I have no idea how they expect this to work:
Rep. Jason Chaffetz (R-Utah), an active Romney surrogate, put the budding relationship between senior Republican congressional leaders and their presumptive nominee’s campaign this way: “I don’t think it’ll be a big, wet, slobbery French kiss. But they’ll be holding hands from time to time.”
First of all, Rep. Chaffetz is anything but a “senior Republican congressional leader.” He’s a sophomore who was elected in 2008. He has a couple of nice appointments on the Judiciary and Budget committees, but he has no seniority. The only subcommittee he chairs is a backwater slot on the Government Oversight and Homeland Security Committee. He’s famous for three things: his father was once married to Michael Dukakis’s wife Kitty, he was the place-kicker for Brigham Young University, and he sleeps on a cot in his congressional office rather than getting an apartment in Washington DC.
But all of that speaks more about the author of this article than the point of the article. The point is that congressional leaders are looking to defer to the Romney campaign and do its bidding. But Republicans in Congress have no more clue what Romney stands for than Romney does. And why would Romney want to have anything to do with Congress?
A senior Romney official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the campaign will look to its GOP allies on the Hill to amplify its message in the Capitol and keep close tabs on the congressional agenda.
“We’re not going to be 100 percent linked up, but I do think as a general rule, we would like to see our friends up there as allies,” the official said. “I think ultimately, we are all in the same mindset here: We would like to defeat President Obama.”
Asked if Romney will keep his distance from congressional Republicans given Congress’s rock-bottom approval ratings, the official said: “What I would say is that there’s a time to work with folks up there, and there may be other times where we may pursue our own path.”
Let me put it this way. The Obama administration and every Democratic activist in the country is going to be spending twelve hours a day linking Romney to Cantor, Boehner, and McConnell, and twelve hours a day linking Romney to the governors of Michigan, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Wisconsin, Florida, Arizona, and elsewhere. If Romney wants to be close to them, I couldn’t be happier about that. And if he wants to get some separation from the Tea Party, he’s going to alienate his own base. He can ask John Boehner how easy it is to move to the middle in this environment.
Ever see someone throw a fish on a pier? That’s going to be Mitt Romney. Flip-flip-flopping and gasping for air. The only natural reaction to that is to take a long look at the suffering fish, and then throw it back.
