Tuesday, June 28, 2005

Damning With Strong Praise

Joan Vennochi is already ready to blame the Democrats if health care reform is not enacted this session. In her column today she speculates whether state Democrats will be willing to tackle the issue since it might give Governor Romney a platform to run on should he decide to run for President in 2008. Her column ends with this:

Is there enough political will to hammer out meaningful healthcare reform over the long, hot summer? Are Democrats ready to exercise it -- even if it helps a Republican governor run for president?
Given yesterday's look into Republican perceptions of Massachusetts, and Boston in particular, perhaps the best thing state Democrats can do to torpedo Romney's chances to win the presidency is to loudly and proudly support him. Could it be that the easiest way to stop Romney in his tracks would be to have Ted Kennedy say nice things about him? Imagine, if you will, ads taken out by George Allen, Bill Frist or John McCain peppered with quotes from famous Massachusetts Liberals like Kennedy, John Kerry, or Michael Dukakis. Throw in Howard Zinn and Noam Chomsky for good measure. With the right number of soundbytes, the negative ads just write themselves: "Mitt Romney: Ted Kennedy's favorite Republican" or "Romney's socialized medicine plan was endorsed by Noam Chomsky -- do you want this man to be president?".

Of course, I'm mostly kidding about this. If Mitt manages to actually win the nomination, or decides to run for re-election this strategy could backfire spectacularly. In my opinion, there's really no reason to try to stop Romney from winning the Republican nomination anyway, since I have serious doubts about his abilitity to win the general election with his relatively thin political resume. Still, Romney will have to run against Massachusetts if he wants to win any Republican primaries outside of New England. The thing is, his competition isn't going to let him and we should keep that in mind.