Romney and the Right-Wing Shakedown
Santorum for AG? Newt at the UN? John Bolton for State? The far right has presented mealy-mouthed Mitt with a stunningly long list of demands.
The Washington Post ran a story over the weekend describing the Romney campaign’s efforts to advance the notion of Mitt’s inevitability and get the forces of the right on board the train. It contained a tantalizing and thought-provoking little paragraph that raised the question of what kinds of demands those on the hard right are going to make of Romney, should he become the nominee. There is also the related question of how far he might go to assuage them. Such is their mistrust, and such (so far) is his pliability, that it’s worth pondering the potentially unprecedented dance of demand and acquiescence that we might witness this fall.
The paragraph in question describes a recent conversation that Richard Land of the Southern Baptist Convention, a big cheese in the evangelical universe, says he had with Romney advisers. The money quote: “Land said he recently told [Romney advisers] that Romney could win over recalcitrant conservatives by picking Sen. Marco Rubio (Fla.) as his vice-presidential running mate and previewing a few Cabinet selections: Santorum as attorney general, Gingrich as ambassador to the United Nations, and John Bolton as secretary of state
