It’s no secret most of the Republican presidential candidates have been trying to position themselves as the conservative “anti-Romney.” Newsweek‘s latest cover story reminds us that just four years ago, Romney was dubbed the conservative alternative to John McCain.
What has changed since 2008?
Romney says he understands the conservative reluctance about him, and he names its source: Romneycare. “I think what happened between four years ago and today is that President Obama took his 2,700-page Obamacare bill and tried to stretch the sheep’s clothing of the Massachusetts health-care plan around it,” he says. “I think that to some Republicans that meant that I was somehow responsible for what he did. And that allowed some people to characterize me as being moderate, because it sounded like the president and I were on the same page.”
Romney is only partly right. He entered this Republican primary season with Romneycare hanging around his neck, as Rick Santorum put it, like “a scarlet letter.” But Romney’s greater problem with the grassroots is his disconnect from a GOP reshaped by the Tea Party, with its visceral disdain of the political establishment. Romney is, and ever shall be, the candidate of the establishment, and, though he is capable of sharp debate (as Gingrich has lately learned), rhetorical alley fighting is not his métier.
“His problem is the same as the problem that George Herbert Walker Bush had,” says John Sununu, a Romney supporter who served as the elder Bush’s White House chief of staff. “They come from a genteel segment of society that doesn’t instinctively have the capacity of putting sharp edges on the words they use. Conservatives like sharp rhetoric and prefer to support someone with sharper elbows.”
Romney’s campaign has no particular strategy for winning over the pitchfork crowd (“Just win,” says a senior strategist. “When you win, they all love you”), beyond his positions on issues, which are at least as conservative as those of his remaining competitors. The restive base is still not sold, but that very fact may contain the seeds of Romney’s ultimate vindication on the right. On his most vulnerable issue, health care, Romney has so determinedly sought to reassure the base—repeatedly promising to issue a 50-state waiver on Obamacare on his first day in office, then foster its full repeal—that anything less would invite insurrection. Romney would have to undo Obamacare, Sununu says, “if for no other reason than to confirm his commitment to doing it.”
