You know, Romney really is not that charismatic. Sure, he looks pretty enough. But he almost always sounds as though he’s addressing a bunch of vice-presidents back at Bain Capital. And the speech really didn’t break much new ground (although these things rarely do).
Cheryl Cronin on NECN said that Romney’s speech basically acknowledges that the 2006 election will be run on Democratic issues: education, health care, and jobs. That’s a good point, and probably quite accurate. And what it means is this: if the Democrats can find a really good candidate in 2006 (is it Reilly? more on that here), and if they can put forth a convincing vision on those issues, we should be able to beat this guy.
But it won’t be easy. Romney may be bland, but it’s not necessarily easy to run against bland – he’s pretty, he’s non-threatening, and he talks a good "moderate" game on issues that people care about. Plus, although we’re glad that Romney’s plan to Republicanize the state legislature failed, it remains the case that some may find comfort in having a Republican Governor to act as some sort of a check against an overwhelmingly Democratic legislature – especially because 14 years later the people of MA are used to Republicans in the corner office.
We’d love to hear your thoughts on the speech, and on what we need to do to have a Democrat delivering that speech in January of 2007.
It seems to me like Romney should be toast in 06. I mean it just embarassing to have a governor be so deferential and supportive to a presidential campaign that insults his state time and again. I’m thinking lots of Romney-Bush montages featuring Bush’s “greatest hits” when talking about Massachusetts should be enough to do him in. I don’t have a problem with a Republican as governor (though most years I prefer the Democrat), but where is his pride and loyalty? Would it have been so horrible to stick up for the state he is supposed to represent once in a while?
Romney’s speech was one of those ‘here are a bunch of promises’ speeches that small-government Republicans generally hate. Of course that is not likely a problem for him here in blue MA. The legislature should probably try to steal his thunder — take one of these issues and draft up some legislation with a poison pill. Something that Dems want anyway but Romney will refuse to compromise on so they’ll have to pass it over his veto. If the Democrats can get him to actually veto one of his ‘own’ proposals, they could certainly cast him as one of those typical say-one-thing-do-another pols.As for the election, the Democrats seem to be taking O’Brien’s loss in ’02 very personally. They are trying to learn from their (copious) mistakes and I think you’ll see a better Democratic turnout in the suburbs if they actually follow through on their plans. Reilly, if he ends up being the nominee, will obviously need to have some coaches, but John Kerry’s got a rolodex of handlers a mile long and a good reason to be pissed at Mittens.
BOOOORRRRRING!And that was probably on purpose. Mitt is going to run an ’06 campaign as a dull place-holder who’s not going to run things into the ground. Who knows? He might succeed.The way to run against that is with a candidate who doesn’t have such low expectations of our state. OK, so we’ve got lower unemployment than the national average, but folks are still underemployed, especially recent college grads. UMass has been gutted. Mitt’s proposing an inadequate health plan that doesn’t confront the real problem, which is the pooling of risk. We can’t do better than this crap?Yup, boring. But if Reilly can get some serious bling-bling from Bechtel, he’ll be tough to beat. Although he’s pretty boring too.
Ha ha!DSC Chair Phil Johnston’s response (in part):
I’ve grown more skeptical of the “check the legislature” theory as a response to Democratic control. I think that it made sense when Finneran was running the show. But if those suburbanites and Cape Codders who voted in droves for Romney dislike the legislature so much, why did they vote in huge numbers to retain liberal members of the state Senate last November when they were challenged by Republicans? None of those races was even close!I think we’ll be pleasantly surprised that exorcising the ghost of Finneran will pay dividends beyond 2004.