That's my somewhat facetious image of Romney. Nixon's opportunism and guile without his vicious resentment (this would make Giuliani Nixon on crystal meth). I think Garance is right (and I should have cited her original article in my post) that Romney isn't particularly liberal and that his experience running for the Republican nomination will shape a lot of his policy views for the next few years if he's elected. However, while he is likely to remain conservative, I don't doubt he'd, as president do pretty much whatever he thought would be popular, ideological consistency and policy merit be damned. To answer Ezra's question, this would result in some good things -- probably some draw down in Iraq in a gradual Nixonian peace-with-honor sorta way (like pulling a bandaid off very slowly) and also no real threats to social security or other social programs. On the other hand, it would also be, I think, a bad thing for many many other issues. We'd likely see a continuation of tax-cut-and-spend economic policies, a continued bullying approach to other countries (one fast way to bump your approval ratings up is to bomb something), and a continued attempt to pander to the religious right with nutty judicial nominees and appointees to head federal agencies. On the other hand, I have zero reverence for Romney's supposed technocratic competence. Running a business is just not like running a government. The incentive structure is completely different, management works with different tools, and decisions are made... democratically. Besides health care reform, my impression is that his time as governor wasn't very notable and he ran for president in part because he wasn't going to be reelected. I actually like the case for Huckabee, contra Ezra. Basically it goes like this: whoever wins the White House, Democrats are almost certain to have a majority in the Senate for at least two years (and four is much more likely than not if a Republican wins) and a majority in the house after that. Given that Bush, for all his social conservative rhetoric, didn't manage any large-scale roll-back of reproductive rights, I'm not sure what Huckabee, committed though he is, could accomplish with an opposition congress. On economic and foreign policy issues, where a president has more control, I don't think anyone thinks he's likely to be as bad as any of the other major candidates.
