result of those program eliminations. So will there be some that get eliminated or combined? The answer is yes, but I’m not going to give you a list right now.”

So he's going to eliminate/reorganize huge swaths of the Federal government, but he's going to tell us nothing about which ones he will close, how he'll replace them, or why.

Awesome.

He is exploiting the ignorance of the actual facts among voters I'd discussed in my first post in 2011. If people are ignorant of how government spends money, it is easy to say "government is too big" and insist on cuts. But if people are told what those cuts will mean, which is what Romney says above that he'll refuse to do, they might not be so supportive. So Romney appears to be comfortable with allowing voters to cast their vote out of ignorance. This is not a positive development for our system.

Romney's campaign is about nothing. Like most people (including me), Romney appears to believe that a generic, bland Republican would have a great chance to win this year, and he's trying to be as non-descript as he possibly can, taking both sides of issues, being evasive, and now, flat out refusing to describe his positions on issues and plans for what to do once he is elected.

Romney's record on energy

Great article about Romney's history when it comes to energy. In a nutshell, Romney used to be for everything he's now against.

Honest question: Does anyone feel like they have any idea how Romney would govern if he were to be elected?

"Etch a Sketch" as meme

On Wednesday, a Romney senior advisor had this to say about the candidate:



There is some debate amongst prominent columnists as to the significance of the gaffe. Joe Klein at Time Magazine believes it's a disaster on the order of John Kerry's"I voted for it before I voted against it" fumble in 2004. Ezra Klein (no relation) argues that it isn't that big of a deal because it doesn't tell us anything new; we already knew Romney would easily change positions, so this doesn't change anything.

I come down on Joe Klein's side on this. While Ezra's right that it doesn't tell us anything new, the Etch-A-Sketch image makes a convenient, bite-sized summary of Romney's total lack of core convictions on many issues. A low-information voter isn't going to read the awesome article on Romney's abortion stance I linked to last week (have you read it yet? You should!), but they will remember "Romney's the Etch-a-Sketch guy". For famously-wonky guys like Ezra, the image doesn't change his understanding of Romney, but for the average voter, it will make a big difference.

(I'll attempt to do another post this evening on ObamaCare.)

Any self-respecting Republican

Transcript of Romney interview

How could a Republican vote for a candidate for commander-in-chief who would respond to questions on a current American war like Mitt Romney did this weekend on Fox News. In only 3 responses, he manages to criticize Obama for having a withdrawal date, suggest the date may need to be moved up, and deny the ability to take a "stand" on the war until he can get more info. We've been there a decade, during most of which he was running for President. That he would claim ignorance on the subject as a way to avoid taking a firm position on what might be a war fought under his leadership demonstrates the man's utter lack of political courage.

Setting a top

The last few years have been defined politically by the Republican Party's breakneck run to the right. While Mitt Romney was considered the "conservative alternative" to the eventual nominee, John McCain. He has continued moving to the right in the intervening four years, but he now finds himself portrayed as a "Massachusetts moderate". The rightward move hasn't been limited to Republicans, such as Obama adopting McCain's "all of the above" energy policy.

Romney now finds himself locked in a protracted struggle for the Republican nomination with Rick Santorum. In 2010, GOP voters nominated a series of poorly organized, extremely conservative candidates for major office like Christine "I'm not a witch" O'Donnell and Sharron "2nd amendment remedies" Angle because they were the most conservative candidates in the primaries, even if they had huge shortcomings as candidates. Candidates who failed to toe the hard-right line were beaten in primaries, and incumbents learned that being perceived as a compromiser would lead to a primary challenge.

In this environment, Romney finds himself matched against Rick Santorum, who pretty much defines hardcore conservativism, at least in the pre-Tea Party era. Without Santorum's glaring weaknesses as a candidate, Santorum would run away with the nomination. This is an electorate that nominated Angle and O'Donnell, after all.

That Romney appears on the way to winning the nomination represents GOP voters setting a limit to how much they value extreme conservativism. While they still appear to prefer Santorum's principles, they recognize that a guy who can't even file complete delegate slates in big primary states won't be able to beat Obama. This is a level of political awareness they didn't seem to have in 2010 where their extreme candidates cost them control of the Senate.

