Hey, why not Pawlenty for VP?

I’m 95 percent sure I’ve written about this before and rejected the idea, but darned if I can find the item now in the archives or remember why I didn’t like it. This is what happens when you write 18,000+ posts. (The only reason I know that figure is because today is the site’s sixth birthday and I was curious to check the total. I checked the number of Headlines too but will spare you that as it’s too depressing for light late-night reading.)

Anyway, Romney/Pawlenty. Why not?

Republican insiders say the first priority in selecting a running mate is to “do no harm.” Nobody embodies that mantra better than Pawlenty. He’s not an electrifying politician, but some of the traits that hamstrung him in the primary could be assets for him as Romney’s No. 2. The Minnesotan is steady and stolid, a reliable surrogate whom Romney could count on to skewer Obama without snarling. Likeable and funny, Pawlenty has governing experience, a bootstraps biography and an authentic middle-class mien that could make him a helpful envoy to blue-collar voters in the Rust Belt battlegrounds where Romney has struggled. “Every candidate I know tries to establish some roots in what I call real-world middle America. A lot of them have to invent it. With Tim Pawlenty, it’s real,” Vin Weber, who backed Pawlenty’s presidential bid before becoming an adviser to Romney, told TIME’s Michael Crowley last year. He would be viewed an acceptable choice for Chamber of Commerce conservatives as well as Tea Partyers and Evangelicals.

As a runner-up to Sarah Palin for a slot on the GOP ticket in 2008, Pawlenty has already been vetted. “In any normal year, Tim Pawlenty’s a great pick, a no-brainer,” strategist Steve Schmidt told McCain. Four years ago, McCain felt he needed a spark to compete against Obama’s historic campaign. This time around, with Obama vulnerable and early polls presaging a tight contest, many Republican insiders say Romney should play it safe. Pawlenty, who endorsed Romney shortly after dropping out the race last summer and has served as the campaign’s national co-chair, is as safe as they come. And while Beltway handicappers are placing their bets on Ohio Senator Rob Portman, Pawlenty is a Midwesterner with more blue-collar appeal and without the baggage of Bush Administration ties.

I think my objection to Romney/Pawlenty initially was that it would be the most bland, boring ticket ever, a personality vacuum in a year when O is looking to exploit the likability gap. But I was wrong. Romney/Portman would be at least as bland and boring as that, and unlike Pawlenty, Portman has no executive experience. His resume is solid — congressman, OMB chief, and senator for the past 15 months — but I have no idea if he’d be a solid exec or a solid communicator as president, which will be important in selling deficit reduction and entitlement reform to the public. Maybe that’s a simple matter of having not been exposed to him much? I’m more comfortable with Pawlenty because I’ve watched him campaign whereas Portman is a near-total cipher to me, but that’ll obviously change once RP is out on the trail. Even so, it’s not clear to me why Portman is a better “safe” pick than T-Paw on the merits. Is there any strong argument to prefer him apart from the increased likelihood of winning Ohio? (Which is a pretty strong argument, admittedly.)

One more question. With the possible exception of Portman, is it safe to say that Pawlenty’s better qualified than any other likely VP pick? Rubio and Susana Martinez are appealing but there’s no hard proof that they’ll significantly move the Latino vote, and T-Paw spent far longer as governor than either of them has as senator or governor, respectively. Christie comes from the same region as Romney, also has less experience than Pawlenty, and would be a risk to overshadow the nominee. As big of a Paul Ryan fan as I am, he has no experience beyond the House and might prove to be a genuine liability on the ticket depending upon how well the Democrats demagogue his budget. Pawlenty, I think, is the ultimate “do no harm” guy. So, why not?

Quotes of the day

“Mitt Romney effectively assumed the helm of the Republican Party on Tuesday after five primary victories across the Northeast solidified his stature as the presidential nominee-in-waiting who is trying to unite conservatives and persuade independent voters that President Obama does not deserve a second term…

“The Romney campaign is aggressively looking into all aspects of the Obama administration, with a plan to present the president as a nice and likable but unsuited to solving the country’s economic challenges. Aides said they intended to keep the conversation focused on Mr. Obama’s record in the White House and not his personal biography.

