Mitt Romney may be focusing most of his time and attention on New Hampshire lately — in hopes of winning the state’s all-important first presidential primary next year — but he hasn’t made his case to one Granite Stater.
Mother Jones reports Bruce Keough, who ran Romney’s 2008 New Hampshire campaign, isn’t signing on for 2012 and is instead lobbing arrows at his old boss.
Keough is just the latest of Romney’s ’08 team to bail out for a second tour of duty. In March, Romney’s 2008 Iowa chair turned on him, saying that Romney lost his credibility when he dove to the right to pick up conservative presidential primary votes after his term as the moderate Republican governor of Massachusetts.
Keough’s struggling with similar concerns about Romney. From Mother Jones‘ Andy Kroll:
It’s this ever-changing persona that soured Keough on Romney. “I don’t think the voters are looking for somebody who’s going to be recasting himself,” he says. “They want somebody who’s been true to a certain set of political ideals for a while.” Which isn’t to say that Keough completely disagrees with Romney. He tempers his criticism by saying Romney “has been strong at times” and has “a lot of assets as a candidate.” Still, Keough adds, Romney “manages to say things that cause people to think, ‘Wait a second: I thought I knew him, and now I’m not so sure.’ I think he can be successful. But I don’t think he will be successful if he runs his campaign like he did in 2008.”
Romney finished second in New Hampshire in 2008, and second overall in the nomination contest against John McCain. Normally, that would tee him up nicely to win the Republican nomination next year. Polls show him doing well in New Hampshire and still near the top of the 2012 field overall.
But there’s a well-documented lack of excitement about Romney that’s leaving an opening for other candidates. Keough, for one, is ready to move on to someone fresher. Kroll reports Keough is “sizing up other potential candidates, including Indiana governor Mitch Daniels and former Minnesota governor Tim Pawlenty.”