So while Romney is clearly a superior and more-electable candidate, he has to fight Santorum on the latter's ideological turf. Despite being the more moderate candidate, he is winning. In the Tea Party version of the GOP. So it's not surprising that he's not storming his way to victory; that he's winning at all is impressive, given the makeup of the electorate.

Fantastic article on Romney's abortion record

This article, which appeared on Slate.com last month, is the most thorough and illuminating exploration of a candidate's position, and character, I've ever read. It explores Mitt Romney's progression from pro-choice Senate and governor candidate to a governor who supported federal funding for stem-cell research to a governor who vetoed any abortion bill whether pro-life or pro-choice to a strongly pro-life presidential candidate. He claimed that he had one view-changing epiphany on the matter in 2004, despite taking positions in 2005 and 2006 which were still pro-choice. He has repeatedly, demonstrably lied about his history on the issue, and the article has all the historical proof to prove it.

It's a very long article, but definitely worth a read. If you're only going to read one thing about a candidate, this should be it.

Cut, Cap and Bullshit, Part 2

Yesterday, I lamented that Mitt Romney and the Republican Party are attempting to make a massive change to the role of government, their Cut, Cap and Balance plan, without informing voters of the implications of that change. Romney's website includes a section on spending. It's quite a document, to say the least, and at least gives us some hints as to the likely damage to the nation that would be done by a President Romney. Let's go through it item by item; this will take a few days:

As president, Mitt’s goal will be to bring federal spending below 20 percent of GDP by the end of his first term. Reduced from 24.3 percent last year; in line with the historical trend between 18 and 20 percent.

You know who never had a year with federal spending below 20% of GDP, per the OMB (.xls)? Ronald Reagan. Neither did Reagan's successor, George Bush. The best either did was 21.2%, in 1989.

Close to the tax revenue generated by the economy when healthy.

That's actually true, per the Excel/.xls link above. Way to go, Mitt!

Requires spending cuts of approximately $500 billion per year in 2016 assuming robust economic recovery with 4% annual growth, and reversal of irresponsible Obama-era defense cuts

The $500 billion number is pretty accurate, based on the OMB .xls data above. The 4% annual growth number is optimistic for the next few years, given that in the past 11 years we have only just barely touched 4% briefly in 2004.

Romney intends to cut $500 billion without touching the ridiculously-bloated military budget. We're in such terrible financial straits that we have to make all the draconian cuts that we'll discuss, but we MUST continue to spend 450% more than our nearest competitor, apparently.

Tomorrow, we'll look at Romney's plan to devastate Medicaid and Medicare, which millions of Americans depend on for their health. But we can't touch even one penny of the military budget!

The fractal primary campaign

I've always liked fractals. From Wikipedia, "Fractals are typically self-similar patterns, where self-similar means they are "the same from near as from far."

The defining state primaries of this season have been microcosms of the larger race. The overriding story of the entire campaign has been the steady stream of flavors of the month who rise up to challenge Romney, only to have Romney overwhelm them with superior resources. Santorum rose up in Iowa only to be smacked down in the next several races. Gingrich won in South Carolina only to be devastated by negative ads in Florida. Santorum racked up impressive but delegate-poor wins in the Midwest a few weeks ago only to lose in a heads-up match in Michigan.

Last night's Super Tuesday elections were another example of the self-similar campaign. At the start of the night, as at the start of the campaign, Romney was looking like a prohibitive favorite. He won big in Virginia, thanks to poor organization by his opponents resulting in only Ron Paul appearing on the ballot alongside him. He also won early wins in Massachusetts and Vermont. But his early momentum was blunted by fairly early wins by Santorum in Tennessee, Oklahoma and North Dakota. I found myself thinking that Santorum might actually carry the night, if he could maybe carry Ohio and Alaska, with Paul perhaps winning the caucuses in Idaho. But, as he's vanquished quick-rising challengers before, Romney wound up carrying a majority of delegates awarded on the night, including a close win in Ohio.

