Romney In Michigan

By Kevin Drum

(Political Animal)  ROMNEY IN MICHIGAN....Kos is still pushing Democrats to cross over and vote for Mitt Romney in Tuesday's Michigan primary and Matt Yglesias remarks that "cynicism aside, it really does seem to me that Romney would be a less dangerous president than Mike Huckabee or John McCain or Rudy Giuliani. Voting for Romney in a primary is win-win."

Is that true? That's the way I see things too, but the other day I ran into Hugh Hewitt at our local Ruby's and it got me to wondering. Hugh is a smart guy and a consummate Republican Party apparatchik, and he supports Romney. I don't remember all the specific details of why he prefers Romney, but just in general he obviously thinks that Romney is the most reliably conservative candidate in the GOP field. I, on the other hand, also support Romney, but I support him because I think he's just pandering to the base right now and, in fact, is the most reliably centrist and technocratic of the Republicans currently running. If you put a gun to my head and forced me choose one of the Republican candidates to be president — well, I'd probably just go ahead and shoot myself. But if I didn't shoot myself after all, I'd go with Romney.

So what I'm wondering here is, who's getting suckered, me or Hugh? Would Romney really be worse than, say, McCain or Giuliani from a liberal perspective? That's hard to believe, frankly. But that's what Hugh Hewitt thinks, and his fealty to the conservative cause isn't really open to question. So who's right?