1. Governor Romney does not want the seat long term, and this is a short term vacancy.
Reports Politico, "Former Massachusetts GOP Gov. Mitt Romney will not seek the Senate seat vacated by Ted Kennedy's death, a Romney spokesman said Thursday."
"Responding to speculation that Romney may be interested in the seat — which he challenged Kennedy for in 1994 — Eric Fehrnstrom, a spokesman for Romney’s political action committee, told POLITICO that the former one-term governor has no interest in campaigning to replace Kennedy."
2. In spite of being a Republican, Governor Romney is the second most popular politician in Massachusetts, after now deceased Kennedy. (Which makes him #1 at the moment.)
From the same Politico article:
"Despite declining to run for a second term as governor in 2006 and dwindling support in the state for his landmark universal health care policy, Romney’s poll ratings in solidly Democratic Massachusetts remain respectable."
"According to a Rasmussen Reports poll released the day before Kennedy’s death late Tuesday night, Romney rated second after the late nine-term senator as the most respected politician in the state."
"More than one-third of those surveyed, 35 percent, said they respected Romney the most among the state’s politicians. Only 5 percent said Democratic Sen. John Kerry while 3 percent chose Deval Patrick, the state’s Democratic governor. Exactly half of those surveyed said they respected Kennedy the most."
3. Governor Romney has been an elected official before, chosen by the people of Massachusetts because they believed he would represent them.
While not without critics (who is?), he is far more popular than the current Governor, Duval Patrick, and for that matter, prior Governors of the State.
4. The reason Massachusetts is looking for an interim Senator is to continue to influence the health care debate.
Who better to influence that debate than Mr. (Bipartisan) Health Care himself?
5. Massachusetts is concerned about the big leap backwards the loss of Kennedy will give them in credibility in the Senate.
Romney has more than a little name recognition nationally--maybe even more than Kennedy at this point--and he already knows almost everyone in the U.S. Senate and Massachusetts government personally. Romney could actually be a leap forward, especially compared to a cancer stricken Mr. Kennedy.
So Democrats will frown over giving away a little power, but it may actually benefit them in the long run if they have a GOP ally with the clout of Romney on health care.
Finally, this may be the only real olive branch that could completely put an end to the very fair uproar (Democrat and Republican alike) over the "hypocrisy" of taking away Romney's power to select an interim Senator and giving it back to a Democrat...
For more on that, see this link:
http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2009/08/28/push-kennedy-successor-stirs-political-storm/
Thanks for reading,
@ConsRepublicans (Twitter)
http://twitter.com/consrepublicans
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