Is Mitt in It To Win It?

In which Mitt Romney is shaping up to be 2012's John Kerry, but with more conservative eyebrows, fewer military medals, and a rival who can put together complete sentences.

We're just a year and a couple of weeks away from Election Day in the U.S., and while Barack Obama is alternately bringing the troops home from Iraq, heralding victory in Libya, and, umm, dealing with that small matter of the economy, the Republican field continues to provide great fodder for columnists across the country. This week's debate among the GOP nominees featured the first "recorded movement of a hair on Mitt Romney’s head," remarks Charles Krauthammer in The National Review. "Although it was only one follicle, displaced a mere 1.2 centimeters, the tremors were felt from Iowa to New Hampshire." By that, he means the calm, cool, and collected frontrunner briefly – ever so briefly – lost his composure when uber-Texan Rick Perry launched into an attack on Romney's alleged hiring of illegal immigrants. It was a rare moment for Romney, but while the "Vegas fight mildly unsettled the Republican race ... its central dynamic remains." And that dynamic is that Romney cruises along with support levels of between 25 - 35 per cent while the other candidates play a game of musical chairs, in which each has a brief moment in the sun – take a bow, Herman Cain - before their total lack of viability as a serious presidential candidate sends them back down to single digits.

For the Tea Party take on what a Romney candidacy might mean for the movement, we turn to Douglas MacKinnon in The Washington Examiner, who can (hilariously) barely keep the steam from blowing out his ears over the prospect of a "Rockefeller Republican" ending up on the GOP ticket. "Make no mistake, if Mitt Romney secures the nomination, the Tea Party almost assuredly suffers a mortal wound," says MacKinnon. As Tea Party support "pin-balls from candidate to candidate," (first Michelle Bachmann, then Perry, now Cain, and with a movement toward lining up behind Rick Santorum all the while), the GOP establishment must be relishing the prospect that Romney might just keep the fringes at bay. "Is anyone in the GOP paying attention to what is going on here?" cries MacKinnon while pounding a dead horse over the public healthcare plan and emissions caps Romney introduced as governor. It turns out that one of the senior policy advisers for Romney's emissions cap was John Holdren, who is now Obama's chief science adviser. This is the proverbial straw for MacKinnon's back: "Is the Republican establishment so desperate to hold on to its power that it will continually look the other way as a chameleon-like candidate not only dreams up the ideas used by far-left Obama White House, but praises one of the people most reviled by the conservative movement?" Huh. Killing the Tea Party, reasonable stances on carbon emissions and healthcare ... this Romney guy's sounding better and better each day!

And over in The Atlantic, Elspeth Reeve comments on the striking similarities emerging between Romney and the Dems' unsuccessful candidate in 2004, John Kerry. "Like Romney, Kerry was an early frontrunner later overshadowed by flashier candidates; his case that he was the more electable candidate led to back-to-back wins in Iowa and New Hampshire, essentially ending the Democratic primary in 2004," notes Reeve. "But while Romney surely hopes the 2004 similarities end there, Obama hopes that's where they begin." Obama's team is reportedly hoping to take a page out of the Karl Rove Guide to Ruthless Re-Election by painting Romney as a flip-flopper, such as his reversals over the healthcare plan, with no core values (in that he's a Republican who doesn't really mind abortion or gay marriage that much). We'll add that Kerry and Romney are both blue-blooded Massachusetters with no rabid base of support, and whose frontrunner status is owed entirely to the weakness of the rest of the field. Needless to say, these aren't exactly the kind of candidates who inspire the apathetic to turn out on Election Day. And heck, if Romney does end up the GOP nomination but loses to Obama, it sounds like he'd make a great addition to the prez's cabinet.