Thursday, March 03, 2005

Elephant Dreams

Go away for a few days and the governor goes wild! Mitt Romney hit up several more states in his undeclared efforts to be the next Republican candidate for POTUS. He performed the same-sex marriage shtick. It’s the I-was-always-against-it-but-they-made-me-do-it routine that really never works.
This should have posted February 27.

Amusingly enough, for all his bluster, he may have wasted his words in South Carolina last week. The New England papers as well as the AP missed the undercurrent. Their coverage was about his trying to distance himself from same-sex marriage and making strong anti-abortion statements. There are real questions about how seriously that can be taken from a governor of a state that bans the death penalty, supports abortion rights, and has legalized homosexual marriage.

Meanwhile, the reports in the South Carolina press cut to the chase and bode ill for the man with the magic underwear. The opening line in the story from the largest paper, Columbia’s The State, was “Republican Gov. Mitt Romney of Massachusetts, a devout Mormon, flew into the heart of the South Carolina Bible Belt on Monday to test the climate for a possible presidential run in 2008.”

Yankees may well demand details on policies and positions as the ante to the game, but to many Southerners the first question remains, “Who are your folks?”

“Good luck,” The State quoted Clemson political-science professor Dave Woodard. “I don’t think that (his religion) will play well at all.”

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