Zooming in on the fractal campaign even more reveals more self-similar patterns in the Ohio results. Romney led early in the night, only to have Santorum overtake him and lead for much of the night. Santorum was doing well among the rural, more conservative counties, while Romney was winning big in Cuyahoga and Hamilton counties, which are urban, usually Democratic areas (zooming out briefly, most of the states Romney has won were also blue states won by Obama in '08). Romney ultimately overtook Santorum just after 11pm last night, just as he pulled ahead of Santorum in the polls in the few days right before the election.

Projecting the patterns of the campaign forward, it appears even more clear that Romney will ultimately be the nominee. By preventing Santorum from getting any momentum-building surprise wins while also racking up a majority of the delegates, Romney continues his solid but not awe-inspiring performance. He will continue to use his superior resources to go on to victory, but it won't be overwhelming. He's probably going to struggle in the upcoming elections in Alabama, Mississippi, Hawaii, Kansas, Missouri, Illinois and Lousiana, with Gingrich likely doing well in the South, Santorum in the Midwest, and Ron Paul at the caucus in Hawaii.

Romney's unexplained conservativism

After a two-day detour to Rush-ville, we're back to talking about Romney's lack of biographical explanation for his 20 year rightward trend. Apart from naked political ambition, there is no other justification given for his conservativism, and I think that's most of the reason that the Right hasn't embraced him. With Rick Santorum, you understand the source of many of his views. For instance, he caught a lot of flak for coming out against prenatal testing, on the grounds that it would encourage abortions if a disease such as Down Syndrome is discovered. Given that Santorum has a daughter with Trisomy 18 (extra copy of chromosome 18, where Down Syndrome is an extra copy of chromosome 21), his views on the issue make sense.

If Romney had a similar story, conservatives could trust him more. As it is, we have statements from all over the map over the past 20 years. Even recently, he has occasionally made statements that call his conservativism into doubt, such as his initial statement opposing the Blunt amendment or his recognition that cutting spending would at least temporarily slow the economy. If he's elected President, how could anyone, conservative or liberal, claim to know what Romney will do when it really matters. He might return to his more moderate/liberal roots when the fate of the world is at stake.

For a movement demanding ideological purity, like the Tea Party, you have to have either a long history of demonstrated adherence to dogma, or a biographical explanation to justify your lack of such a record. Romney has neither, and because of it he is incapable of being truly accepted by the GOP.

Romney needs some tragedy

Mitt Romney is, objectively, a political chameleon. In 1994, when liberal Republicans still roamed New England, he tried to out-liberal Teddy Kennedy, tellling (.pdf) the Log Cabin Republicans that "as we seek to establish full equality for American's gay and lesbian citizens, I will provide more effective leadership than my opponent," and "we must make equality for gays and lesbians a mainstream concern. My opponent cannot do this. I can and will." Then in 2002, as the old concept of the moderate-liberal Yankee Republican was in its death throes, Romney tacked to the right and was elected as a moderate governor. Once he decided he would run for President, he continued moving rightward, pulling out of a multi-state cap-and-trade program and being a pro-life governor despite running as a pro-choice candidate. In the 2008 campaign, he ran as a center-right candidate, just to McCain's right. This time around, after the rise of the Tea Party, he portrays himself as "severely conservative".

It would be one thing if Romney had a great personal story to help voters understand his political shifts, with moments of crisis leading to changes in his views. But instead Romney projects the image of a man who has never had any tragedy in his life at all. He was born to a father who ran a large auto company and later became governor and a mother who was a candidate for U.S. Senate in 1970. He went to good schools and wound up making hundreds of millions in venture capital. He's been married for 42 years and has five good-looking sons and five good-looking daughters-in-law.

As a reasonably informed voter, I am not aware of any true moment of crisis in his entire life. Instead of a compelling personal narrative that would explain his growing conservativism, he appears as an out of touch rich guy who makes $10,000 handshake bets, hangs out with NASCAR team owners, owns multiple Cadillacs, and pays a lower tax rate than most Americans. His political shifts therefore appear nothing more than callow political opportunism.

