A Brief History of the Romney Campaign

I was one of those who followed the Republican presidential primaries, and watched for signs of life among the string of “anti-Romney” candidates that rose and fell: Rick Perry, Herman Cain, Newt Gingrich, Rick Santorum. But Romney had the ability to outlast each and every one of them, as each and every one of them showed some flaw that could not be overcome.

The Wall Street Journal today has provided a brief summary history of the Romney campaign over the last two years.

My objection to Romney was embodied in the phrase “if he’ll believe in Mormonism, what else will he believe in?”

But Romney has since delivered a very sound set of economic policy proposals that I think will do for our sluggish economy what the Reagan policies did in the 1980’s. Having lived through those years, I can tell you that the 1980’s were a whole lot better than the 1970’s. Reagan inherited a recession, and the economy then slipped into a “double-dip” recession, before pulling mightily out of the doldrums with a full year’s worth of 7% economic expansion.

One may or may not see “economic growth” as a moral benefit. Chief Justice Roberts showed us this year that the “we-need-a-Republican-president-because-of-the-Supreme-Court” argument is still tenuous as it was in the George H.W. Bush era.

But from a life-on-the-ground perspective, the economic challenges of raising a family look to be helped a great deal by Romney’s policy proposals, and that’s the perspective I bring to this moment. I would rather see a Republican president with sound economic policies than a Democratic president with policies that drag on the economy.

As they say:

Perhaps Mr. Romney's most appealing trait is his optimism: We have problems, a whole lot of them, but they are solvable. Americans have always believed that. Yet the sentiment seems unusual given the current President who won with large Democratic majorities but has spent four years blaming his predecessors for every ill as if they are intractable.

Mr. Romney has treated voters like adults and offered them a true choice about the future. He is promising change, and for once that abused term doesn't mean [change] for the worse.