Romney: What Will He Do?

I am finding it difficult to predict what Mitt Romney will do in office if he becomes president. In the past, I have assumed that he is acting very conservative because he fears his base, so he will act that way in office. However, he has refused to take any position that might be at all unpopular. O anything that could be unpopular he is vague or silent. So this really makes me wonder what he will do in office.

It is clear that his policies, if looked at what is implied to meet his promises, are extremely conservative. It is also clear that doing what is implied would be deeply unpopular. The best example of this is his budget and the cuts that would be required to allow him to balance the budget, cut taxes, increase defense spending, and keep medicare and social security whole. To meet these goals he would have to gut all other government programs.

So will he go through with his unpopular policies or will be back down and be much more moderate? Jonathan Chait points to noise from the campaign suggesting Romney wants so bad to institute real change, even if it is deeply unpopular and causes him to have only a one-term presidency.

President Obama said the same thing and he was clearly being disingenuous. (The Romney campaign makes it sound more credible by referencing James Polk, though misrepresenting the history a bit.) And I don’t see Romney as being the one who is more willing than Obama to be unpopular.

It’s not like these are positions Romney has held dear. He has become a staunch conservative to win the nomination but as we all know he was a moderate as governor of Massachusetts.

So I am stuck. Will he actually take very unpopular steps to institute deeply conservative policies? I think Chait is right that Conservatives want to, seeing as that it is their last chance considering where the demographics are going.

It's possible that Mitt Romney doesn't even knows what he will do. Maybe he doesn't realize these policies will be deeply unpopular. Either way, I am not too worried. If the demographics are right, I don't see such far right policies saying for long. As Douthat points out in the Polk piece, the things Romney et al want to do are far in the future and easily overturned. Except for the budget cuts: though they can be reversed in short time there will be some short term damage.