Lose One for The Gipper

Time for a post mortum. The Romney Reform train derailed last Tuesday somewhere between Boston and Washington. Far from having its intended effect, the party building excercise Romney undertook actually resulted in some self-inflicted wounds.

The campaign was built on a shaky foundation, Romney's own election, and a faulty premise, that the Legislature needs reforming.

The Massachusetts voter, astute as he is, has grown weary of the Democratic Party controlled Legislature. But it would take a Herculean effort to rectify the inbalance in the institution. So for the last 14 year, and 4 elections, we have opted for the easier quick fix; hiring someone to keep an eye on them.

Romney, like Weld and Cellucci, before him was elected to get us back to a kind of equilibrium between the two branches of state governmnet. (With the advent of an activist State Supreme Court, the voters will also be looking for ways to curtail the Court's self-assumed powers, probably through referendums initiated by the other two branches.)

During this election, Romney tried to transfer his political capital to his hand-picked Republican candidates for the legislature, ignoring a very important dictum in politics: you cannot transfer political capital, you can only (make it or) spend it. You can campaign, fundraise, and endorse a candidate. You can't choose them, and they still have to get elected on their own.

The point is that Romney is the solutionto the Democratic Legislature in the voters minds. Further reform is not welcomed. The attempt by the Governor to disguise his efforts as reform failed, utterly. It was too transparent.

Romney was really trying to remedy what is the Achilles heel of every Republican from Massachustts lusting for higher office; coming from a state that he can't carry in a general election. Romney Reform was undertaken instead to prepare the Governor for the next train to leave town, the one carrying him to Washington in 2008.