“‘There is a pretty broad view that President Obama is a good family man and decent guy, but may be in over his head,’ said Mr. Gillespie, a former counselor to George W. Bush, who was brought into the Romney campaign this month. He said the argument against re-election would be built around the suggestion that Mr. Obama ‘has not displayed strong leadership, but failed leadership and weak leadership.’”

***

“The bad news for Obama four years later is that the first weeks of the general-election campaign have demonstrated that Mitt Romney and his top staff are not going to play by the same rules as the McCain campaign…

“Many conservative bloggers and reporters believe that mainstream publications and networks ignore stories that make the president or his allies look bad. One of the few surefire ways to force the media to cover a story they would prefer to ignore is to have the Republican presidential candidate talk about it. In 2008, McCain’s refusal to do so was particularly hobbling, but the Romney campaign is, so far at least, proving more willing to highlight those controversial topics or ones best handled with a bit of laughter — and utilizing the later hours of the campaign news cycle to do it…

“The Romney campaign is approaching the coming weeks with a strategy of ‘bracketing’ — doing events before and after key Obama campaign stops, making Obama’s message for that event implausible, refuted, and silly by the time he delivers his remarks. Before an Obama stop, Romney will do interviews with local radio stations. Last week Romney went to Charlotte, N.C., to give a ‘pre-buttal’ to Obama’s acceptance speech at the Democratic National Convention in September. Romney was supposed to speak on a rooftop with a view of the convention site, the Bank of America football stadium; bad weather forced his team indoors, and Romney spoke with a the city skyline behind him.”

***

“On Romney’s speech Tuesday night, Santorum said he struck the right tone. ‘I think he painted a strong picture. It’s one that’s a clear contrast to what this president’s brought this country,’ he said. Despite having once been his opponent, Santorum said the goal is to defeat President Obama, and he would support that. ‘This is about making sure we have the right person in the presidency, in the House and the Senate,’ Santorum said. ‘I believe he’s the better — obviously I believed I was the better choice. But I’m not in the race anymore.’

“Morgan observed, ‘Unless I’m mishearing things, you just endorsed Mitt Romney’ — a charge Santorum jumped around, saying he’ll be meeting with Romney soon, and then we’ll see.”

***

“If Romney wins the election, it’s almost a sure bet that Republicans win control of both the House and the Senate. And that matters. Right now, the GOP’s agenda is the Ryan budget, and that’s entirely fiscal: It’s a premium support plan for Medicare, and tax cuts, and deep cuts to Medicaid, food stamps and other domestic programs. All that can be passed through budget reconciliation — which is to say, all that can be made immune to the filibuster.

“Four years ago Barack Obama dazzled us in front of Greek columns with sweeping promises of hope and change. But after we came down to earth, after the celebration and parades, what do we have to show for three and a half years of President Obama?
“Is it easier to make ends meet? Is it easier to sell you

r home or buy a new one? Have you saved what you needed for retirement? Are you making more in your job? Do you have a better chance to get a better job? Do you pay less at the pump?
“If the answer were ‘yes’ to those questions, then President Obama would be running for re-election based on his achievements…and rightly so. But because he has failed, he will run a campaign of diversions, distractions, and distortions. That kind of campaign may have worked at another place and in a different time. But not here and not now. It’s still about the economy …and we’re not stupid.
“People are hurting in America. And we know that something is wrong, terribly wrong with the direction of the country.”

Obamateurism of the Day

Joni Mitchell once sang:

Don’t it always seem to go
You don’t know what you’ve got ’til it’s gone.

Apparently, the Obamas sing this regularly, but they mean that we don’t know what we’ve got in them, according to Jodi Kantor’s new book, The Obamas, as Jim Geraghty reports.  When they went to Oslo to collect the Nobel Peace Prize, the Obamas began complaining to their friends that Americans just didn’t appreciate their genius, or something:

But amid the bad news and pressures of late 2009, the trip unexpectedly passed like a brief, happy fantasy for the president, a Nordic alternate reality where citizens were learned and pensive, discussions were thoughtful, and everyone was a fan. “It wasn’t hero worship,” said one adviser who accompanied them. “Okay, it was.”
For one day, the Obamas lived in the dream version of his presidency instead of the depressing reality. At meals and receptions, they mingled with the members of the Royal Academy – government officials, academics…
The trip spurred a thought the Obamas and their friends would voice to each other again and again as the president’s popularity continued to decline: the American public just did not appreciate their exceptional leader. The president “could get 70 or 80 percent of the vote anywhere but the U.S.” [President Obama's old friend] Marty Nesbitt told [another old friend of Obama] Eric Whitaker indignantly.”

