Could the Lord be so beneficent as to give Massachusetts Democrats a second chance to defeat the Romney family in much less than a year? It’s beginning to look that way, according to the Boston Herald‘s Hillary Chabot in a piece inevitably entitled “Tagg, you’re it for GOP Senate hopes”:
Tagg Romney is considering a run in the special Senate election now that Scott Brown has opted out….
Calls for Romney, 42, to join in the short campaign to replace Secretary of State John F. Kerry have increased since the Herald first reported heavyweight Republicans are urging both Romney and his mother, Ann, to get in.
The eldest son of former governor and presidential candidate Mitt Romney already has statewide name recognition and could quickly ramp up the campaign infrastructure for a short, five-month race.
I don’t know why the younger Romney would want to do this unless he’s even more arrogant than he sometimes came across in posing as the power behind the scenes in his father’s campaign. He has no prayer of winning, even in a turnout-depressed special election. To even become competitive he’d have to take positions that would make him permanently toxic in national GOP politics–or at least require him to emulate Mitt’s remarkable ability to repudiate his own record.
I still don’t know why if Massachusetts Republicans just need a placeholder in the Senate special election they don’t just draft Mitt himself. For his admirers, it would represent a Last Hurrah moment the quick-to-be-forgotten 2012 nominee otherwise will not get. And for his intra-party detractors, it would be a political stake through the heart that he’d have to pay for himself.
