Mitt Romney - Republican Front-Runner?

You know, with regard to the Republican nomination for next year’s presidential election, I keep on hearing the name Mitt Romney being mentioned as the frontrunner. And for the life of me, I can’t work out why.

Part of the reason is that Mitt Romney is not an inspiring candidate. In fact, when I think of the name Mitt Romney, all I can think of is the man who strapped a dog to the roof of his car before setting off on a long journey. And that sort of thing doesn’t immediately make me think “oh, he’d be a good president”. Or a credible candidate for the presidency.

Of course, he’s far saner than some of the other potential candidates – and yes, I’m talking about Sarah Palin and Mike Huckabee here. He might be dull, insipid and uninspiring (with a penchant for unintentional [?] animal cruelty, but at least he looks and sounds like a credible (if deeply boring) candidate for the presidency. Which maybe why, given his track record of failure when seeking the Republican nomination, he has become the frontrunner.

There’s a precedent for this, of course. A US political party faces the prospect of having to run a presidential campaign with someone far away from the centre ground. Therefore, they take action, and the establishment moves to embrace a much more mainstream candidate. It happened to the Democrats, for example, in 2004, when the more radical Howard Dean (who, for a long-time seemed destined to be the nominee) was replaced by the much more mainstream (and much more pedestrian) John Kerry.

Which is the point – if nominated, Mitt Romney will be the Republican’s answer to John Kerry. And we all know how John Kerry’s bid for the presidency ended…