Er, okay. And this disenchantment with American voters took place less than nine months into his term.  What exactly had Obama accomplished to warrant “hero worship”?  Or for that matter, the Nobel Peace Prize?
I’ve got an idea.  Maybe the Obamas should leave the US in January and live in Norway a few years.  When we miss him enough, he can come back — but, Mr. President, don’t call us … we’ll call you.

Got an Obamateurism of the Day? If you see a foul-up by Barack Obama, e-mail it to me at obamaisms@edmorrissey.com with the quote and the link to the Obamateurism. I’ll post the best Obamateurisms on a daily basis, depending on how many I receive. Include a link to your blog, and I’ll give some link love as well. And unlike Slate, I promise to end the feature when Barack Obama leaves office.
Illustrations by Chris Muir of Day by

RNC chair: Mitt’s our “presumptive nominee”

Looks like the RNC has tired of waiting for other candidates to take the hint. RNC chair Reince Priebus and Mitt Romney have begun working this morning to merge their efforts and start working on the general election with Romney as the leader of the party:

Less than 24 hours after sweeping five primaries and declaring the Republican presidential nomination fight officially over, former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney and the Republican National Committee are moving quickly to coordinate their efforts.

“Governor Romney’s strong performance and delegate count at this stage of the primary process has made him our party’s presumptive nominee,” said RNC Chairman Reince Priebus. “In order to maximize our efforts I have directed my staff at the RNC to open lines of communication with the Romney campaign.”

This involves some personnel moves from the Romney primary campaign to the RNC:

The leading edge of the synchronization will be four liaisons between the two organizations. Brian Jones, who has been serving as an adviser to Romney since late last year, will lead that effort. Kevin Madden, who served as the press secretary for Romney’s 2008 presidential bid, will advise the communications operation and serve as a DC-based television surrogate for the Romney/RNC effort. Ward Baker, a veteran Tennessee-based GOP strategist, will help coordinate the political and field teams. Ron Kaufman, a veteran RNC member, and Ben Ginsberg, who served as national counsel to Romney’s 2008 race, will also facilitate interaction between the two groups.

Priebus will remain in his position, and Romney won’t name a deputy chair, which presidential nominees will sometimes do to flex their muscle or keep tabs on the organization. Chris Cillizza writes that this is a vote of confidence in Priebus from Romney. And why not? Priebus has done a very good job as a turn-around specialist at the RNC, and perhaps only a fellow turn-around specialist like Romney can appreciate the effort and the improvements made from the Michael Steele era.

The new partnership will allow the Romney campaign to raise money in the same manner that the Obama campaign has done for the past year. Romney and Priebus will hold big-ticket joint fundraisers that will score eye-popping donation totals, presumably immediately. Romney and the GOP needed to get started on that as soon as possible; Obama has $100 million in the bank, even if the donations to his campaign trail his pace from 2008 rather significantly, while Romney has $10 million banked at the moment. The GOP has all summer to catch up, but the earlier reality sets in and they get started, the better off they are.

Rubio: Let’s just respect the running-mate process now

Wouldn’t it be ironic if a Republican politician called for everyone to chill out for a while and let Mitt Romney engage in his process for picking a running mate — and used it as a springboard for even more speculation? Oh, wait — that’s not irony, it’s punditry. Either way or both at the same time, I doubt that anyone will take Marco Rubio’s advice and find something else to discuss for the next three or four months … like, say, dog handling or cookie analysis:Rubio says, ““The last thing he needs are those of us in the peanut gallery to be saying what we would or would not do,” so of course that’s the first thing the rest of us will do. Callum Bortchers at the Boston Globe interpreted Rubio’s remarks as to reopen the question of whether he would accept an invitation onto the ticket:

Florida Senator Marco Rubio downplayed his higher office aspirations in a TV interview aired Sunday, refusing to discuss his vice presidential prospects and saying he does not think about becoming president some day.

But the statements by Rubio, a first-term Republican with a burgeoning national profile, were softer than ones he made last week, when he told the National Journal that he would say no if presumptive Republican nominee Mitt Romney asked him to be his running mate.

