Right Wing Nation

I’m stumped by those who want McCain to pick Romney for the ticket. I’m not bashing Romney. I like Mitt, always have. But I don’t see what he would bring to the ticket.

The first problem is something I’ll call the Romney Fickle Factor. This isn’t a reference to Romney; it’s a reference to those Republicans who flip-flop on their support for Romney. If you check out Red State or Hot Air or just about any of the big Republican blogs and scroll through the archives, you’ll see that the same people who trashed him when he was running are now saying he’s the best choice for VP. In fact, the only non-candidate blog I know of that has remained constant in their support of Romney is National Review (if you recall, they endorsed him). Then there’s that weird, irrational Dobson thing. When Romney was running, Dobson liked him. Now that Mitt has dropped out, Dobson is saying “we” won’t vote for McCain if he puts Romney on the ticket (if you can explain the logic there, you win a gold star).

Romney would bring a number of issues to the race that McCain does not need. Do we really want to have a replay of the Mormon debate? And with Mitt on the ticket, it would be a lot louder and nastier than it was during the primary race. Then there’s the flip-flop debate, which again, would be a lot louder than it was before if Romney is on the ticket. Romney’s healthcare plan didn’t come up much during the primary race, but now that it’s threatening to bankrupt the state, it will, and it won’t be pretty. McCain doesn’t need that.

That leads us to another problem: McCain has several powerful strengths, and putting Romney on the ticket would undo some of them, because Romney is weak on some of those issues. Flip-flopping, for example (and no, I’m not dragging up the issue for discussion). You can call McCain many things, but a flip-flopper or a panderer is not one of them. I don’t think Romney is a flip-flopper or a panderer, but he seems to be to many, many people.

A McCain-Romney ticket would be all about Romney. The press would be all Romney, all the time, and they’d pick him apart like they never did in the primary race. It would definitly be one of those “you ain’t seen ugly yet” moments.

Here’s another strength Romney would undo. McCain is the alpha dog in the race, and make no mistake, while this may not be a political issue per se, it will resonate. Let me quote this article from Lisa Shiffrin on NRO:

One problem Romney has, which I was acutely aware of the other night, is that he comes off just a bit too effete. He is smart and thoughtful. But each time John McCain said something that was smirky or a direct lie, (the business about timetables) [not a lie, by the way], after trying to correct it, Mitt’s natural inclination was to shoot a plaintive look at the questioners, as if to signal that he and they both knew that McCain was misbehaving. This was entirely redolent of the behavior of the teacher’s pet, who always knows the right answer, looking for authority to back him up in an argument with the class bully. But if you are president you have to be the authority, and you had better be able to slay the dragon right there and then, without looking to some offstage authority figure to nod in agreement that you are right. This little bit of body language reinforced whatever it was that McCain’s people meant recently when one of them was quoted saying, “Mitt Romney is the kind of guy that John McCain used to beat up at school.” (That’s a paraphrase.)

I found the remark obnoxious (as you would expect a grown woman to) at the time. But when I watched the interaction described above, I knew what that guy meant. And the fact is, you don’t want to vote for the bully, but you don’t want to vote for the goody two-shoes either.

At the time (Mitt hadn’t dropped out yet), there was something that made me vaguely uneasy about Mitt, although I couldn’t put my finger on what it was until I read Lisa’s comment. In fact, that comment, and identifying what was bothering me, pushed me toward McCain at the time. But my point is don’t underestimate the psychological. McCain exudes strength. Mitt does not. McCain needs somebody who underscores strength, not somebody who undermines it.

And the polls just don’t support a McCain-Romney ticket. There’s this Rasmussen poll, for instance:

Thirty-one percent (31%) of New Hampshire voters say they’re more likely to vote for McCain if he selects Mitt Romney as his running mate. Thirty-nine percent (39%) are less likely to vote for McCain with Romney on the ticket.

And here’s another, from Massachusetts:

Just 34% of Massachusetts voters think McCain should select former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney as his running mate. Forty-three percent (43%) disagree. Nearly half (48%) of voters say they would be less likely to vote for McCain if Romney was on the ticket. Just 27% would be more likely to vote for the senator, while 22% said it would have no impact on their vote.

So Mitt would be a liability even in his own state. That doesn’t, to me, recommend him as a VP candidate.

I haven’t seen any real reason to put him on the ticket other than some variation of “McCain needs a real conservative,” and as often as not — no, more often than not — this comes from somebody who was jeering at Romney for not being a “real conservative” when he was still in the race. The whole argument is specious, given the damage the big government daddy state Republicans have done to the brand: This is only the most recent of a string of polls dating back to the Terry Shaivo fiasco that document how much damage the daddy staters have done. A “real conservative” would only hurt McCain, because if he wins, it will be with support from the center. And I doubt that a Romney pick would help pull centrist votes.

I do like Mitt. But I don’t see how he would do anything but hurt McCain’s chances in November.

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