SARASOTA, FL — Mitt Romney has a new act, but this time, it may
not be an act.
At Keiser University here on Wednesday, Romney stood before a
banner that read “Economic Turnaround” with the sleeves of his
white dress shirt immaculately rolled up, and spoke about how his
successful career in the private sector made him ideally suited to
be the steward of an uncertain economy.
“I didn’t spend my life in politics, that’s not how I got
going,” Romney explained. “I spent 25 years in the private sector,
in business.”
While Romney has made his business background a part of his
presidential run from the beginning, his image as a corporate
turnaround artist was obscured as he aggressively courted social
conservatives and attempted to prove he was tough on national
security.
As the former venture capitalist talking about the scourge of
global jihad from his front lawn, or as the recently converted
pro-lifer touting his support for the Human Life Amendment, Romney
came across as artificial.
In the early nominating contests, voters who wanted an authentic
social conservative went with Mike Huckabee, and those who were
looking for a strong commander-in-chief during a time of war got
behind John McCain.
NOW, SEIZING ON growing economic unease, Romney has begun to employ
populist rhetoric, and frame every issue as an economic
challenge.
“The things I’m hearing from people as I go from town to town
and city to city are actually pretty similar as I go across
Florida,” he said. “People are concerned about the economy, what’s
happening to jobs…A lot of families are feeling an economic
squeeze.”
For much of the campaign, Romney ran away from his health-care
reform effort in Massachusetts, but now he is fully embracing it as
an example of his ability to solve problems.
“When I became governor, I went to work to see if I couldn’t
find a way to get everybody health insurance,” he said. “We had
about 460,000 people in my state who were uninsured, and you know,
after I signed the bill a year and a half ago, now that it’s been
in place, we signed up 300,000 people that didn’t have insurance.
And we’ll get the rest. We’ll get everybody insured.”
At an appearance later in the day at the H. Lee Moffitt Cancer
Center in Tampa, Romney defended mandates, which force individuals
to purchase health insurance or face fines, by citing the “free
rider” problem of those who show up at hospitals without health
care.
He also vowed that he would “help middle class families make
ends meet by making sure they all know they’ve got health care
that’s affordable.”
During much of the campaign, when Romney talked about the
importance of strong families, he included a line about the need to
preserve traditional marriage with a constitutional amendment. In
his current stump speech, he instead tied the issue back to his
proposals on health care and education.
“If you’re going to have strong families, you need families to
know that they can get health care, that they’re not going to have
to worry about whether their kids can get the care that they need,”
Romney said at Keiser. “I also believe if you want to have strong
families, you want to have great schools.”
When Romney talked about strengthening the military, he also
framed it as an economic issue, saying that the American economy
needs to be robust to maintain a powerful military.
FOR ROMNEY, the switch in emphasis to economic issues not only
allows him to sound more credible, but it makes it more difficult
for his opponents to use the “flip-flop” charge against him, at
least in the Republican primary. In a general election against a
Democrat, any time he mentions creating jobs, he’ll be attacked for
being a corporate takeover artist that laid off workers (a criticism that helped Ted Kennedy defeat him in
his 1994 U.S. Senate race).
Republicans looking for an economic conservative in the mold of
Ronald Reagan will not find one in Romney. While Reagan believed
that government should get out of the economy and allow the market
to work on its own, Romney believes in public and private
partnerships. Whereas Reagan didn’t see government as a solution to
America’s problems, Romney believes that government can provide
solutions, as long as it is competently managed enough.
In this sense, Romney’s view of the role of government may be
closer to Herbert Hoover, a brilliant mining engineer and
consultant who tried to apply his business skills to help manage
the economy as president.
Romney’s new populist economic message that includes
full-throated defense of government mandates for health care may
not endear him to all conservatives, but at least his current
posture is closer to his actual record as a moderate Republican
governor from Massachusetts.
It took a year, but we may finally be seeing the real
Romney.
