Mitt running for prez and away from Mass.

2 March 2005

Massachusetts politicians must think they're some sort of gift to the world - or at least to the nation. How else to explain the overabundance of Bay State pols who run for president? Since 1960, the year Jack Kennedy was elected, there have been four: Ted Kennedy, Michael Dukakis, Paul Tsongas and John Kerry.

Now there are five.

Of course, Mitt Romney isn't admitting to anything. "Now is the time for policy and progress, not presidential ambitions," the governor said over the weekend. He said this while in Washington, D.C., on the heels of trips to South Carolina, Missouri and Utah - all clues that, even if the time is not now, it certainly is soon.

In other words, of course he's running. And he's accused of bashing Massachusetts, kowtowing to the hard right and, worst of all, ignoring us.

The last is true - and it likely signals Romney won't be running for re-election - but the first two are not.

Take the bashing of Massachusetts. A typical comment was Romney's line to South Carolinians that in Massachusetts "being a conservative Republican is a bit like being a cattle rancher at a vegetarian convention."

In high dudgeon, the state's political establishment pronounced itself offended. He's "making fun of the state," Treasurer Tim Cahill griped.

No he wasn't, Tim. He was making fun of Democrats.

Moreover, Romney's point was not only that he's a Republican but that he's a conservative - a rarity even within the state GOP.

I think Massachusetts Democrats were spoiled by the likes of Bill Weld, the genial, liberal governor from 1991 to 1997. He and successors Paul Cellucci and Jane Swift were the kind of Republicans that Democrats like - and for good reason: Anywhere else in the nation, they would be Democrats.

Romney isn't - and never was - Bill Weld redux. He's partisan and confrontational, a small-government hardliner who is also deeply conservative on social issues. People here elected Romney because they wanted someone who could stand up to the Democratic hegemony. He got the job despite his politics, not because of them - and as Romney is now discovering, his politics and values play better elsewhere.

Still, that's not why the odds of Romney running for re-election have dropped. It's a safe assumption that Romney's next step rests solely on a calculation as to what best will help him secure the GOP presidential nomination. As John Kerry and Michael Dukakis could attest, voters back home get angry, jealous even, when they think you're wooing someone else. Romney doubtless knows this. Yet a full 20 months before re-election, he's traveling the country, talking about national issues. That new focus suggests he's already made up his mind.