Now that the smoke has cleared and McCain has the GOP nomination locked up it might be worthwhile to mention what a good job Mitt Romney did in his first go out of the box in the biggest of all political races.
I am not a Romney cheer leader but by the same token seeing someone from our state do well is not something that I am unalterably opposed to. With that in mind it is hard to understand the consistent venom that the Globe spewed over the Romney campaign. Even after his withdrawal, the Globe responded with a holier than thou editorial criticizing Romney for his various flip flops and politics of convenience. Unfortunately, that is what our political systems is all about. In order to serve you have to win and in order to win you have to carefully craft a messsage that will resound with enough people to get you there.
What campaign is ever drafted out of honesty, idealism and principal? Forgive me for being cynical but those campaigns lose. Pandering to money and interest groups are the winning formula, then after winning you can worry about doing the right thing.
It is rather a telling note that the Globe's two endorsements apparently fell on deaf ears of Massachusetts voters as both of them lost. One can only hope that those results are another indication of the continuing downward trend of Globe influence in the region.
In any event Romney's pull out and recent endorsement of McCain was the right things to do for his party and simultaneously increased his own party stature. Unlike the Democrats, who rarely give a loser a second shot, the Republicans are quite the opposite. Reagan, Nixon, Dole, Bush I and now McCain have all finished second in previous elections and then went on to win the nomination later.
We haven't heard the last of Mitt Romney on the national scene.
