Monday, August 22, 2011

Mitt Romney: The Catch-22 of Executive Experience

Mitt Romney, long-running candidate for President: executive experience, check.

A desperately needed skill, Romney's previous tenure as Governor accords him a talent and traits much needed for the Presidency.

Jon Huntsman is another former governor running for the Republican nation, but the focus on candidate Romney is more pertinent because of his status as long-winning, long-winded, and now winding-down front-runner

Yet his legacy as executive is marred by the status, or state, of his experience, the Bay State, Massachusetts, whose electorate is 3-to-1 liberal, like the City by the Bay.

Running a liberal bastion from a moderate stance makes him damaged goods, or at least a difficult bill of sale.

The biggest set-back, his crowning achievement: Romneycare, the state-mandated insurance program which is hemorrhaging cost overruns while failing to provide every resident of the state with affordable health insurance.

Romney's premier accomplishment as executive, Romneycare is the walking-talking argument against Obamacare, which every Republican Presidential candidate wants to repeal. Romney, wanting to tout his executive experience, must lug a liability as left-leaning as the President he would run against if he were to win the nomination.

It is a shame that a Mormon, born in Michigan to another celebrated governor, cut his teach as a governor in state so liberal, that any finesses and panache he could boast is irrevocably marred with statist policies which will hardly endear him to the fiscal-limited government advocates swelling the ranks of the Republican party, and primaries.

Mr. Romney cannot run against his history. He has experience, yet his legacy hinders an electorate desperate for leadership from assessing his previous practice.

In addition to Romneycare, there are the numerous waffles on social issues, from his failed run against Ted Kennedy to his solidified election wins as governor. Defending a women's right to choose--terminate a baby before birth, and government-sanctioned alternatives to marriage, which now impinge on religious dissent within the Bay: these and other marginal views will inevitable marginalize a once electric and energized front runner, with the necessary executive experience becoming a future President.

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