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cloudboy -> RE: Andrew Sullivan & The Daily Beast OH PEW! (10/9/2012 10:05:36 PM)
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I've been reading a lot about Romney the past week. I think he's the best Republican candidate to win the nomination since either Nixon or Eisenhower, not that he is comparable or similar to them. The best thing about him is that he's really not an ideological Republican, and he won the Presidential nomination by default. The base never took to him, ever. He had tepid support at the Republican convention and actually lost ground in the polls afterward.
These are actually good signs. Its a small miracle that a Rockefeller, moderate Republican won the nomination at all. He has a track record of bipartisanship, thinking outside the box, and wanting to solve problems. He makes a good impression on the people who work with him. He does not have a rigid sense of policy.
What's puzzling is where does he actually stand on issues? As Governor of Massachusetts he was one person and in the Republican primaries he was another. His real self became more evident during the debate, the self that he had to hide during the primaries b/c the base would have rejected him for not lowering taxes and being proudly bi-partisan in passing MASS health care law. (He's also an environmentalist at heart, too.)
Although he looks like a great candidate to get the US economy going, when he was present with John McCain in 2007 in a Republican summit meeting on how to handle the impending economic collapse of the US, he was mainly silent on what to do and had no action plan or recommendation at the time.
Here's one quote from the New York Times Magazine that really stood out about him:
Everyone thought at the time that Romney's success in forging a bipartisan compromise on health care was actually a thing he would ultimately run on, not run away from.
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