Is Massachusetts Mitt’s excuse?
posted at 10:25 am on January 5, 2012 by Karl
At RedState, Leon H. Wolf would prefer Rick Perry and Jon Huntsman as the GOP presidential nominee. Yet, he argues that Mitt Romney, “if he were to win the nomination, *** would be our most conservative nominee since at least 1988.” Although I think he validly notes some are overreacting to the probability of a Romney nomination, Wolf is likely overstating the case for Mitt. Moreover, what grabbed my attention was one of Wolf’s asides:
[I]f I had my druthers I would prefer someone like Rick Perry who has been more or less consistently conservative for a relatively long time (an easier feat in Texas than Massachusetts, no doubt, but that is beside the point).
It is not entirely beside the point, as Romney supporters will defend his record as the product of trying to govern a Blue state like Massachusetts. That’s one reason why it’s worth reading the response from the American Spectator’s Jim Antle — a Bay State native who voted for Romney thrice:
So I know something about settling and political reality. I also know that over that period Romney went from being someone who emphasized he was an independent during the Reagan years to trying to be a full-spectrum Reagan conservative, someone who described himself as a “progressive” in this decade to a “four-legged stool” movement guy, someone who with equal conviction defended both sides of the abortion debate, did not just flip-flop on abortion once but zig-zagged for over nearly two decades, and has generally acted as if none of this ever happened.
That pretty much tracks the standard oppo research on Romney. Antle is not alone, either. Michael Widmer, president of the nonpartisan Massachusetts Taxpayers Foundation, says Romney did little to make state government small or simpler during his tenure as governor. Romney raised revenues with a host of fee hikes and tax levies. The state payroll increased by 3,000 workers, or 2.6 percent, under Romney. Mitt also floated the unprecedented notion of empowering the state revenue commissioner to adjust the tax filings of certain corporations who used complicated transactions and out-of-state shelters to avoid paying their “fair share” of state taxes. And there was Romneycare, which Mitt still defends.
Maybe all the critics from Massachusetts are simply being unrealistic. After all, Jake — it’s Massachusetts. But people who live there have some frame of reference, don’t they? Moreover, Romney does not fare well in comparison to other Republican governors in Mass. The CATO Institute’s Fiscal Policy Report Card for governors — which looks at proposals as well as results — shows that in the 1990s, William Weld got a high “B” and third-best score overall. In 2000, Paul Cellucci got an “A” and the highest score overall. In 2002, Jane Swift managed a low “B,” even in tough economic times. Yet in 2006, Mitt Romney could only manage a “C.” That’s an unimpressive grade, even on the Massachusetts curve.
Blowback
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Thanks for this. Lots of helpful links.
Y-not on January 5, 2012 at 11:23 AM
Was 2010 enough of a sea-change, though; is Obama-style politicking enough to turn a moderate red? I don’t know, certainly, what’s in Romney’s heart. And that’s really the question.
We all look back with hindsight. Strong fiscal conservatives can say, “Yeah, but” to a litany of issues with the current crop of candidates. But what was the overall mood and direction of the country at the time, and what would have been the likely result of fiscal conservatism on a state relative to what was going on around them? Would Indiana, for example, have lost a lot of tax base to Illinois if they tried to roll back collective bargaining on state employees while Chicago was throwing money at them hand over fist?
I’m not making excuses, I just think it’s possible that as liberals have moved left, conservatives have moved right. Should we, in 2012, limit our choice for the GOP nominee to someone who’s always been from the fiscal conservative wing (not that there’s anyone currently running and sane actually from that category), or is it reasonable to select someone who has moved into that category as a result of lessons learned (hopefully)? And would a President Romney actually say, “I’ll end Obamacare (or insert your favorite fiscal topic here)” and then ignore it once in office?
BKeyser on January 5, 2012 at 11:28 AM
Exactly. And the answer is NO, he wouldn’t. The idea that Romney will “go rogue” once he gets into office and start acting like a Democrat is ludicrous. I’m all for holding his feet to the fire but first we have to win the White House. It’s that simple.
cicerone on January 5, 2012 at 11:33 AM
The issue isn’t whether Mitt would sign a repeal of O-care; I think he would… in a first term, anyway. The issue is whether he would spend any political capital to do it.
Karl on January 5, 2012 at 12:13 PM
Yeah, I get that. Peronsally, I think we should be more focused on winning the Senate than the White House. Both are important, of course, but a President Romney/Santorum/Perry won’t budge Leader Reid.