Romney avoids disaster

The results from Michigan are in. Romney won his home state by a score of 41%-38% over Santorum.

It is a result that perfectly fits with the story of the primary campaign so far. Romney won, but he didn't win by much, and he didn't inspire much confidence (or anything else, for that matter) while he was at it. He'll likely march his way to the nomination, but it will take a good while, and if Santorum/Gingrich can get out of each other's way, they might still stop him.

Despite his failings, he is a better general election candidate than a primary candidate, given the ever-increasing conservativism in the GOP electorate. Romney's task has been to move far enough to the right to win the nomination without alienating the . While he seems to be more or less succeeding at the first part, he is miserably failing at the second.

Here (fair warning; look at the y-axis) a graph of Romney's favorability ratings over the past 2 years. Since the start of the year, his net favorability rating (% who view him favorably minus % who view him unfavorably) has moved from +8.3% to -13.1%. That's a big drop.

Much of this drop has to do with the tone of his campaign. Much of the ad spending during the primaries has been negative attacks launched by the Romney campaign and his Super PAC. With the cycling of temporary frontrunners, Romney has had to launch multiple rounds of attacks, leading to a perception that his campaign is mostly negative. Which it is.

If he wins in Ohio next week, he'll have much more freedom to talk more about his 59 point economic plan, or his plan to slash income tax rates by 20%. If he loses, he'll have to continue funding his attack machine, driving down his ratings even further.

Cross-party primary voting

Michigan appears to be coming down to the wire. One poll released today has Santorum up by 1%, and the other released today shows Romney up by the same margin. The race, with its great potential to impact the rest of the primary campaign, will likely be decided by secondary factors. One factor that bears discussion, particularly with much of my readership being located in Ohio, is the issue of cross-party voting. In Michigan, as in Ohio, any voter is allowed to vote in either party's primary. The Santorum campaign has been using robo-calls to encourage Democrats to ask for a GOP ballot and vote for Santorum to stick it to Romney.


It would certainly be in the interest of the Democrats to see Romney lose in Michigan. And the race will likely be close enough that it wouldn't take too many mischievous union autoworkers to vote Republican to change the outcome. While Romney has been decrying such tactics in the past day, his record of admitting to voting in Democratic primaries in Massachusetts for the "weakest opponent for the Republican" undercuts his claim. So, given his personal history of doing the same thing, Romney deserves what he gets.

But I'm genuinely torn about whether or not voting in the other party's primary is an abuse of voting rights (disclosure: in 2000, my first official vote I ever cast was for John McCain, despite being a solid Democrat even then). On the one hand, it seems dishonest to say you're a supporter of one party when you're not. On the other, the parties are more or less able to make their own rules for primaries, and if they didn't want fake Republicans voting, they could change the rules to prevent it.

So I don't know what to recommend for Democrats and independents in Ohio and Michigan. It seems wrong to vote for the expressed purpose of sabotaging the other party, like Romney says he did in '92. But if, come the PA primary in April, there's a candidate who I think would be a better President than the others, I think I'd be ok with pulling the lever for him.

As far as tonight goes, if Romney loses but is able to point to Democratic shenanigans as an excuse, it might limit the effect of a Santorum win. I doubt that enough Democrats would be persuaded by the robocalls to make up for this cost, but we'll see. It's gonna be a long night; the last polls in Michigan close at 9pm ET, so there might be a late post tonight.

Why Michigan Matters

(note: sorry about the horse-race post)

Tomorrow, Michigan and Arizona have their primaries. The polling in each state indicates a likely Romney win in Arizona and a close finish in Romney's home state of Michigan. With these expectations set, Arizona won't matter in terms of bounce and/or impact on other races. Michigan, however, has a chance to have huge influence over the remainder of the primary season. There are two possible outcomes:

1. Romney wins, even narrowly. This blunts Santorum's momentum and gives Romney a bounce into Super Tuesday, one week later on March 6. He'll probably lose Georgia (to Gingrich), Tennessee and Oklahoma (to Santorum) regardless, but a win in Michigan will give him a decent shot at Ohio, along with likely wins in Massachusetts, Virginia and Vermont. and he'd probably be able to hold off Ron Paul in the caucuses in Idaho, Alaska, Wyoming and North Dakota. He re-establishes himself as the inevitable nominee. Like Obama in '08, he'd have a long primary season before he'd finally vanquish his foes, but with the eventual nomination in hand, he can kind of float above the fray, using the free media of the ongoing primary to rehabilitate his image and lay off the harshest attacks on his opponents.

