Emergency White House Candidate

Mitt Romney announces his candidacy for the presidency.

In the country of the blind, the one-eyed man is king. To the weak field of Republicans who have announced their intention to run for the presidency in 2012 you can now add Mitt Romney. And despite many reservations from conservatives, he appears to have the best chance of success for now. But the fact that he may win the nomination is due more to the weaknesses of his opponents than it is to his own strength. Romney, devoid of charisma, slippery as an eel and often described as an opportunist, could end up scoring points as the least of the other evils embodied by the wacky field of arch-conservative representatives favored by the tea party movement.

With sleeves rolled up, Romney announced his candidacy last Thursday in New Hampshire. The Republican campaign will kick off in this small New England state next year. Romney used the occasion in his speech at Bittersweet Farm in Stratham to attack Barack Obama’s economic policies, claiming that Obama had deepened the recession and not created enough new jobs. He added that the real estate market remained weak, and government spending was still too high. Romney accused Obama of applying “European answers” to American problems. “This president’s first answer to every problem is to take power from you, your local government and your state so that so-called ‘experts’ in Washington can make those choices for you. And with each of these decisions, we lose more of our freedom.”

Prior to his speech, Romney told NBC he thought he had a better than 50 percent chance to win the Republican primary election. A realistic scenario: Romney has a well-functioning campaign team. Since his defeat in New Hampshire in 2008 against John McCain, he has worked to build a network of local supporters. In any case, the former investment banker and multimillionaire has enough money to run, and contributions to his campaign continue to come in. He took in $10 million in a single day in Las Vegas, in donations from wealthy supporters and did so despite his drawbacks, principal among which is the mandatory health insurance program he inaugurated as governor of Massachusetts that served as a blueprint for Barack Obama’s health care reform plan. Tea party supporters call this hated initiative “Obamacare,” and Romney vowed to reverse that decision and rejected his own health care reform plan in Massachusetts, which he called “a state solution to a state problem.” He avoided any mention of Paul Ryan’s plan to abolish Medicare while further cutting taxes on the wealthy. That makes Romney the only Republican candidate thus far who doesn’t publicly support the Ryan plan.

How difficult it may become for Romney was shown when Sarah Palin made an appearance. Following her visit to New York, she chose to show up in New Hampshire, of all places, just as Romney announced his candidacy — thereby stealing a good portion of the show from him. Officially on a family vacation, the tea party movement icon is currently fueling speculation that she may herself enter the race for the White House. But there is also a good deal of evidence that the ex-governor is mainly interested in polishing her own image as a kingmaker. She parked her red, white and blue festooned bus, emblazoned with a facsimile of the U.S. Constitution and the words “One Nation” just 10 miles from the farm where Romney was laying out his election plans. She had already previously expressed criticism of “Romneycare.” In any event, she has already captured the media’s attention, with even CNN reporting live on her tour.