Steeped in Tradition, Romney Launches Campaign

Traditional.

That one word sums up how Mitt Romney's long-awaited presidential announcement speech is expected to come off Thursday afternoon, and it describes how his team is approaching his second White House campaign.

"We're going to have a traditional, New Hampshire-style barbecue on Thursday and then a traditional, New Hampshire-style town-hall meeting on Friday morning," said spokesman Ryan Williams. "And that's how we're going to run this campaign up here -- in the traditional way with lots of questions from voters the way people in New Hampshire expect."

Several hundred people will gather on a farm in Stratham for hamburgers, hot dogs and chili concocted by the family matriarch, Ann Romney. In attendance will be dignitaries from the state, including former Gov. John Sununu, the immediate past state GOP chairman who has been informally advising Romney.

On stage with Romney will be Doug and Stella Scamman, longtime former state Republican legislators who own the farm. A 12-year-old Romney fan will lead the Pledge of Allegiance. Expect lots of little American flags.

And after he delivers what surely will be a well-received address explaining why he's the right man for the biggest job on the planet, the candidate will hunker down and wait until early the next morning for a town-hall meeting at the University of New Hampshire's Manchester campus. There will be no big fly-around or further announcement-tour events today: Mitt Romney wants you to listen to what he has to say in that single speech.

The former Massachusetts governor, who by most measures is the front-runner for the nomination, has a pretty traditional message for someone looking to knock off an incumbent: The president has done a lousy job, the economy is a mess, and I'm the best guy around, so I'll make it better.

Just as consequential, "traditional" is what Mitt Romney looks like where GOP presidential candidates are concerned, and it is in almost every way who Romney is in the scheme of presidential politics this cycle: A country-club Republican who can credibly claim that if his party is going to continue its tradition of picking the guy who is next in line, as a repeat candidate, now is his time.

He's got a solid pedigree: son of a successful governor, husband of more than 40 years, father of five, richly successful businessman, savior of the Salt Lake City Winter Olympics, former governor himself. What he has yet to explain to voters is why he is better for them now than he was four years ago and what he has done to enrich himself in the time since then. He jokes that he's currently unemployed, but competing against him are a handful of people who are still employed or have been more recently, and they might be a bit fresher in that regard.

Erin McPike is a national political reporter for RealClearPolitics. She can be reached at emcpike@realclearpolitics.com.

Source: http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2011/06/02/steeped_in_tradition_romney_launches_campaign_today_110060.html

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