2. Santorum beats Romney in Mitt's home state, where his father was a popular governor. Romney's aura of electability/inevitability is destroyed forever. He goes on to lose Ohio next week. Conservatives in Virginia, where only Romney and Paul are on the ballot, line up behind Paul to deny Romney a win. He finishes third in Georgia, Oklahoma and Tennessee and loses a couple caucus states to Paul. The race is blown wide open, and we don't know the name of the nominee until the convention in August.

So it'll be a big night. I still think Romney wins both states tomorrow and will be the eventual nominee, but I'm not nearly as confident now as I was in November.

Perfectly awful

Close your eyes (briefly... you still gotta read) and imagine the worst Republican candidate possible. What would be some of the characteristics of that candidate? Here's my guess at some main ones:

1. In an atmosphere of hatred from both sides (Tea Party and Occupy Wall Street) for the super-wealthy, he should have hundreds of millions of dollars.
2. It would be even better if he was born into money and influence. A self-made man, say a man born to parents of different races and given a funny name who writes a book and earns a few million, might inspire good feelings, but a man who was born at third base and thinks he hit a triple would really be a focus of ire.
3. Taking his money and doing something useful with it might make for a popular origin story. It would make him a more perfectly ridiculous candidate if he were to be a personification of corporate capitalism, required by law to be solely dedicated to making even more money.
4. Rather than letting his wealth be a tertiary bit of trivia in the campaign, he should constantly bring it up in increasingly ridiculous and tone-deaf ways, like "I'm also unemployed", "I like being able to fire people who provide services to me", "I'm not concerned about the very poor", or that his wife drives a "couple of cadillacs".
5. While a horrible personal history makes for an unappealing vessel, he and his campaign need to be really bad at the business of campaigning.
6. But beyond the optics of back-story and campaign theatrics, it's important that he speak out against popular practices like contraception, causing his standing amongst women to fall dramatically.
7. Lest any conservative actually be inspired by his superhuman ability to spout the the conservative talking point of the day, his rhetoric must be balanced with a long history of statements that he "is moderate, and my views are progressive."
8. History is not enough. We need new bits of evidence that he's not a true believer, like "If you just cut, if all you’re thinking about doing is cutting spending, as you cut spending you’ll slow down the economy."
9. For objective proof of his political impotence, he needs to finds himself locked in an existential struggle with Rick fucking Santorum.
10. Finally, we need to discuss his position on the issue that most animates his party's base. For the modern Republican Party, that issue is the individual health care mandate, which fueled the 2010 landslide. So our hypothetical worst candidate possible would have to be literally the one Republican out of the 35.9% of the entire country who are Republicans who is most tied to the individual mandate.

Santorum wins Iowa

Despite initial results showing an 8-vote win for Mitt Romney in Iowa, the official results, which were certified this morning after a careful examination of results from the precincts, shows in fact that Rick Santorum won by 34 votes. So Mitt Romney goes from an unprecedented sweep of Iowa and New Hampshire to a loss to a homophobe and a win in his own backyard.

That being said, he can still just about put the primary to bed by putting up a clear win in South Carolina on Saturday. What will be fascinating to watch over the next 2+ days is how the Iowa result is portrayed in the media and how it affects the results in South Carolina. On the one hand, Romney might get some negative press about the loss and see his numbers take a hit. On the other hand, much of Newt Gingrich's improvements in the polls in the past few days has been the result of conservatives coalescing behind him as the only "non-Romney" with a chance to stop the freight train, but now Santorum can point to an Iowa win as evidence that he too can be the standard bearer.

