Romney can beat Obama.

I thought that in 2008 and I think it now.  Willard Mitt Romney is:
- smooth
- articulate
- fairly intelligent
- pretty well informed
- experienced in both government and business
- good looking.

Romney has executive experience.  He looks like he was selected out of central casting to play a president in a movie, you know, like Reagan.  Romney has a family that looks the same.

Romney is also expedient enough to convince enough independent voters to support him over President Obama.  Romney has already started repeating that Obama is a very nice fellow but that he doesn't have a clue how to run the country, a view that many currently share including 2008 Obama supporters.

Romney is not scary like most of the other Republican candidates.  Two days ago Romney presented his 59 points for creating jobs in the USA.  Nice touch: 59, not a round number like 50 or 60.  Sounds more specific.  Or did Romney just bore himself when he got that far.  Romney made good points, most of which most us can support.  Romney spoke in a very friendly but well informed manner.  Good speech.

Romney inspires confidence.  The most recent media designated front running Republican, Rick Perry, made his debut in the debate held at the Ronald Reagan place in California.  Just why is there a life size model of the presidential Air Force One plane filling much of the auditorium?  This is especially odd considering how much Reagan hated government, particularly the federal government, which he insisted on heading for eight years.  Maybe not so surprising considering that he posthumously hijacked the trappings of President Kennedy's funeral.  Four days after his death on June 5, 2004 in his home in Bel Air, California, Reagan had his body flown to Washington, D.C. to lie in state for thirty-four hours, then on to a state funeral in the Washington National Cathedral, then on June 11, six days after his death, flown back to the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library in California, where another service was held, and Reagan was interred at long last.  All this at taxpayer expense.  Reagan should have been rolling over in his grave.

Texas Governor Rick Perry may look as much from central casting as Romney but as a clown presidential hopeful, not the real thing, not the guy who actually wins, unless it's another of those  love/hate USA movies in which the country is great but is sabotaged by unscrupulous leaders. Perry is getting roasted for correctly describing Social Security as a Ponzi scheme.  In the debate Romney aggressively supported Social Security, which was a good political move.  Perry is only accustomed to battling other Republicans in primaries, a race to the right.  Once nominated for governor his elections have been secure in Republican dominated Texas.  Listening to Perry attack the federal government I waited in vain for one of the two wimpy questioners to simply ask Perry why he doesn't explicitly advocate that Texas secede from the union ... again.  I wouldn't mind.

Fortunately for Obama, the Republican party is so dominated by nuts that Romney may not get nominated for president in 2012.  Since Reagan's inspiring rhetoric in 1980 ("I paid for this microphone.") the old minority country club patrician party of Nelson Rockefeller and William Scanton of 50 years ago has expanded by convincing American citizens to vote against their own best interests by distracting them with a series of irrelevant issues such as:
- race
- homophobia
- socialized health care
- fear of science.

Can Romney be nominated?  Yes, if Republicans hate Obama more than they hate the above.  Then Obama could be in real trouble.