Reviewing Romney's Run

Well Mitt Romney has been out of the Presidential race for a couple of weeks now but I’d like to briefly list some of my thoughts on his campaign. Now I have written some things on the blog before about Mr. Romney and the prospect of a Mormon serving as President of the United States. Now of course I am a Mormon and to be honest I would like to see a fellow member of my faith attain the presidency. It would be a milestone, not on the level of having a women, a black man, or even a Catholic in the office, but considering that Mormons were once driven out of the country, it would symbolize that we’ve come a long way. However the Mormon I’d like to see in the White House would have to be pretty special, he’d have to be worth all the crap the religion would go through for his (or less likely her) being in the oval office. Mitt Romney is simply not worth that, though his father George might have been.

Romney got off to a wrong start, he tried to reinvent himself in a way that didn’t seem fully sincere. He would be what ever he felt he needed to be in any given state in order to win, and ultimately that meant a lot of second and third place finishes. He was never authentic in this race, though the Mitt of the 1990’s running against Ted Kennedy certainly was, and the Mitt who ran the 2002 Olympics was defiantly in his element, proving himself to be one of the great administrators of our time. However Mr. Romney chose not to run as a moderate, but as a conservative. He chose to cow-tow to the religious right, a group that could never fully accept him, and to de-emphasis some of the things that could have truly made him an attractive candidate, such as his ability to win in uber-liberal Massachusetts and the health care plan he had instituted there. Of course universal health care is an evil phrase among most conservatives so he dropped it.

The way Romney handled his Mormonism was in some ways good. He indicated that while the faith of course influenced his personal conceptions of morality, he would not take marching orders from Salt Lake City. I never understood the fears of those who thought he would be an autonimuton for the Church hierarchy, I mean what evil orders where they expecting him to receive, use the military to force the baptism of the American citizenry, I mean come on. Mitt Romney did pander to religious interests thought there was nothing distinctly Mormon about the way he did it, he knew he had the Mormon vote (winning 89% of the Republican primary vote in Utah), so he spent his time groveling for the approval of the Evangelical constituency, something Mike Huckabee screwed him over on.

Anyway Romney’s gone now from the political scene, and considering the bridges he burned in his often negative campaign its unfeasible that he’ll ever be back. Now I suppose the question is, which one of those five son’s of his will become governor of Missouri and run unsuccessfully in 2048.