Once again, it'll be an interesting few days leading up to the voting.

Cain out; good news for Newt

Herman Cain suspended his campaign today. He said "suspended" so he can continue to raise money, but he's done. He says he will endorse a candidate "in the near future". Based on his recent appearance with Newt Gingrich at a "debate", as well as Newt's current status as frontrunner, makes Newt most likely to pick up a few more percentage points as a result of today's announcement.

He'll also become more likely to beat Romney. Cain being out of the running means the "anti-Romney" vote is split one fewer way, meaning Romney's amazingly-stable 20-25% in the polls less likely to hold up.

Romney will be the nominee

At tonight's CNBC debate, Rick Perry likely torpedoed both his own campaign and Herman Cain's. As a result, I will predict that by December 1 Newt Gingrich will be at least 2nd in the polls, if not 1st. More importantly, I would now project Mitt Romney to be the near-certain nominee.

Perry committed a huge blunder in the debate. He was attempting to discuss his plans to eliminate three cabinet departments, then couldn't name which three. He got Commerce and Education, but forgot the Energy Department.

If Romney, Gingrich, Huntsman, Santorum or Paul would have committed this mistake, it might not have been so bad for their chances. For Perry, however, the gaffe played into an already-established narrative that he's, to be blunt, too dumb to be President. This reinforcing nature of the gaffe is what makes it so fatal, just like Howard Dean's "I have a scream" moment killed him because it reinforced that he was unstable/angry or why Dan Quayle's "potatoe" gaffe defined his legacy.

It is, frankly, unacceptable for a Presidential candidate to not be able to rattle off every cabinet department, or at least the ones he plans to eliminate. Perry should have been able to catch himself, start a list of each department and arrive at the right one.

This gaffe will undoubtedly be run again and again on the news, and I think we can all predict with a fair degree of certainty what Saturday Night Live will open with this week. I predict that this will lead to a discussion of the intellectual requirements to be President, and that this (along with the sexual harassment stuff) will end Cain's reign at/near the top.

So why Gingrich? Truly, it's largely a process of elimination. Perry, Cain and Bachmann have already had their shot (and fail the intelligence test), Paul's too out there, Santorum and Huntsman too unknown, and Romney's Romney, so it's Gingrich's turn. He certainly meets the intelligence requirement. He's a true conservative, with 1994 Contract with America credentials. Perry and Cain are going down, and voters won't settle on Romney yet, so it's Newt's turn.

Does Newt have a chance of being the nominee? I truly doubt it. With the intensified attention that will come with improving in the polls, people will remember about his "right-wing social engineering" remark, his serial affairs, his ethics issues that led to reprimand by the House, etc. But for now, when poll respondents only remember the 1994 revolution and his recent debate performances, he'll have a rise.

But after his inevitable fall, we'll be left with Romney. I think Santorum's social stances are too extreme even for the modern Republican Party, and he's just not that likeable. Huntsman is too moderate/reasonable. So they're left with Romney. As previously discussed, I'm OK with that.

Mitt's "anti-Romney" problem

One of the main narratives assigned to the Republican primary season is the quest to be the "anti-Romney", the candidate who gains the most support among conservatives who think Romney is too moderate (and/or too Mormon, depending on your view of the Christian Right). With Romney running for the Republican nomination non-stop for the past 5 years, voters have already made their minds up on him, and his overall support is unlikely to change much, at least until actual primary and caucus results start shaking up the race.

The polling data pretty much supports this view. Despite big shake-ups to the race (Huckabee dropping out, the rise and fall of Trump and Bachmann (and Perry?), the rise of Herman Cain), Romney's support in polls has been pretty steady in the high-teens to mid-twenties.