“Let me just say this about the vice presidential process,” Rubio said on CNN’s “State of the Union.” “Up to now it’s all been theoretical. We have a nominee now, and our nominee, Mitt Romney, the leader of the Republican Party, has a vice presidential process in place. And I think from this point moving forward, I think it’d be wise for all Republicans to kind of respect that process, myself included, and say moving forward, we’re going to let his process play itself out.”

I didn’t get that at all. What I heard was Rubio refusing to even play along with the question, although he did suggest earlier that Jeb Bush would make a great choice for Romney, when Candy Crowley started off by noting that Bush was pushing Rubio as the running mate. Bush himself categorically stated yesterday that he wouldn’t get the offer, and that the media should get over the idea:

Former Florida governor Jeb Bush, the son of one U.S. president and the brother of another, said he wants to put to rest any talk of him becoming the running mate of presumptive Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney.

“I am not going to be the veep nominee,” Bush said in an e-mailed statement yesterday. “Lay that to rest.”

The question arose after an earlier interview with the Newsmax.TV website in which Bush didn’t rule out the idea. In the interview, he touted the qualifications of U.S. Senator Marco Rubio of Florida for the second spot on the ticket. …

“I guess I wasn’t clear enough,” he said.

I like Jeb Bush, and on paper, he seems like a great choice. He remains incredibly popular after a long, successful run as governor of a critical swing state in the election this year, and while he’s not exactly a darling of the base, he would bring regional balance and potentially some enthusiasm from Latino voters. There’s only one fly in the ointment — his last name. Adding Jeb to the ticket would allow Team Obama to run against George Bush all over again in 2012, a strategy that they will pursue anyway but with little credibility — at least without a Bush on the ticket. Jeb’s smart enough to know that, and so is Mitt Romney.

NYT ombud: Trust us, we’re unbiased

With a tough presidential election on the horizon, media outlets relish the demand that the battle will bring for news and feature coverage.  In order to get those readers, though, the media outlets have to be perceived as reliable and trustworthy.  That brings us to a rather humorous column from the New York Times’ public editor — their version of an ombudsman — Arthur Brisbane, in which he addresses the disparity in scrutiny of Mitt Romney over the sitting President in recent Gray Lady coverage.  Brisbane criticized his paper four weeks ago for an over-the-top slam of an investment by the blind trust set up for Ann Romney, and apparently that’s part of his argument that the Times will provide fair coverage of the upcoming general election — despite the suck-up coverage given Barack Obama in his first term.
No … really:

According to a study by the media scholars Stephen J. Farnsworth and S. Robert Lichter, The Times’s coverage of the president’s first year in office was significantly more favorable than its first-year coverage of three predecessors who also brought a new party to power in the White House: George W. Bush, Bill Clinton and Ronald Reagan.
Writing for the periodical Politics & Policy, the authors were so struck by the findings that they wondered, “Did The Times, perhaps in response to the aggressive efforts by Murdoch’s Wall Street Journal to seize market share, decide to tilt more to the left than it had in the past?”
I strongly doubt that. Based on conversations with Times reporters and editors who cover the campaign and Washington, I think they see themselves as aggressive journalists who don’t play favorites. Still, a strong current of skepticism holds that the paper skews left. Unfortunately, this is exacerbated by collateral factors — for example, political views that creep into nonpolitical coverage.
To illustrate, Faye Farrington, a reader from Hollis, N.H., wrote me earlier this year in exasperation over a Sunday magazine article about “Downton Abbey,” the public television series, in which the writer slipped in a veiled complaint about Mitt Romney’s exploitation of the American tax code.
“The constant insertion of liberal politics into even the most politically irrelevant articles has already caused us to cancel our daily subscription,” Ms. Farrington wrote, “leaving only the Sunday delivery as I confess to an addiction to the Sunday crossword.”
The warm afterglow of Mr. Obama’s election, the collateral effects of liberal-minded feature writers — these can be overcome by hard-nosed, unbiased political reporting now.

