Romney Still Carries Baggage

Unlike four years ago, Mitt Romney has won in both Iowa and New Hampshire. It now appears that the GOP nomination is his to lose, and it’s hard to imagine how that could happen. He’s got money and momentum.

But with all the excitement and hoopla now surrounding the Romney campaign, it’s important to not lose sight of the baggage he still carries, the incredible weakness of the opponents he is dispatching with ease, and how difficult defeating President Obama will be.

Mitt Romney has never been able to excite the electorate. He's wooden and aloof as a campaigner. He is vulnerable to the charge that he's unprincipled and a flip-flopper, a case that his GOP primary opponents are making in a way that Obama will savagely exploit in the fall campaign.

To put it bluntly, it is not clear if Romney stands for anything other than getting elected on Nov. 6, 2012. And he's prone to gaffes. His comment a few days ago that he likes to be able to fire people pushes political stupidity beyond the breaking point. It's devastating because it implies a sort of heartlessness that most Americans abhor.

And, while it is the case that Romney appears to be well on his way to being the last GOP aspirant left standing, it's the case that his opponents are a joke — a veritable cavalcade of clowns. Thus, Romney appears to be a giant but only when compared to the dwarfs who oppose him.

With the exception of moderate conservative and thoughtful, Jon Huntsman, who bet everything on New Hampshire and lost badly, the rest of Romney's opponents have caused the Economist Magazine to recently opine, “something has gone badly wrong with the party of Abraham Lincoln, Theodore Roosevelt, and Ronald Reagan.”

Over the past few years the Republican party has lurched far to the right. And those who have opposed Romney in Iowa and New Hampshire are extremists who are obsessed with issues like abortion, gay marriage and gun control. In addition, they hold views on immigration, taxation, energy, the debt and deficit, global warming and foreign policy that a substantial majority of the American people find to be looney.

That is why Obama leads all Republican challengers in current polling. It’s extraordinary when you think about it. Under normal circumstances a president with an economy in the toilet stands no chance of reelection.

Whether Mitt Romney can reconstruct the Republican Humpty-Dumpty remains to be seen.

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