The rebirth of the Republican Party and the revitalization of the conservative message might just start with Mitt Romney becoming Governor Romney again. Republicans lack much ability to stop the Obama agenda at the national level. Even with real gains in both houses of Congress, Republicans have no real shot at controlling Congress after the 2010 mid-term elections.
State government is different. Republican strength in state legislatures across the nation is much stronger than in Congress. Republicans control at least one chamber of the state legislature in twenty-one of the fifty states, including important states like Pennsylvania, Ohio, and Michigan Republicans control both chambers of the state legislature in twelve states, including important states like Texas, Florida, and Georgia. Republicans have enough clout now to sustain gubernatorial vetoes in such key states as California, New York, Illinois, and North Carolina.
What this means is that if the Republican Party can win some big victories in state elections in 2010, those victories can translate into the ability to implement their own policies and solutions in a number of big states. Political resurgences have often come from just such victories, if those victories are followed by effective governance. Americans get to see the contrast between Republican and Democrat rule.
Rudy Giuliani showed how crime could be successfully combated though the municipal government of New York City. Tommy Thompson showed that welfare could be reformed as Governor of Wisconsin. Mitt Romney could show how business enterprise can be revitalized as the next Governor of Illinois. If he ran, if he won, and if he was able to change the economy of Illinois, that would be the sort of dramatic and successful action which would draw the attention of the nation from a “Spend, Spend, Spend!” approach of Democrats and toward a sensible, strategic approach of Romney.
Why Illinois? The state once automatically associated with industrial production and American capitalism has become the most hopeless basket case of the fifty states. The state just impeached an governor for corruption; the governor before Blagojevich is sitting in prison; and the senator Blagojevich appointed may be forced to resign from the Senate. Pandemic corruption seems to overwhelm the state. It needs a clean broom, and the image of clean government and competent business sense - - which all of America needs - - is needed most profoundly in Illinois.
Illinois ought to face a backlash from voters in 2010, but unless Republicans come up with a true leader, then the backlash may resolve itself into bitter, apathetic resignation. Democrats control the Illinois State Legislature, but it is possible for Republicans, with the right candidate, to capture the Illinois State House of Representatives (the GOP would only need to gain 12 seats out of the 118 up for election in 2010) and even the Illinois State Senate (the GOP would need to gain 8 of the 30 seats up in 2010.)
The best candidate for Republicans to run is Mitt Romney. Why? Unlike virtually every major political candidate on the horizon, Mitt Rommey was a fabulously successful businessman, and his success came in that area of business, investment banking, which requires perfect understanding of all aspects of the general business market. No political figure in our nation has more demonstrated genius than Romney in the specific problem of investment and return than Romney.
Romney also turned around the 2002 Olympic Games. What has an international embarrassing mess of corruption and incompetence was transformed into a profitable and respectable operation. In many ways, this is exactly the type of triumph of smarts and honor over sloppiness and bribery that Americans may yearn for by 2010. What Illinois needs most is absolute integrity. It is hard to find a major political figure in America today as squeaky clean as Romney. It was his honor, as much as his intellect, that allowed him to save the 2002 Olympic Games.
Romney also has on the job experience as a governor, serving as governor of the most Democrat big state in America with a reasonable degree of success. Unlike the Illinois Senator Obama who won the White House with no experience, an Illinois Governor Romney would hit the ground running as perhaps on governor of any state in American history would be able to do.
If Michigan did not have a four year residency requirement, I would want Romney to run for governor there, where his father was governor. Illinois also has a residency requirement, but Article V Section 3 of Illinois Constitution requires that the governor need only be a resident of the state for three years prior to his election (i.e. Romney would have to be a resident as of November 2009.) Romney tackled the residency legal issue in Massachusetts, and won it, as he did the “carpetbagger”political issue.
Romney has as much integrity as any Republican around. He is reasonable and articulate. Romney has the wealth to run a campaign without relying on much help, especially in a statewide rather than a national election. Romney is, in retrospect, the Republican in the nomination fight around whom principled conservatives should have rallied. Only when he withdrew did many conservative see him as he truly was: a true patriot and an American who shared their values.
If Romney ran and led a broad Republican statewide victory in Illinois next year, then if he showed the same skill which he did seven years ago in the Olympic Games, Romney could draw national attention and praise for Republican initiatives at just the moment when Obama fatigue was at its highest level.
This might make Romney the favorite for 2012, when Romney would be sixty-five years old. It would give conservatives and Republicans something to point to, something to celebrate, something to guide them, in the 2012 election. Republican Illinois Governor Romney could also champion a broad recovery of Republican strength in the northern industrial states in which he served as governor or his father served as governor (Massachusetts, Illinois, and Michigan.)
Would Romney run? He might, particularly if all of us conservatives made sure that this time around we treated him as a friend and ally. If Romney ran and if Romney won, it could be the most powerful tonic for our nation and for our party since Ronald Reagan served as a wildly popular Governor of California. And we have all been waiting for Reagan’s ghost for many years.
Bruce Walker
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