Stop it — you’re killing me, Arthur!  Seriously, I can’t quite catch my breath from laughing out loud.  Brisbane gives us two of the most obvious cases of bias and says that this editorializing can be overcome by trusting the same people not to editorialize in news stories in the next six months.  One can imagine Lucy telling Charlie Brown much the same thing right before pulling the football away for the 50th year in a row.
The story on Ann Romney’s blind trust is one good data point that shows the problem doesn’t just lie with “liberal-minded feature writers.” By definition, a blind trust keeps the owner from making or even knowing of the financial decisions made by the trustees.  Ann Romney isn’t the candidate.  How, then, is this a news story in the presidential race?  Mitt Romney cut his ties to Bain in 1999, long before the company invested in the Chinese company in question.  Ann Romney’s blind trust has a “relatively small stake” in Bain Capital Asia fund in question, and she didn’t direct the purchase.  Furthermore, the trustees bought the stake before the fund invested in Uniview.  Does this tell us anything about Ann Romney, let alone Mitt Romney?  Of course not.  But the Times certainly didn’t mind tying both of them to Chinese surveillance.  Spooky!  Who gave that story the green light?  The editors, that’s who, not “liberal-minded feature writers.”
Here’s one data point omitted by Arthur Brisbane in his “trust us” missive: Vicki Iseman.  That was just one example of the NYT’s “hard-nosed, unbiased political reporting” in the 2008 election.  The Times endorsed John McCain in the Republican primary — much as they did today for Mitt Romney — and less than a fortnight later accused him of having had an affair with a lobbyist based on innuendo provided by a couple of disgruntled former low-level staffers.  The story was absurd, and the Times later tried to backpedal furiously from their insinuations by saying that the relationship was merely inappropriate and not necessarily sexual. The paper was roundly condemned for their yellow-journalism story, but I don’t see Brisbane discussing that in yesterday’s column.
The Times also went after McCain for his medical records in May, which he released as planned anyway.  What really went on in that incident?  The McCain campaign excluded them from a media pool during the release of the records, no doubt for payback on their Iseman smear.  The NYT then threatened to write negative editorials about his medical records if they were not added to the pool, which they did when the McCain campaign refused to knuckle under to their extortion threat.  The “hard-nosed, unbiased political reporting” that followed included two separate articles whining about their exclusion from the rather large pool at the McCain event.
So forgive us for laughing at you, Arthur.  You gave it the ol’ college try, but after watching the Times at work four years ago — and before and since then, too — we’re not about to trust the Gray Lady in 2012 to behave responsibly.
Update: Vinny Gambini said it best:

Jon Huntsman: You know the GOP this year kinda reminds me of Communist China

Via Buzzfeed, former presidential candidate Jon Huntsman reminds us why he received the most favorable coverage from the media, and yet consistently polled at or near the bottom of the heap before dropping out of the GOP race.

Recounting his first experience on the presidential debate stage in Iowa last August, Huntsman says he was struck by the question “Is this the best we could do?”
Huntsman, the former Utah governor and once President Barack Obama’s Ambassador to China, expressed disappointment that the Republican Party disinvited him from a Florida fundraiser in March after he publicly called for a third party.
“This is what they do in China on party matters if you talk off script,” he said.
Huntsman said he regrets his decision to oppose a 10-to-1 spending cuts to tax increase deal to cut the deficit at the Iowa debate lamenting: “if you can only do certain things over again in life.”
“What went through my head was if I veer at all from my pledge not to raise any taxes…then I’m going to have to do a lot of explaining,” he explained. “What was going through my mind was ‘don’t I just want to get through this?’”
That decision, Huntsman said, “has caused me a lot of heartburn.”

His comment comparing the GOP to the Communist Party in China is so outrageously outrageous that you have to wonder whether this was a lame attempt at a joke. He’s now claiming his comment was taken out of context (of course), but I think more than anything this is just sour grapes on Huntsman’s part. He actually embarked on this campaign of running (well) to the left of mainstream conservatism soon after the 2008 election, and really has never let up. What did he expect from the GOP after he expressed support for a third party run by someone more moderate than…Mitt Romney? There is no surer way to ensure Barack Obama is re-elected in November, and given how Huntsman has positioned himself it’s not hard to imagine that he envisions a political climate more receptive to his particular charms in 2016. A big tent is one thing, but it’s generally expected that you remain in the tent if you want to continue as a member of the party.
And what exactly does Huntsman regret about his opposition to any tax increases at the Iowa debate? That he didn’t tell the truth? What, does Hunstman think if he had answered this question more honestly that somehow the outcome of his candidacy would be any different? This can’t possibly be the case and I can only surmise that his real regret is losing a measure of credibility with all those reasonable (non-communist) Republicans, not to mention his friends in the liberal media.
Having closely followed Huntman’s campaign from its outset, I think I can accurately recount the question most conservatives were struck by when they were introduced to his campaign:
Who?
But considering the amount of money spent on Huntsman’s campaign, and his ultimate failure to gain traction with even one single contingent of the Republican party, the real question we should be asking is…why?

