Mitt Romney sometimes seems like a lousy candidate for President --certainly he and his campaign have stumbled badly at times -- but I think that if you look at him in the context of the Republican Party, they are lucky to have him. He is about the best the Republican Party can do, seriously. Consider:
• A candidate has to be a nutcase conservative to survive the Republican primaries, yet only a moderate could win the general election. Romney can be both with equal conviction, and as a former Republican Governor of a very blue state, he has some background to support either. Even so, he struggled to get through the primary.
• Romney is a good salesman. He managed to sell his switch to moderate Republican to some independents without losing the hard case right-wingers, even after his campaign spokesman said that was what he would do.
• He has convinced evangelicals to vote against the only Christian in the race.
• He has a built-in constituency – Mormons – who will vote for him by a huge margin and give money and time to his campaign.
• He is intelligent and articulate.
• He can win a debate even when the facts are against him.
• He manages to avoid specifics that can be attacked politically and sells it as bipartisanship with a straight face.
• The man has no scruples about what he says. Whatever it takes.
• Consider the alternatives, in something like decreasing order of viability: Pawlenty, Perry, Santorum, Gingrich, Huntsman, Bachmann, Cain, Trump. Palin maybe should be in there, just ahead of Bachmann. That’s a horrible field. Obviously, it isn’t easy to find a Republican candidate who can survive the primaries who isn’t out-and-out crazy.
It is just hard for me to imagine anymore what a viable Republican candidate for President would even look like. Anyone truly crazy enough to believe in this party will get killed in the general election. A true moderate will be shouted down and chased away. The Romney solution – a guy with no specific policies and no philosophy who can sell different versions of himself to different crowds – is better than I thought they would do. With less than a week to go, he still has a chance, which is pretty remarkable.
It’s the party, not the candidate. There is a reason that Democrats have better candidates: you don’t have to be batshit crazy or pathologically dishonest to be one. If Republicans don’t like Romney as a candidate, I would love to see them go with a true believer next time. Then they’ll know what a terrible candidate is.
Rick Santorum is still young. Oh please oh please oh please.