His support is high enough to dominate a field of candidates who split the conservative votes among themselves. The goal of all the other candidates is to consolidate the anti-Romney vote behind him-/herself, climbing above Romney's steady but beatable support. Romney wins by keeping the field closely competitive with each other, allowing his more moderate voter base to carry him to victory. He is greatly helped by additional conservatives in the race; Sarah Palin entering the race would probably deliver Romney the nomination. She would pull enough conservatives from Bachmann and Perry in Iowa that Romney would likely win there. Following that up with a win in New Hampshire, where he absolutely dominates the polls, would pretty much end the race. In the past 9 election cycles, which more or less define the modern primary era, no Republican has won the nomination without winning either Iowa or New Hampshire, and wins there would coalesce support behind him as the most electable candidate. There would be immense pressure from anti-Romney conservatives on weaker conservative candidates to get out of the race before Iowa to keep that from happening.

However, the emergence of another moderate candidate, such as NJ Gov. Chris Christie, or the ascension to viability of former Utah Gov. Jon Huntsman, would likely devastate Romney's campaign. If either is able to peel 5-10% from Romney's total, he sinks from frontrunner to also-ran.

Christie will reportedly announce his decision in the next few days. We'll know a lot more about the shape of the Republican race, and Mitt Romney's chances, when he does.

The GOP candidates, Part 5: Mitt Romney

Former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney is most likely to be the nominee. The main reason is that Republican voters hate Barack Obama so much that at the end of the day they'll hold their noses and vote for the candidate they perceive to be best positioned to beat him. Especially given Perry's debate performances and his position in head-to-head polls recently, Romney's apparently the most likely winner in the general election, so they'll give him the nomination.

I think a Romney nomination would be a gift to Obama's re-election bid, as Romney fits right into Obama's previously-discussed strategy of showing the Republicans will attack the things they used to support, leaving the government gridlocked and incapable of doing anything. On issue after issue, Mitt Romney has lurched significantly to the right, as has the rest of his party.

Health Care
In 1994, when he ran for Senate against Ted Kennedy, Romney said he would support Sen. John Chafee's (R-RI) health care bill, which included a federal mandate to buy health insurance. He later, as Governor, put in place "RomneyCare", which includes a mandate to provide insurance.

This election, he attacks health care reform as strongly as any of his Republican colleagues. With Republican voters whipped into a frenzy over ObamaCare, to do anything else would end his chances of nomination.

Cap-and-Trade
In 2005, Romney was strongly involved with negotiations to set up the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative, a cap-and-trade system among New England states. Initially, he supported the measure, saying "I think it is good business" and "we can effectively create incentives to help stimulate a sector of the economy and at the same time not kill jobs."

This time around, he says "Cap and trade effectively constitutes an enormous, hidden tax on the American people and American businesses. It will lead to higher joblessness and make a bad economic situation even worse."

Abortion
When running for the Senate in 1994, Romney stated "I believe that abortion should be safe and legal in this country." When running for Governor in 2002, he said "I will preserve and protect a woman's right to choose, and am devoted and dedicated to honoring my word in that regard."

In 2008 and 2012, he has repeatedly said he is pro-life and would support overturning Roe v Wade.

Campaign Finance
In 1994, Romney advocated strict campaign spending limits and the abolition of PACs. In 2002, he suggested public financing of campaigns through a 10% tax on private contributions to privately-funded candidates.

In 2008, he said "Do we really want government telling us when we can engage in political speech, and what form it can take". He has since been strongly opposed to McCain-Feingold and other efforts to limit campaign contributions and spending. Recently, he has received rather shady large contributions from corporations which form, give him a check for lots of money, then close.

Gay Rights
In 1994, Romney wrote a letter (.pdf) to Log Cabin Republicans saying he supported gay and lesbian soldiers being allowed serve openly.

He recently said "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" should have been kept in place.

In the interest of brevity, I'll stop there, but he has a similar record of strong right-ward turns on issues such as gun control, immigration policy/amnesty, capital gains taxes and others.

Vast majorities of voters agree that Washington is broken. Parties that used to be able to compromise with each other are now unable to do so. A Mitt Romney nomination would be great news for Obama and Democrats because he personifies the truth that the separation between the parties is the result of the Republican Party tilting heavily to the right.

Next up, we'll get back to discussing why Obama's recent strategy of pushing for tax increases on the rich is not "playing to his base", as his critics claim.