Teddy Kennedy was one of the greatest senators in the history of our country but, when he decided to run for president, he couldn’t articulate a reason why he wanted the job. People are beginning to notice the same thing about Mitt Romney. What’s his motivation? It can’t be anything Obama has done because Romney ran for president four years ago when Obama was merely a low-seniority member of the U.S. Senate. It can’t be the issues, because Romney flips his positions on issues to fit whatever constituency he’s facing at that moment. It appears Romney is running for president because being too rich to work is boring the crap out of him. If he has another reason, I can’t discern it.
In any case, former Bush speechwriter Michael Gerson has no idea why Romney wants to be president. And he thinks Romney sucks as a candidate, especially when compared to the Frothy One.
The former Pennsylvania senator possesses strengths that neatly fit some of Romney’s weaknesses. Santorum combines a deeply held social conservatism with an authentic blue-collar appeal. Romney has trouble competing in either category. While Santorum is very conservative, he avoids being a conservative caricature. He was one of the Senate’s main advocates of global health programs and a champion of faith-based anti-poverty efforts.
There’s a certain truthiness to these observations, but let’s not overdo it, Michael. Santorum has some blue-collar appeal, but it’s limited by him being the biggest sanctimonious ass in American politics. And can there be a bigger caricature than to have your name redefined as the sometime unfortunate byproduct of a popular sex act involving fecal matter and lube?
But, yeah, anything is better than watching Mitt Romney try to win the vote of a unionized auto worker.
Gerson continues:
And Santorum has an additional advantage over Gingrich as the anti-Romney. The GOP establishment — party types and elected Republicans — viewed the prospect of Gingrich’s nomination with undisguised horror. Having worked with him, they did everything they could to defeat him — a revealing commentary. Santorum is hardly the party favorite, but establishment objections are many degrees less heated.
I’d like to make this more succinct and say that, despite John McCain’s desire to saw Santorum in half with a Vietnamese tent-pole, Sticky Ricky is still several times more popular in DC than Newt Gingrich. Not that that really matters:
And Romney is unable to directly exploit Santorum’s main electoral weakness — his occasional, off-putting relish for the culture wars. Santorum has gone out of his way to question the role of women in the workplace and in the military, and emphasize his opposition to contraception. “One of the things I will talk about,” he said in October, “that no president has talked about before, is, I think, the dangers of contraception in this country.”
I don’t know if Gerson has noticed but opposing contraception is now a mainstream Republican position. Romney can’t exploit a weakness like that. He can’t get to the right of that. But he can play along.
Romney believes in nothing. Maybe not even himself.
