Romney’s on a roll, in the money and the polls
Republican presidential contender leads in Iowa, N.H.
By Jill Zuckman
BOSTON — For Mitt Romney, the multimillionaire venture capitalist turned Olympic savior turned politician, all is going according to plan.
With an eye-popping $21 million raised in the first quarter of this year for his presidential campaign and a steady stream of television advertising, the one-term former governor of Massachusetts has caught the attention of both voters and political insiders. Star turns at the first two Republican debates gave his candidacy yet another shot of credibility.
And now, recent polls in the early-voting states of Iowa and New Hampshire show Romney surging with a double-digit lead over Sen. John McCain of Arizona and former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani. The Des Moines Register put Romney’s standing at 30 percent, 12 points ahead of McCain and 13 points over Giuliani. A Zogby poll in New Hampshire shows Romney at 35 percent, with both McCain and Giuliani at just 19.
At Fenway Park Monday, during an interview in a corporate skybox along the first-base line, Romney said the administration’s missteps in Iraq may have prolonged American involvement there and his own approach to decision-making could have shortened it.
“I think we made a number of miscalculations in the Iraq war,” he said, sitting forward in a brown leather club chair. “I think we were under-prepared for what actually existed in Iraq. We were under-planned for what we would do when Saddam Hussein was replaced. We under-managed the troops, so we have created many of the difficulties and extended the conflict longer than may have been necessary.”
With an MBA from Harvard and a career as a business consultant and then investor, Romney, 60, brought his business training to bear on Massachusetts, imposing highly specific benchmarks on state agencies and programs during his four years as governor. His staff says he loves listening to opposing points of view and debating policy options.
“My approach is a highly deliberative, data-driven approach, drawing on the expertise of people who vehemently disagree with each other, who state their case, who argue their position with data and sound analysis and then following that deliberative process we can make a decision, or if necessary, I can make it alone,” he said.
“That process could have helped us understand better the risks of going into Iraq so that we could have prevented some of the downsides from occurring,” Romney added.
But despite his self-proclaimed emphasis on accountability, he declined to assign blame or responsibility for the war’s failures—though he said he’s certain Bush accepts responsibility as commander-in-chief.
“At this stage, I spend less time trying to analyze the past and more time trying to assess where we go from here,” said Romney, who supports the recent surge of troops into Baghdad and Anbar Province and said he is eagerly awaiting Gen. David Petraeus’s progress report in the fall.
With his movie star looks and presidential bearing, the increased visibility for Romney is beginning to put him on the receiving end of his opponents’ ire and the media’s scrutiny. Political observers have suggested that voters would be unwilling to elect a Mormon to the nation’s highest office. Already, the other Republican campaigns are quietly questioning his foreign policy credentials, and not-so-quietly criticizing his changing policy positions.
“The question for voters is, does a one-term governor from Massachusetts have the foreign policy experience necessary to deal with the challenges of today’s world?” said Brian Jones, McCain’s spokesman.
Romney’s newfound success appears to be a source of irritation to his opponents. In South Carolina’s debate last week, McCain leveled a sarcastic dig at the former governor, suggesting he changes his positions depending on whether it is an even-numbered year or what office he is seeking.
And Romney has changed numerous, significant positions from his stance on abortion (to anti-abortion), to his newly minted support for gun rights and opposition to gay marriage, to his largely curtailed support for embryonic stem cell research.
“After studying presidential nominations for 30 years, I’ve never seen somebody who has so completely renounced his past record when he decided to run for president,” said William Mayer, a political scientist at Northeastern University in Boston.
Romney has grown used to such criticism, and depicts his changes as evolution rather than flip-flopping.
“Everyone hopefully changes when they get experience on some issues,” he said in the interview. “You don’t change your principles, but your view on a particular issue may change.”
That hasn’t stopped the McCain campaign from taking shots at Romney. “Mitt Romney has been consistent in one regard: that nearly every position he holds now is opposite of what it was when he was governor of Massachusetts,” Jones said.
With his campaign gathering steam, Romney is in the midst of another intense burst of fundraising. On Monday, he raised money in three states, starting in Hartford, Conn., and traveling to Boston and then Houston, Texas. Here at Fenway Park, approximately 200 donors paid $2,300 apiece for a lunch of hot dogs with sauerkraut, chicken and potato salad.
In June alone, Romney is scheduled to hold 65 fundraisers.