BKeyser on January 5, 2012 at 12:37 PM
I live in mass. Mitt getting a c is good. weld,celluci,swift
although i voted for them were all to the left of Mitt Romney. I actually liked WELD the best-but hr really was a RINO
gerrym51 on January 5, 2012 at 12:57 PM
i lived in MA for both gov. romney and gov. weld. weld was the more principled conservative of the two . what he accomplished proves it- weld was a very effective Republican executive.
he killed his predecessor mike dukakis’s pre-romeycare romneycare healthcare for all legislation- you know instead of signing an over reaching unconstitutional bill into law and bragging and outright lying about. dukakis was a miserable typical liberal failure , leaving office with a state with junk bond status, 10% unemployment, a deficit of 1.5 billion dollars and spiraling taxes. weld balanced the budget, reduced taxes and then reformed successfully both unemployment and medicaid. he actually believed in small government unlike mitty-kins. and he did something about it resulting in lower unemployment,lower taxes, and a government surplus. mitty left the state with romenycare, more onerous taxes he liked to call “fees” and he gifted the entire country with obamacare. romney helped engineer the dire mess we’re sitting in the middle of.
i’d vote for weld for office in a hot minute without reservation- but i’m going to need a lot of drugs and barrels of liquor to have to pull that lever for president romney. make no mistake, i’ll do it via any means necessary- anything to kill off the boy king- but i won’t delude myself into thinking mittenz is something he is not- a conservative.
it’s deflection really by mitbots-every other republican governor of blue MA has to be more of a RINO and less of a conservative than st. mitt of the hairdo no matter what their record . mitt was worse than a RINO as governor- he was a democrat and a socialist. weld was no such thing and his term in office proves it.
mittens on January 5, 2012 at 2:47 PM
Mittens! I have to exclaim when you say Weld was the more principled of the two. Yipes. But not the better family man by conservative principles. Eek. I think you are fooled by Weld’s charisma and personality. I saw him, met him last year, he lives in NYC now, and is a Republican NY -er, came here to MA for Scott for an event in frosty January. Total pro choicer. Romney is American Traditional, center right, not a Rino, that is derogatory. Look at his family if you want to know, with his own life, he walks the walk.
The Dukakis health care you mention, was a messy law that was supposed to be implemented and ultimately led to the Romney health insurance plan. Those crazy MA referendums, like the one that we voted for our tax rate to decrease, but they only have to implement them incrementally, they are very subjective and controlled by the liberal legislature. Supposedly we all voted and the liberals won, that we should have Universal Health care which really was left hanging all that time, and the legislature continued to think they should create plans for it.
You remember they would say Universal Health Care, but to a lot of them it meant Free Euro Style health care…they wanted that in a state that had 90% coverage already. The legislature put forth a plan to create that Public Option and for several months was threatening to do that, because they could over ride any veto that he made. They thought the 90% of us who had great health insurance plans should give them up for this. Romney stopped them from doing it, and he negotiated in good faith with them, showing them they did not need single payer to cover 8% of the people. The answer was to provide smaller, affordable plans that the 8% could afford. Well, it’s been ruined since then because the liberals have gone batty, since a small plan is not equal to a cadillac plan, and then they still have the problems of medicaid and the free care that doesn’t go away, and Duval Patrick has only presided over wanting to see it get worse, for his own political purposes. And when they propose solutions they are always worse than Obamacare.
The fees you mention are only paid by people who use the services, and it helps control who has to pay for those things. Don’t use the RMV? don’t pay anything. A lot of those departments were really scaled back by Romney, and a lot of state employees were let go. Which is why you read about the terrible fees in the Globe.
So, Mittens, wait until after the voting to start mixing the cocktails, so that you vote for whom ever the republican candidates is, and you don’t make any mistakes. You don’t really have to identify with Romney to hire him as CEO for four years. I realize you are gone from here, you were tired of fighting the good fight, but Romney turned the state around, and the efforts he made kept us growing after he left, so that we did not have the unemployment rate other state have. And NH, they don’t either, a lot of them have a job down here.
And don’t forget: Weld gave us Cellucci, and Cellucci gave us Jane Swift. Which is why we needed Romney really badly.
Fleuries on January 5, 2012 at 9:01 PM
“Romney faced a state legislature in which Democrats held 85 percent of the seats.” (Wikipedia) He brought a $3 billion deficit back to balance.
Excuse? For what? Not vetoing the whole idea and being overridden? I don’t think Romney needs an excuse. He’s not in this to please the tea party. He’s proven that he’s the most competent candidate in this race, and if the others can’t organize or raise money and do what it takes, then they don’t deserve to be the nominee.
The ones who need an excuse are the tea party who failed to get behind someone, organize and raise money and then run from candidate to candidate like kids trying to tip over a canoe. They have shown themselves to be the real amateurs, and they’ll deliver this election to Obama if they don’t wise up. You can’t win just by opposing people and support those who share your pet causes, you’ve got to have competent candidates unlike Sharon Angle and Christine O’Donnell, and have some appeal to swing voters.
Neither Gingrich or Santorum prepared ahead of time. They just counted on their oratorical skills to deliver them the nomination. That worked for Obama, but it won’t work for them, especially this time.
flataffect on January 7, 2012 at 3:08 AM