Tagg and Matt Romney, two of former GOP Presidential candidate Mitt Romney's sons, have reported that their father had no interest in running for President. Mitt's wife Ann commented on "The View" that she as reluctant for her husband to run again.
Romney had been running for the past seven years, but not because he wanted to. He ran because he believed that he had to. Then again, believing that you have to do anything is not really believing, is it?
In 2008, John McCain nailed Romney in the New Hampshire debates as the candidate who represented "real change" because of his change on domestic policies from Boston to Washington. McCain snidely maligned him, yet Romney barely responded besides an aside of "That's not nice." I wanted Romney to win in 2008 after both Ron Paul and Tom Tancredo stepped out of the race because McCain was an unpredictable moderate. Yet like Romney in 2012, McCain's ground game got bigger and better over time, and he won the nomination.
This is the conservative dilemma. They view government as at best a necessary evil, having more faith in traditions, the private sector, and individual liberty. These men and women have no interest in profiting from government, and so they fear that they will profit very little in government. They step into office seeking to cut spending and limit the scope of the state, but inevitably they run into the bureaucrats and civil servants who work within the inner workings of government. Mostly Democrats, these "Fat White Pink Boys" as defined by MSNBC's Joe Scarborough, have no desire to see the government shrink, along with their paychecks, or worse a big pink slip emerging in the near future.
In "There No Such Thing as a Free Lunch", Milton Friedman referenced Richard Nixon, also explained the near impossibility of getting rid of government programs. "Tea testers", for example would be an easy program to get rid of, but if a handful of Congressmen raise protests against scrapping the agency, then the President cannot raise the political capital or time to pursue the interest. Such is the case in every administration. One exception, Luis Fortuno of Puerto Rico, cut spending and limited the state to such bare limits only because the Puerto Rican government did not have enough to make payroll for the first month of his term.
Yet someone has to head the "ship of state", and someone has to speak up for government as a limited entity, one which has its place, but not its place all over the place. This battle can seem like a losing one, but someone has to do it. George Washington epitomized this reluctance. He took the oath of office because he was so widely regarded, so popular, with such integrity. His unwillingness to do the job ironically enough made him the most qualified, a country gentleman who refused to be crowned king, who wanted to go home and be left alone to his family and estates. The uneasy fusion of skill and will, with just enough thrill, is a difficult combination to find within a man. Romney was not one of them.
Mitt Romney brought much-needed centrism to Massachusetts. The moment that he signed "RomneyCare" into law, however, he set off a conflict that put him at odds with the national conference, one of the chief reasons why I opposed his nomination.
He vetoed eight hundred bills, yet the heavily Democratic legislature passed seven hundred them in spite of his veto. Unfortunately, he could not run on this accomplishment without offending the centrists and independents in the country whose vote he needed.
I recall his interview with Piers Morgan on CNN. He seemed so out of place, out of sorts, unfit for the office because he felt unfit within himself. The interview with Sean Hannity was even worse, a Presidential candidate who was debating himself as much as he was answering questions. His ungentle stride with his legs crossed just oozed discomfort and discomfit.
He supported gun control in Massachusetts, then he went out of his way to support the Second Amendment. His personal views were pro-life, but he respected his pro-choice Bay State constituency, yet he also wrote an OpEd for the Boston Globe detailing why he vetoed embryonic stem-cell research.
The greatest inconsistency for this Presidential candidate was not his "flip-flops" on social or even fiscal issues. The greatest and the worst flip-flop for Romney was the flip of his head and the flop of his heart. It was crystal clear to me from the beginning that Romney was "all-head" and "no-heart" for this race. He did it out of a religious-patriotic sense of obligation, but this country needs people who "want" to run for office.
The GOP Party elites paid more attention to who had the money and the ground game instead of the candidate who had the record and the rhetoric to win. The Party elites have got to get over the allure of money, power, and prestige. A populist, middle-class message is the conservative track to take. No more outsiders, no more businessmen who make money but do not make the impression that they care about "the little guy".
I commend Romney for reaching out to black and Hispanic voters. He has done so much more than many other GOP candidates. Yet no matter how much he said, nor how much he spent, there was not reconciling the inner turmoil of a candidate who did not really want the job.
This is both good news and bad news for the GOP. The brand is not bad, but the party needs a better standard-bearer, one who says and does what he believes, and one whom we can believe what he says and does. Not just a technocrat who can manage a company, nor even someone who has previous executive political experience, but someone who can connect with voters because he (or she) is connected within himself and connected to the mission he is seeking to fulfill.
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