Today’s outrage: Romney looking forward to more vacations in … France

Alternate headline: “Confirmed: He’s a RINO.”
No, I kid. Romney’s fondness for France is, I think, already common knowledge among righty activists thanks to Newt running one of the dumbest attack ads of the primaries against him back in January. It’s not purely academic either: He spent two and a half years there in his early 20s on his LDS mission and evidently liked it enough that he’s willing to give this answer even now, despite the fact that “French” has always been a byword for elitism in some parts of America. Kind of nice to see him being unabashedly honest, the political consequences be damned. The lefties at HuffPo and Daily Kos have seized on the clip as evidence of hypocrisy because Romney once criticized The One for taking “elaborate vacations” as president, but watch and you’ll see that that’s a red herring. Romney never says he wants an “elaborate” vacation (unless all French getaways are inherently elaborate) and he never says he’d take vacation there during his presidency. What this is about is clear enough from this aside in ABC’s write-up:

“The best memories were with my wife on vacations from time to time in France,” said Romney, who has been criticized for being “out of touch” and has made several comments that have highlighted his wealth during his campaign.

Just the ol’ “France = elitism” charge coopted for the Democrats’ messaging about Romney’s wealth. (In the dKos post, he’s referred to at one point as “Mr. Car Elevator.”) The GOP had fun using John Kerry’s Frenchiness against him eight years ago, but anti-French sentiment was much higher then because of their opposition to the war. If Romney had to run in an age of “freedom fries,” would he have given this same answer?

Video: Romney sides with Obama in supporting extension of low student-loan rates

Remember that NYT piece last week wondering about friction between Romney and the House GOP as as he tacks towards the center for the general election while they try to hold the line on the right?

Here’s the first wisp of smoke.

“I fully support the effort to extend the low interest rate on student loans,” Romney said at a joint news conference with Florida Senator Marco Rubio. “There was some concern that that would expire halfway through the year, and I support extending the temporary relief on interest rates for students as a result of student loans, obviously, in part because of the extraordinarily poor conditions in the job market.”

In publicly breaking with his own party, Romney is taking away a potential wedge issue for President Obama’s campaign — and giving hope to Democrats that they may find new momentum for the legislation [to extend the rates]. The deadline for the current, low interest rates to expire is July 1…

Republicans oppose the bill in part on the grounds that it isn’t paid for…

Asked whether House Republican leadership would get behind Courtney’s bill, given Romney’s comments, a spokesman for Speaker John Boehner was non-committal.

GOP Rep. Jeff Landry told the Times last week vis-a-vis Romney, “We’re not a cheerleading squad. We’re the conductor. We’re supposed to drive the train.” We’ll find out soon how true that is, but in the meantime read this Daily Caller piece from Friday explaining succinctly what a clever trap this was for Democrats to set. It’s not just that the extension isn’t paid for that bothers Republicans, it’s that lower rates keep the higher-education bubble inflated and keep the Democrats’ pals in academia flush with cash. But with the lower rates set to expire automatically in July, Romney was in a bind. If he sided with Obama, there’d be instant agita within the GOP that our “Massachusetts moderate” nominee is already going wobbly on spending. If he sided with House Republicans, Obama would spend the next week bashing him for hating kids and education and the middle class and all things good and true. In fact, The One actually organized a multistate trip and an appearance on Jimmy Fallon’s show expressly for that purpose.

Romney chose door number one because he thinks he has a shot at winning young voters, or at least at enough young voters to make Obama’s lift that much heavier in November. One out of every two new college grads is unemployed or underemployed; among 18-to-24 year olds, fewer than 50 percent say they’d like to see a second term for O. Romney’s not going to hand Obama an excuse to get an otherwise ambivalent core constituency excited, especially when the cost of extending the lower rate is “only” $5.6 billion this year. He can agree with him on this and then bash him on bigger spending items (I think/hope). Besides, Romney’s probably looking for a high-profile issue on which to distinguish himself from House Republicans. He’s already praised Ryan’s budget so he’s checked the “fiscal conservative” box; now he’s going to do something for centrists and independents by daring Boehner to undercut him. He likely figures that, with the primary set to unofficially end tomorrow night in Pennsylvania and the general election to start in earnest, the House GOP will be reluctant to kneecap him on a relatively small-ticket item. And if they do, that’s fine: Centrists will feel reassured that he won’t necessarily be led by the right and conservatives will turn out to vote for him against O in November anyway.

