The Holy Cow! Candidate - © Copyright 2005 The Atlantic Monthly
Today, with George Bush in his second term and a vice-president who wants no part of the top job when it opens up in 2009, a man once thought dead walks the earth as one of a select few—among them Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist; Senator John McCain; maybe Florida’s governor, Jeb Bush, and New York’s former mayor Rudy Giuliani—with a legitimate shot at being the next Republican presidential nominee.As a conservative Republican in the bluest of blue states—he is in his third year as governor of Massachusetts—Romney embodies intriguing national electoral possibilities. “The Republican race is totally and completely wide open,” Whit Ayres, a pollster based in Virginia, told me, making the case that Romney is worth taking very seriously. “It’s hard to identify another year when there was no favorite for the Republican nomination.”
One thing Romney has going for him right now, of course, is his relative novelty. On the national scene people haven’t yet had a chance to grow tired of him, or to examine the warts and the skeletons. There’s a chance that he’ll turn out to be the political flavor of the month; that before long the Republican Party’s attention will move on to the next new thing. By some measures Romney hasn’t worn well in Massachusetts: this spring his approval ratings fell from a high of 56 percent to 43 percent, as he staked out unpopular positions against stem-cell research and gay marriage.
July 30th, 2005 at 6:52 pm
I read the article, Gurl, and I agree that it is very good. Questions like those about the garments WILL be asked, and geting them out of the way early, and in a manner which flatters the Governor, are a bonus.
I honestly think that the punditocracy is overestimating the hostility of evangelicals to Mormons. What they want is a moral PERSON, and Romney is that.
Don’t forget, Gore was the Baptist, and Bush is a Methodist. The person is bigger than the denomination.