George Weeks: Mitt Romney on familiar ground

George Weeks

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Weeks

September 25, 2011

By GEORGE WEEKS Syndicated Columnist The Record Eagle Thu Feb 23, 2012, 03:41 PM EST

The Straits of Mackinac is a fond place for Michigan native Mitt Romney, the former Massachusetts governor who is making his second bid to be the Republican presidential nominee.

It was in a boat under the Mackinac Bridge, he once told me, that Ann Lois Davies accepted his proposal for a 1969 marriage that produced five sons for the son of 1963-69 Gov. George Romney, himself a 1968 presidential contender whose family spent cherished time at the Governor's Summer Residence on Mackinac Island.

(There are reports that Mitt first popped the question to Ann after the two left high school in Oakland County, but for this column the Mighty Mac acceptance version works better.)

In advance of his weekend appearance before more than 1,600 activists at the biennial Republican leadership conference that has been held on Mackinac Island since 1953 and for decades has been a well-attended forum by presidential contenders, Romney had these positive developments:

• He received well-deserved favorable media coverage from last week's two-hour Republican presidential debate in Florida sponsored by Fox News and Google in which he exchanged barbs with Texas Gov. Rick Perry, who has been leading in recent national polls.

I thought Romney in the debate decisively bested Perry, who also attended the Mackinac conference.

• A poll reported last week by Marketing Resource Group and Inside Michigan Politics (IMP) newsletter said that if the GOP presidential vote were held now in Michigan, Romney would get 40 percent to Perry's 17 percent, with all others in single digits.

Not all that surprising considering Romney's Michigan ties.

In the poll's general election match-ups in the sampling of likely voters in Michigan, Romney was tied with President Barack Obama while Perry trailed Obama 50 percent to 39 percent.

IMP Publisher Bill Ballenger said: "Mitt Romney continues to perform much better in Michigan than he does on the national level. In almost every national poll of Republican primary voters, Rick Perry has overtaken Romney as the GOP frontrunner. The strength of the Romney name is surprising since George Romney's last year as governor of the state was over 40 years ago."

On Saturday, Republican State Chairman Bobby Schostak told reporters that Romney "is the one to beat" in the state's 2012 GOP presidential primary. He said, "Clearly someone with the name of Romney will appeal to independents" in Michigan.

• In advance of the Mackinac conference, Romney had a key endorsement from Michigan Republican National Committeeman Saul Anuzis, former GOP state chairman, who said: "... It makes sense to support the most conservative candidate who can win ... Mitt Romney is that candidate, and now is the time to start rallying our forces."

He said, "Romney's singular focus on job creation combined with his Michigan roots and ability to relate to the hopes and dreams of native Michiganders make him Mark Brewer's worst nightmare."

The reference is to the combative veteran Democratic state chairman who long has made a point of hanging around such GOP gatherings as the Mackinac conference to give his party's spin to the proceedings.

While Brewer is Michigan's chief critic of Gov. Rick Snyder, Schostak is a designated cheerleader. In an opening statement at the conference, he said:

"In less than a year, Gov. Snyder and the Republican legislature truly cut spending instead of using accounting gimmicks, tricks, and smoke and mirrors.

"In less than a year, Gov. Snyder and the Republican legislature eliminated the overbilling, job-killing, growth-chilling Michigan business tax."

Snyder cheerleaders obviously were not in the majority among those surveyed in the MRG-IMP poll.

MRG said its "Michigan poll just out of the field shows 74% of Michigan voters believe that the country has gotten pretty seriously off on the wrong track with only 15% stating the country is going in the right direction. For the State of Michigan, 66% of voters reported the wrong track, with 24% citing the right direction."

MRG President Tom Shields said, "If pessimism breeds contempt, political leaders should be wary of voters in 2012. The sustained high wrong track numbers show voter pessimism to be deep-seated and achingly real with optimism long gone. After eight years of sustained wrong track numbers, voters are negative, beleaguered and impatient for change."

He said, "MRG has been conducting surveys of the Michigan electorate every spring and fall since September 1985. The last time voters in Michigan felt good about the direction of the state or country was more than eight years ago.

" I would normally say we have no place to go but up, but we have been down longer than most third graders have been alive. The only good news out of this survey is that there is slightly more optimism for the direction of the state than the country, but only by nine points."