They’re both dynamic, well-spoken, good fundraisers, and let’s face it—enviably coiffed with great hair. One has officially thrown his hat into the ring (again) and leads at this point in the national polls as the GOP favorite, while the other appears to still be coyly flirting with the idea as his praises are sung with anticipation by the likes of Rush Limbaugh and other conservative luminaries.
But as Campaign 2012 gets underway, former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney and current Texas Gov. Rick Perry are also haunted by their respective 800-lb gorillas, gorillas representing their ill-planned policy departures from major conservative values which could be anathema to the voters they need to earn the party’s nomination. Both candidates (that is, if Perry enters the race) will have to come to terms with these specters of Christmas Past if they’re serious about the White House.
Otherwise known as a socially conservative governor, Perry riled up family-values voters in an uncharacteristic move when he issued an executive order in 2007 requiring school-age girls to be immunized with Gardasil, the vaccine against HPV. After a huge outcry from parents in the Lone Star State, lawmakers in Austin blocked the order and the requirement died in the state Capitol—but not before leaving the bad taste of cronyism in Texans’ mouths when it was revealed that Perry’s former chief-of-staff was a lobbyist for Merck, the maker of the drug.
“VaccineGate” was a common attack challengers lobbed at Perry in the recent 2010 Texas GOP primary for governor, as well as his support of the Trans-Texas Corridor, a position which raised concerns among property-rights voters. The large transportation project had farmers and ranchers up in arms over the threat of up to a half-million acres of land that could have been acquired through the state's assertion of eminent domain. That scheme eventually died, as well.
In the end, Texas’ very conservative GOP for the most part forgave Perry for these transgressions, and primary voters handed Perry the nomination with 51% of the vote in a three-way race. That’s a pretty good indicator for how well he might do winning a Republican nomination in a party that’s increasingly moving to the right with the help of the Tea Party movement.
Now to Romney. As governor in 2006, Romney shepherded his famous RomneyCare plan through to law, which not only established a mandate for every Bay State citizen to obtain state-regulated health insurance, but also provided taxpayer-funded coverage for working class people who were otherwise not eligible for Medicaid coverage. Sound familiar?
Romney may have envisioned his plan as being a harmless Petri dish experiment in federalism, asserting a state’s autonomy over its own health care environment. But as NPR’s Julie Rovner reports, the much-reviled federal ObamaCare plan “was based, almost line for line, on the Massachusetts model”—morphing that Petri dish into a giant Frankenstein’s monster which now threatens President Obama’s own re-election chances.
Even worse, Romney stands by his plan and refuses to say “my bad.” At a campaign stop in Ann Arbor, Mich., on May 12, Romney said, “I, in fact, did what I believed was right for the people of my state.”
The fact is, the economic fallout has been disastrous for Massachusetts, causing an explosion in demand for services from newly insured people, which has in turn both greatly limited access to care and driven up its cost.
As voters continue to scrutinize the performance of a state-level CEO and the impact of his policies in the state, it won’t help Romney that the Mercatus Center recently ranked Massachusetts as one of the least free states in the nation, coming in at No. 46, thanks to a morass of “nanny-state” regulations, of which RomneyCare plays a huge part. (Meanwhile, Texas comes in at No. 14.)
The lesson learned here is, as a politician with an otherwise good track record, you’re allowed to make a couple of blunders every once in a while—nobody’s perfect. And luckily for Perry, his bad ideas didn’t gain much momentum in Texas.
Unfortunately for Romney, his whopper of a bad idea not only came to fruition in the state of Massachusetts, but traveled on to Washington to become the worst federal policy in decades. And in Republican theology, that’s an unforgivable sin that simply won’t pass muster for the White House nomination.
Erin Humiston is director of policy communication at the Institute for Policy Innovation (IPI), an independent, nonprofit public policy organization.
January 12, 2011