2002 question about Mitt Romney
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Author Topic: 2002 question about Mitt Romney  (Read 307 times)
Vermin Supreme
Henry Clay
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« on: June 02, 2012, 12:13:38 PM »
« edited: June 02, 2012, 12:15:36 PM by Vermin Supreme »

I was 13 years old back when Mitt Romney was elected governor of Massachusetts and was wondering who were his demographic straights with in the state. Did the Ed King blue collar workers appreciate Romney record on his positions of issues such as abortion? How about the libertarians who were more likely to vote Carla Howell but were also pragmatic Republicans/independents? I imagine the white collar "party of business" were his strongest voter vase with poor minority's being his weakest. This is mostly specificly for Massachusetts people on this forum such as Mr Moderate but any one that followed this race could help me with my question.
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old timey villain
cope1989
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« Reply #1 on: June 02, 2012, 01:49:44 PM »
« Edited: June 02, 2012, 01:55:02 PM by cope1989 »

There's a great NYT article that talks about elastic states. Massachusetts is an elastic state because it has a lot of swing voters. Most of the time, however, these swing voters break for the Democrats, giving Massachusetts its partisan edge.

Mass Republicans win mainly by picking up Suburban voters. They tailor their candidates to appeal to these center, or even center left, upper class voters who are mainly white. These people are moderate on social issues and can't stand activist social conservatives who base their whole platform on issues like abortion and gay marriage. But honestly, those aren't huge issues for them. They care more about economics. They approve of free market economics, mainly because it has worked for them very well. But they also think a safety net is important.

So if the Massachusetts GOP can run a Republican who is center left on social issues, as Romney was, and center right on fiscal issues, which Romney also was, then they can pick up enough moderates to win.

*It should be noted that Romney wasn't truly center left on social issues, though. He tried to take a hands off approach. He basically told them that he didn't approve of abortion, but he wouldn't attempt to strip away at a woman's right to choose. Privately, I think he was very much against gay rights in the state, but he tried to keep that under wraps. As the end of his term got closer, however, and he was gearing up for his presidential run, he became more vocally conservative on social issues. Which is probably one of the reasons his approval ratings plummeted the last year of his term.
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