This past Saturday, Republican activists and voters in each of Washington’s 49 legislative districts met in homes, schools, and churches around the state to participate in the 2012 GOP precinct caucuses, which took place less than a hundred hours before Super Tuesday.
I stopped by one of the Bellevue caucus sites to observe, and had the pleasure of being able to talk to more than a dozen attendees about their experience. All of the Republican activists I spoke with were very friendly and thoughtful. Most told me that they voted for Mitt Romney, because they saw him as being able to make the most credible case against President Obama in November – though I also met supporters of Ron Paul and Rick Santorum.
Although Romney won convincingly here (he received more votes than Rick Santorum and Newt Gingrich combined), in other states (like Alaska) he has only prevailed because his rivals split the rest of the vote. Having so many opponents makes Romney’s campaign look stronger than it really is.
If the Republican contest were a two-person race, like the drawn-out fight for delegates between Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton in 2008, would Romney still be winning?
Recent polling consistently shows that more voters have a negative opinion of Romney than a positive one, and anecdotal evidence suggests that many principled conservatives simply don’t trust him – as exemplified by the blunt critique of Romney that Tea Party Nation founder Judson Phillips delivered to The Boston Herald the night before Super Tuesday.
“He blew it,” Phillips told the paper. “It’s like we tell our kids — always tell the truth, otherwise we won’t know when to believe you. He’s taken two positions on everything except how to spell his name. It doesn’t matter what he’d say, none of us would believe it.”
Phillips isn’t the only one who has noticed that Romney sounds different depending on which time of the day he’s talking. Several websites have sprung up that compare Romney’s statements on issues with other statements he’s made on the same issues since he started running for president around six years ago – like MultipleChoiceMitt.com. All of their statements are sourced.
For instance, on Nov. 23, 2011, Romney was quoted in the Washington Post as saying, “The reason I’m the guy to take that Republican banner and take that message is because I understand the economy. It’s in my wheelhouse. This is not something I need to get briefed on by Timothy Geithner.”
But just days later, on Dec. 7, 2011, The Washington Examiner asked him if he supported U.S. and IMF intervention to help Europe resolve its debt crisis. Specifically, the Examiner’s Tim Carney asked, “What U.S. aid would you be willing to provide to Europe?” Romney’s response was as follows: “Not much, because Europe is capable of solving Europe’s problems. I actually think that — I mean, I’m not an economist by training, but what limited understanding of the economy I have suggests it’s very difficult to cobble together Greece, Ireland, Italy and Germany with the same monetary policy and highly disparate fiscal policies. I don’t know how they hold it together.”
In this example, we can see that in the span of only two weeks, Romney told one prominent newspaper, “I understand the economy. It’s in my wheelhouse.” Conversely, a few days later, when asked to analyze an important global economics issue, he prefaced his answer with a perplexing disclaimer (“I’m not an economist by training”) and added that his “understanding of the economy” was “limited”. Huh?
Romney is hardly the first presidential candidate to put his foot in his mouth, and he won’t be the last. But it sure seems like he stumbles over his own words an awful lot. And he can’t seem to keep his positions straight. What does he really believe? Where does he really stand? We don’t know.
Though I disagree with Santorum on just about everything, it seems to me that he is more authentic and principled than Romney. He says what he believes, and I appreciate that. He does a good job of articulating what the right wing’s agenda really is.
If he was Romney’s only rival, he might be running even with Romney right now. Unfortunately for his campaign, Gingrich has been resisting calls to quit the race. Gingrich is clearly in a weaker position than Santorum, so if his goal is to see a principled conservative get the Republican nomination, he should bow out. But he seems determined to stay in. The longer he sticks to that decision, the slimmer Santorum’s chances become for catching up to Romney.
Andrew Villeneuve, a 2005 Redmond High graduate, is the founder and executive director of the Northwest Progressive Institute, a Redmond-based grassroots organization. Villeneuve can be reached at andrew@nwprogressive.org.
