Why Can’t Romney Close the Deal?

26 October 2011 |permalink | email article

Matt Bai, in his politics and government analysis, wonders why Mitt Romney, the clear winner in most debates, seems stuck at 21 percent in the New York Times/CBS News poll released Tuesday. At this stage in the race when Republican pollsters suggest the presumed nominee should be polling in the mid-to high-30s, even as three quarters of the GOP’s electorate continues to search for a Romney alternative. All this could suggest that Romney is this year’s Hillary Clinton – an institutional favorite on his way to losing the nomination. But Bai believes Romney is actually where he wants to be.

If Republicans can coalesce around a more conservative challenger – say Rick Perry emerging as the clear anti-Romney in the race – then the current poll numbers would represent a serious problem. But Perry, despite his widely controversial flat tax proposal, is running behind second tier candidates Newt Gingrich and Ron Paul. If Romney does well in Iowa and wins New Hampshire more Republicans may finally embrace his candidacy. Bai thinks that the right question to ask isn’t, “Why can’t Romney close with Republican voters?” But rather, does he really have to?

California Notebook

Gov. Jerry Brown, who’s always had a parsimonious reputation in his previous two terms, signed legislation allowing children 12 and older to seek medical care for the prevention of sexually transmitted diseases without parental consent, got a check for $8,000 from a pharmaceutical company with a financial interest in HPV vaccines. Brown, who’s raised about $45 grand through June, has not said whether he will seek re-election in 2014, The Sacramento Bee reported.

Ambitious L.A. Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, seeking to raise his profile and taking a huge army on a trade mission to Asia, confronts a new round of budget cuts before he leaves office in two years. So he’s boldly trying to influence public pension boards that guide the city’s huge retirement fund. City Hall gnomes question whether under state law such boards are supposed to remain free of political interference.

Quotable

The New Yorker’s John Cassidy describing Perry’s Ugly Tax Hybrid: “Not Flat, Not Fair, Not Credible.”

“If the government can pay $2 billion to the bankers and the railroads, why cannot it pay the $2 billion to soldiers?—Father Charles Coughlin, the populist “Radio Priest,” who became a legend in the early 1930s for railing against “greedy bankers and financiers” while World War 1 veterans who could not find jobs became known as the Bonus Army. 

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