Exit question one: Romney will definitely man up and have that “serious conversation” with America about entitlement reform when the time comes, right? Exit question two: Does this mean, contra David Plouffe, that he really isn’t the, er, most conservative nominee since Goldwater?

Hmm: Marco Rubio schedules “major speech” on foreign policy

Every move he makes from now until Romney chooses a VP will be seen through the lens of veepstakes maneuvering, no matter what Rubio’s true motivation might be. That said, it’s hard to believe the timing of this announcement is a coincidence. Today was his first big photo op with Romney on the stump, and speculation about Rob Portman has been much hotter lately than speculation about Rubio himself. This looks like his way of reinserting himself into the conversation and blunting the criticism that he’s not yet ready to be president in a pinch. Foreign policy is as core an Article II function as it gets, so here he comes to show that he’s qualified:

    Republican Sen. Marco Rubio of Florida will deliver what his staff bills a “major speech on the future of U.S. foreign policy” this week, the senator’s office announced Monday.

    Rubio, considered to be a top vice presidential pick for likely GOP nominee Mitt Romney, is set to speak Wednesday at The Brookings Institution, a left-leaning think tank in Washington, D.C.

    His remarks will focus on “whether U.S. global leadership is sustainable and even necessary in the 21st Century,” his staff said in a statement, without releasing further details.

I’m keen to hear what he says this time because thus far Rubio’s distinguished himself as being a hawk in the neoconservative mold. Watch the second clip below of him making the case for nonmilitary intervention in Syria to help the resistance free the country from Assad. He’s right in line with McCain, Lieberman, Graham and other prominent Senate hawks on that. Is Romney willing to double down on interventionism by choosing him as VP when even a majority of Republican voters lately say they want out of Afghanistan? In one sense, there’s little risk to doing so since Obama’s hands are tied on the issue; the guy who ignored the War Powers Act to join a coalition in Libya isn’t about to knock anyone else for being too interventionist. (So hawkish is Rubio that he passed on a chance to criticize Obama for that in his WSJ op-ed on Libya last year, even though it’s the worst case of overreach in Obama’s experiments with executive power.) The question is, after 10 years of war, are there more votes to be had among centrists and indies by taking a more cautious line? What does having an outspoken interventionist on the ticket do to help Romney?

Should be interesting — especially his thoughts on how much longer to stay in Afghanistan.
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Paul captures 20 of 24 Minnesota delegates in CD conventions

It’s tough these days to be a Republican in Minnesota.  While the party managed to take control of both chambers of the state legislature in 2010 for the first time in decades, the organization is deeply in debt, thanks to mismanagement under previous leadership, and seems at times in total disarray.  A sex scandal in the state Senate leader’s office that forced then-majority leader Amy Koch to give up her position didn’t help either.  The latest stumble has national implications, however:

    Minnesota will send 40 delegates to the Republican National Convention. Twenty of the 24 delegates based on congressional districts were awarded to Texas Rep. Ron Paul in selection processes that concluded this weekend.

    Thirteen Minnesota delegates will be allocated based on the results of a statewide convention in May, according to Paul campaign senior adviser Doug Wead.

    Wead wrote on his blog that GOP presidential front-runner Mitt Romney is an a “panic” after the Paul landslide. Similar efforts to bolster the Texas congressman’s delegate count are underway in Iowa, Colorado, Maine and other states.

    “[A] number of Romney Hawks are now deeply concerned that Ron Paul has already laid the groundwork for similar success in six more caucus states,” Wead wrote.

In Minnesota, delegates get chosen in congressional-district conventions, and they are not bound to any candidate.  I ran for one of these positions in CD-02 on Saturday as part of a “unity slate” backed by GOP candidates for leadership positions in the organization.  None of us even came close to winning; we later found out that the closest anyone else came to winning those slots was more than 100 votes behind the second and third place finishers, who tied.  The same tie occurred when electing alternates.

