Romney is fast rising as a serious contender
WASHINGTON -- Until very recently, Governor Mitt Romney has been a long shot preparing for a race -- the Republican presidential primaries -- that almost always goes to the favorite.
But through shrewd moves and good luck, Romney has steadily risen through the ranks of GOP prospects. Now, almost everyone in Republican politics ranks Romney as the second-likeliest nominee, behind Senator John McCain of Arizona.
Such early soundings are a popular inside-Washington parlor game. But they carry some weight in the Republican Party, whose leaders tend to line up early behind presidential candidates. Preseason favorites have won every nomination since, um, 1968, when Romney's late father, Governor George Romney of Michigan, was the early front-runner. He lost to a late-entering Richard Nixon.
The current Governor Romney needed strong backing early in the process to be taken seriously as a contender. Republicans don't like new faces, so Romney had to make himself familiar very quickly. He has done that, and more.
Last week, Romney was the runner-up to McCain in an exhaustive National Journal poll of Washington insiders. And McCain himself has validated the early soundings by crashing the annual convention of the Republican Governors Association, which Romney chaired. McCain knew that Romney's ties to Republican governors could give him thousands of foot soldiers in the primaries. It was a testament to the extent of Romney's support that McCain felt a need to intervene so early and so directly.
Romney's ascension has been helped by the stumbles of other, better-known contenders. George Allen, once considered the leading threat to McCain, lost his Virginia Senate race. Bill Frist, who had hoped to parlay his position as Senate majority leader into a solid record of accomplishment, ran into intense opposition. He recently announced he will leave politics and return to medical practice.
But Romney's own actions have played a role in his rise. Moves that were dismissed as craven in Massachusetts -- denying protection to former president Mohammad Khatami of Iran or having State Police round up illegal immigrants -- have played big in Washington.
Now, Romney is widely accepted as a true conservative, to the right of the quirky McCain, by the large GOP punditocracy. It helped that Romney made frequent trips to Washington to give speeches at conservative think tanks and to curry favor with GOP insiders.
Being regarded as a true conservative is crucial to Romney's chances, since the Republican field is overloaded with moderates and mavericks. As a governor of ultra liberal Massachusetts who ran as a moderate for the Senate in 1994 and for governor in 2002, Romney might reasonably have been held in suspicion by conservatives.
But since deciding not to run for re election, he's taken on the Massachusetts liberal establishment in such a showy way -- especially on gay marriage -- that national Republicans can't help but cheer at the fox in the liberal hen house.
This is important because Romney could gain a trove of support when conservatives realize that his fellow Northeasterner -- Rudolph Giuliani, former New York City mayor -- is a social liberal.
Giuliani is known nationally mainly for his forceful leadership after 9/11, which made him a GOP hero. But the conventional wisdom is that when Republican primary voters hear about Giuliani's three marriages, how he once shared quarters with a gay couple, and of his support for abortion rights, they'll opt for someone else.
That would leave McCain and a number of long shots, some of whom, such as Kansas's socially conservative Senator Sam Brownback, could emerge as a true contender. McCain will be 72 in 2008, and has been an active supporter of the Iraq war.
Republicans like graybeards, having nominated a past-his-prime Bob Dole as recently as 1996, so McCain's age won't be a huge liability; but his support for the Iraq war -- and especially his call for more troops -- might be.
Romney is free of any responsibility for the war, and his reputation as a competent manager might seem especially appealing after President Bush's managerial failings. But Romney is otherwise untested, unvetted, with a trove of business deals behind him. And he's a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, which some conservative Christians hold in disrepute.
Nonetheless, the country is starting to pay attention to the next presidential campaign, and Romney is near the center of the stage. Not a bad place to be, and far better than he had any reason to hope for six months ago.
Peter S. Canellos is the Globe's Washington bureau chief. National Perspective is his weekly analysis of events in the capital and beyond. 