Well I was wrong about THAT one...

I'm not going to lie. 2008 was a very good politically predictive year for me. I bet that Mike Huckabee, the more religiously conservative, yet less well known, former Governor of Arkansas would win the Republican Iowa caucus.

And when every pundit in the land declared that it would be a "New York" election race between Rudy Giuliani and Hillary Clinton (see here, here and here), I successfully predicted in early March that the final Presidential contest would be a race between moderates with John McCain and a young pragmatic upstart Barack Obama. And although many had doubts about whether a black man with Hussein as his middle name could win the presidency, I bet that Obama would eventually be the final winner of the whole shebang. Because let's face it, after eight long years of the Bush administration, you could poop in a bag, write the letter D on it and you'd have a better than 50% shot at winning the Presidency in 2008.

So at the end of 2008, shortly after Obama's election, I proclaimed to my Republican colleagues at the RLO in the Massachusetts State House, that 2012 would continue to be a centrist election and not a base election and that the Republican nominee would be the promising moderate Governor from Minnesota, and almost Republican Vice Presidential nominee, Tim Pawlenty; because a former governor of a desired purple state could be much more easily sold to the more socially conservative base than former Massachusetts Governor, Willard "Mitt" Romney, who behind the scenes in the Republican party, most people dislike for his inability to take stand on anything that matters to them (this political shrewdness is one of the qualities I admire most in Mr. Romney - but I digress).

Anywho, lo and behold I look at today's news after the (inconsequential) Ames Iowa Straw Poll, that Tim Pawlenty is dropping out of the GOP race. So not counting Donald Trump, who wasn't really running anyway, my final Republican nominee was the first to drop out! Sarah Scalese, I probably owe you $5 bucks! (When I brought up T-Paw as my 2012 nominee, Sarah said something to the effect of, "snooze-fest"), and it appears that her reading of the Republican electorate was right.

However, this momentum shift probably bodes well for President Obama. Most political parties have two basic choices when battling an incumbent President: crazy heart (see Howard Dean), or safe bet (see John Kerry). And the early indicators show that the Republican Party is leaning crazy heart with Michele Bachmann's win and T-Paw's exit. For the sake of the country, I hope the GOP nominates either Mitt Romney or Jon Huntsman, men who I disagree with but who I know at least have good noggins on top of their shoulders. But the early rumblings of Bachmann and Texas Governor Rick Perry show a party reaching for its heart and not its mind.

Why Repubs will have trouble winning in 2012

Because they're going to derail the only nominee they have capable of winning the whole shebang, because he says totally non-controversial (to me) things like this:

Treading water ctd...

Finally, The Cato Institute, a well-respected conservative/libertarian think tank has called Mitt Romney on his bluff that RomneyCare is any different from ObamaCare.

Treading water

Unless Mitt Romney can be proud of his signature accomplishment in Massachusetts which is his Affordable Care Act (ACA), a conservative free-market solution to provide health insurance to people, he's just not going to make sense.

I'll say it again, Mitt Romney is the Republicans' strongest contender for President in 2012. The question is, can he survive the Republican primary from a party that's still searching for what it stands for post-2008?

I hope it's the Governor Mitt Romney party that wins, but my gut says that the people want it to be the Candidate Mitt Romney party. Governor Mitt Romney won't be able to win the Republican primary because of his success on healthcare and his Mormonism, which many conservative evangelicals deem to be "not Christian."

UPDATE: Daniel Gross has an interesting article on Mitt Romney's legitimate expertise to become the national healthcare implementation czar (a hypothetical position). To read the article on Slate.com click here.

Mitt Romney will say anything to be President

I actually liked Mitt Romney as Governor of Massachusetts. My dad voted for him for Senate in 1994 against Ted Kennedy and again for Governor in 2002 and I would have voted for him in 2007 had he run for re-election because he was a moderate Republican who was good at balancing the budget and was realistic on issues such as abortion and healthcare reform.

However, Mitt Romney really wants to be President and has over-learned the lesson of "know your audience". He will never win the Presidency if he seems like a complete opportunist.  One of the things I always admired about George W. Bush is agree or disagree with him, you always knew where he stood.  With Romney, a virtual pro-choicer vs. Ted Kennedy in 1994 and a staunch pro-lifer as a Presidential candidate, you have no idea where he stands. He just stands wherever the rhetoric is most likely to make him president.

And again, as long as this recession continues, I don't see how a country with high unemployment elects a guy who was CEO for a business which helped companies be more profitable by laying off people. Trust me, if when Romney runs in 2012, he'll have the CEOs already.

To see Romney's early pro-choiceness click for the jump.