The Competent Conservative

In his piece in the Wall Street Journal, Gerald Seib articulates what I have been trying to explain to fellow Republicans for months now.  The thing that is great about Mitt’s public opinion polling is that he is always progressing.

By Gerald Seib

Most Republicans have just finished what might be called the spring of their discontent. Not much went right in the first half of the year; not much to cheer about.

But not Mitt Romney. For this unsuccessful 2008 Republican presidential contender, it is hard to imagine how events could be moving more decisively in his favor in 2009. One can almost hear him wondering: Why didn’t things break this way last year?

Let us count the ways that the world has conspired to help Mr. Romney. At a time when the Republican Party is straining to find new leaders, other prominent party members who aspire to that role — Govs. Sarah Palin, Bobby Jindal and Mark Sanford, and Sen. John Ensign — have stumbled or, in the case of Gov. Sanford, flamed out in spectacular fashion. Mitt Romney now looks by comparison like the serious adult in the room.

Beyond that, the national agenda is squarely focused on the economy — which plays to Mr. Romney’s strength as a successful businessman –

And beyond the economy, what are the other big items on the agenda? Well, one is the auto industry, which happens to play nicely to the Romney background as a Michigander and son of an auto-company executive. The other is health care, which tees up Mr. Romney to talk about the health overhaul he led in Massachusetts while that state’s governor. All this leads, inevitably enough, to talk of Mr. Romney already emerging as a leading contender for the party’s next presidential nomination.

“He’s very genuine when he says he hasn’t made a decision about 2012,” says Kevin Madden, a close aide during the presidential campaign and part of a small team of informal advisers. “I know him well enough to know that when he makes a decision he goes 100 miles an hour. Right now it’s in a lower gear.”

In fact, one of the questions Mr. Romney’s advisers are wrestling with is how to avoid over-exposure. But more exposure seems certain as the health-care debate heats up in Congress, and Mr. Romney is called upon to compare his health overhaul in Massachusetts to the one Democrats are proposing. He is able to say that his plan incorporated some aspects of overhaul that Democrats embrace — a mandate that every citizen acquire some form of coverage, for example — while avoiding the element that Republicans really despise, a government-sponsored insurance plan to compete with the offers of the private sector.

More broadly, Mr. Romney has developed a well-modulated critique of President Barack Obama, one that is tough without sounding harsh.

Besides, talk of a presidential candidacy misses the more relevant point. Republicans are looking for a voice to speak for the party in exile, and Mr. Romney is starting fill the role quite nicely.

Yet the most important thing Mr. Romney is doing may lie elsewhere, in the air miles and shoe leather he is investing to help fellow Republicans.

Last year, Mr. Romney’s political action committee endorsed 84 Republican candidates for federal office and passed out more than $400,000 in contributions, while Mr. Romney appeared at 34 campaign events for Republican congressional candidates.