He's certainly qualified to be president. Has better qualifications and experience than the last 3 presidents. His personal past will come up and he will take lashings...but that was some time ago.
I think if Mitt played his cards right, he could be president in 2012...particularly with the economy and finance as being a strong point. In 3 years we will have lost economic ground and people will be angry about the national debt, continued excessive gov spending, gov intervention into private industry and devaluation of the currency, and likely increased taxation. I think Obama will loose a lot of independents over the next year or two.
The republicans are unorganized right now. Perhaps they are waiting, it is still a bit early for organized opposition against this president. They could be waiting for the people to be more disenchanted from a policy standpoint because the people like the president personally.
Good post. I agree with everthing you said. Both Romney and Gingrich would make great presidents. Unfortunately Gingrich would be a horrible presidential candidate. I do agree that his time has passed. He was a great Speaker of the House - the legislative version of Ronald Reagan in terms of policy. His only useful political role now is advisor and teacher.
As for Romney, he was not a good presidential candidate in 2008 but has the potential to be a good presidential candidate in 2012, if he learned from his mistakes in 2008. He made a great emotional speech at CPAC 2008, and people were wondering where those sorts of speeches were earlier in the campaign. He also made the mistake of bragging about his economic strong points. That would have worked in the general election (espeacially during the fall panic of 2008), but not in the primary. Republicans understand that it isnt the government's job to manage the economy.
Never the less, a Romney/Obama general election battle in 2012 would in a lot of ways be the battle that we should have gotten in 2008. I dont care how much the political wind was blowing against the Republicans. You are in the midst of a financial panic. You have one candidate who has written two heavily successful personal memoirs. He was a community organizer. He was a law professor and was president of the Harvard Law Review. He spent 4 years in the Illinois State Senate , and 2 years in the US Congress. For an ordinary American those credentials are not chopped liver. But for President of the United States? The other candidate was a sucessful Republican governer in one of the bluest states. He rescued that state from a huge budget deficit. He rescued the Salt Lake City Olympics from a huge deficit, when everyone thought the situation was hopeless. He was a ventrue capitalist who has taken over many companies and made them profitable and successful. He has a history of managing many firms and solving problems.
It would have been quite a site to behold to see people pick Obama over Romney given those cridentials. We deserve what we are getting right now, but we REALLY would have deserved what we are getting had we picked Obama over Romney.