Ashes

Today is Ash Wednesday, the first day of Lent. Today is also the first day of the rest of Mitt Romney’s political life. I hope he’s honest enough with himself to face that fact; and if Mormons celebrate Lent and Ash Wednesday (I don’t actually know if they do), I hope this day’s observance means more to him than its political significance. (Update: apparently they don’t—see #329.)I have to say, I’ve been rather disappointed in Gov. Romney over the course of this campaign. I pulled for him for a long time. Originally, I had expected Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist would be the GOP’s nominee this year, and I looked forward to that; when Sen. Frist failed to do his job to get the President’s judicial nominees through, however, I decided I could not support him. (I even sent an e-mail to him to that effect; I got a canned e-mail back.) Having done so, I looked around for someone to support, and Gov. Romney seemed far and away the best choice on the horizon. Given his record and his gifts, I thought he’d be a strong candidate and a good president.Eventually, of course, I changed my mind and started supporting Mike Huckabee (not that that means much—my endorsement means nothing and I have no money to contribute). Some of that was because of Gov. Huckabee’s own strengths; a lot of it, though, was that Gov. Romney had actually proven himself quite a poor candidate, spending lots of money to very little result. (Gov. Huckabee, in this respect, has been the anti-Romney.) Unfortunately, he hasn’t handled that very well, and neither has his team, leading to this rather unbecoming sequence, caught by BigJolly at the Lone Star Times. First, Gov. Romney scolded Gov. Huckabee:

“First a couple of rules in politics,” he said. “One: no whining. And number two: you get them to vote for you and so I want them not to vote for Mike Huckabee and not to vote for John McCain and to vote for me . . . that’s not voter suppression. That’s known as politics.”

Good and noble words, but they didn’t last very long; following his loss in the West Virginia caucuses when John McCain’s supporters switched en bloc to Gov. Huckabee, Gov. Romney’s campaign manager had this to say:

Unfortunately, this is what Senator McCain’s inside Washington ways look like: he cut a backroom deal with the tax-and-spend candidate he thought could best stop Governor Romney’s campaign of conservative change.Governor Romney had enough respect for the Republican voters of West Virginia to make an appeal to them about the future of the party based on issues. This is why he led on today’s first ballot. Sadly, Senator McCain cut a Washington backroom deal in a way that once again underscores his legacy of working against Republicans who are interested in championing conservative policies and rebuilding the party.

At this point, if he’s really all that interested in stopping “Senator McCain’s inside Washington ways,” the best thing Gov. Romney could do would be to cut his own deal with Gov. Huckabee: throw his support behind the real “man from Hope” (Bill Clinton mostly grew up in Hot Springs, AR) in exchange for policy promises, which he could then widely publicize as satisfying his own concerns. Somehow, though, I don’t think that’s going to happen. But at this point, Gov. Romney has it backwards: a vote for Mitt Romney is a vote for John McCain. Which might not, in the end, prove to be all that bad a thing; I’m pulling for Gov. Huckabee, but I’ll be content to vote for Sen. McCain in November as well. I don’t know the future, so as far as I know, we might all be better off if Sen. McCain wins the nomination. But if Gov. Romney thinks otherwise, he should take a deep breath and a long hard look at the situation, and act accordingly.HT: Bill