With respect to the debate between Garance, Ezra and Matt referenced below, I think the answer is that they're all right. I certainly agree with Garance (and I don't think anybody disagrees) that there's no hidden liberal technocrat waiting to emerge if Romney becomes President. Obviously, the relatively liberal Republican that governed in Massachusetts was the product of an institutional context very different than what would exist in D.C. and would not reappear. But, as Ezra says, the key is that Romney is at least a technocrat, and the fact that he has a proven record of competent governance is actually meaningful; although a Republican president will make policy outcomes worse, as Bush has demonstrated it's important to have someone capable of actually running the basic functions of government. And while he wouldn't govern as a liberal there's no reason to believe that Romney is more conservative than any of his competitors. McCain's fabled moderation is almost entirely mythical, a vanished artifact of a very brief period in which he was furious at the smear campaign run against him by the Christian right. And his foreign policy views have consistently been to the right of Bush. (One of Matt's commenters asks: "Do you really think that if McCain had been elected President in 2000 that we'd be in Iraq?" Uh, yes.) Thompson lacks not only most of Romney's moderate history but also any record of competent governance, and his indolent campaign is hardly reassuring on this score. Ezra gets the comparison to Huckabee right; I'm not sure why a known competent social conservative is preferable to one whose level of commitment to conservatism is unclear. And particularly since his social liberalism will be mostly irrelevant as a president, Giuliani's authoritarian tendencies and lunatic foreign policy views make him easily the least desirable major candidate. The fact that Romney is almost certainly the least likely to win is icing on the cake. --Scott Lemieux