So what happened?  Paul supporters organized at the local level and got themselves elected as delegates to CD conventions.  They then showed up to the conventions — unlike some others — and played by the rules.  At our convention, there were no disruptions, no demonstrations, no attempts to hijack the proceedings.  The Paul supporters just organized effectively and outboxed the party establishment.  My radio partner Mitch Berg reported that the same thing happened in CD-04, but worries more about what comes next:

    Some of their leadership was motivated by fairly palpable anger over the “way they were treated in 2008″, when quite a few GOP activists gamed the system to keep the first wave of Paul supporters out of power.  To their political credit, they spent their four years organizing, and did a good job of it.

    Less to their credit?  While anger is a good motivator, “anger at the inner workings of a political party” has, I’m going to guess, a short shelf life.   And at least in the Fourth CD, the anger was manifested by ballot.  The twitter stream during the convention indicated that at other districts, Paul supporters booed Dan Severson and Pete Hegseth, whose main transgression was “not being Kurt Bills”, the Paul crowd’s candidate for Senate, or refusing to stand to support John Kline at the 2nd District convention when he was re-endorsed. …

    While the crowd of Paul supporters at the convention Saturday carefully replaced their “Ron Paul” posters and stickers with “Kurt Bills” goodies, and voted to endorse Tony Hernandez by a 190-5-5 margin (after running a skillful campaign to win support from most of the establishment and Paul crowds), I have yet to hear a lot of support for, or even especially much awareness of, races farther down ticket or, more importantly, for candidates who get endorsed even if they’re not on the Paul slate.

    Now, I know that there are a lot of good, committed people among the Paul crowd who are committed to using their positions in the GOP to work for the party, not just a candidate or two.

    But I get a different impression from some of their leadership.  Ronald Reagan once said that if someone agrees with you 70% of the time, it doesn’t make them 30% your enemy.

    And from some of the Paul crowd’s leadership, I do get the impression that, whether motivated by single-candidate zeal or roiling anger over 2008 or one of the mind-boggling number of byzantine interpersonal pissing matches that seems to motivate so much of CD4 GOP politics no matter who the nominee or the cause celebre or what the defining issue is, the Paul crowd’s leadership, in the district and beyond, sees “70% friends” as “30% enemies”.

The Paul campaign wants to believe that they can replicate this outcome in other caucus states, and it’s certainly possible.  But in Minnesota, they had an opening left by a party in serious disarray.  How serious?  They may soon find themselves homeless:

    The Minnesota Republican Party is facing eviction for nonpayment of more than $111,000 in rent at its longtime headquarters near the Capitol.

    Republican Party Chairman Pat Shortridge tried to assure party faithful on Monday that he expects the party will keep its home office, but acknowledged that the party has not paid a full month’s rent for a year.

    “We’re not going to be evicted,” Shortridge said, although the eviction matter is due to be heard in Ramsey County District court next Tuesday. He added that the party is “continuing to negotiate on the back payments as well as on a lease that better fits both our space needs and our budget.”

    The possible eviction is the latest blow for a state Republican Party that is swamped with debt and financial problems. The party, $2 million in arrears on bills and debt related to the 2010 gubernatorial recount, is being investigated by the Minnesota Campaign Finance and Public Disclosure Board for inaccurate campaign reporting.

This isn’t the fault of Shortridge, who just recently took the party chair position to try to right the ship.  The state GOP has had to focus on rebuilding its fiscal position more than the internal and external politics of the 2012 cycle.  Without that kind of focus, the party didn’t have the resources to deal with the Paul organization, and the delegate wins are one consequence.  That’s actually a minor consequence compared to what will happen if the state GOP doesn’t recover in time to organize for its effort in November to hold their legislative advantages, to say nothing of the mission to replace Amy Klobuchar in the US Senate.

Even if the Paul organization managed to steal a march in the caucus states, it’s not likely to damage Mitt Romney, at least not directly.  Rick Santorum was winning more of the caucus states, so the delegates will mostly come from his column, not Romney’s.  The only real threat will be that Paul delegates might embarrass the party at the convention by staging some kind of organized demonstration, but Ron Paul himself would probably keep that from happening; he wants to build the organization so that his son can use it within the GOP, not to excise Rand from the GOP.  And once again, the Paul supporters in the CD-02 convention didn’t aim at disruption at all — just victory for their cause.