Matt Latimer: Is Romney the Next Kerry?

Matt Latimer is the author of the New York Times bestseller SPEECH-LESS: Tales of a White House Survivor. He was deputy director of speech writing for George W. Bush and chief speech writer for Donald Rumsfeld.

Mitt Romney was more likable as a liberal. That, at least, was my conclusion after watching a devastating video put together by the Democratic Party’s best (and maybe only) strategist: comedian Jon Stewart. Before my eyes was an early Rombot model, circa 1994, that we’ve not seen since: emotional, passionate, lively. He sneered derisively at the “Reagan-Bush” years, bragged about being a political independent, and indignantly defended his “consistent” support of abortion rights. Romney was so proud of his pro-choice pedigree that he even tweaked his Senate opponent, Democrat Ted Kennedy, for equivocation. A few years later, when he ran for governor and was asked about support he’d received from a pro-life organization, he squirmed more uncomfortablythan if he’d been forced to watch a marathon of “Mike and Molly.”

That, of course, is not the Mitt Romney running for president today. In fact the Republican’s encyclopedia-sized list of policy reversals makes 2004’s whipping boy, John “I voted for it before I voted against it” Kerry, look like an exemplar of political consistency. All of which raises a haunting question for the GOP as the clock ticks down to the Iowa caucuses: in a party whose potential nominees include Gary Johnson and Ron Paul, could the GOP’s “safe” choice actually be its most reckless gamble?

In 1994, Romney ran for the United States Senate as a “William Weld moderate” because that is what he believed it took to get elected in Massachusetts. On nearly every issue he was boldly to the left of the Republican mainstream. He labeled Newt Gingrich’s “Contract With America” too partisan, opposed capital-gains-tax cuts, vowed to encourage banks to give home loans to poor families, and, as The Washington Post put it, “stressed his support for universal health insurance and abortion rights.” At a debate with Kennedy in Boston, the paper noted, Romney “was more outspoken than Kennedy in arguing that the Boy Scouts should not exclude homosexual youths.” Romney once bragged that he voted for a Democrat, Paul Tsongas, in the 1992 presidential primaries, though he later tried to change his story and his rationale. Stewart pointed out that then-Governor Romney vowed to close “corporate loopholes” in the language now used by President Obama. And Romney’s ever-evolving position on his health-care proposal—which he once called a model for the nation—is notorious...