June is Bustin’ Out All Over with Good News for Romney: Leads Iowa Poll, Executive Experience Matters

June is bustin’ out all over with good news for Mitt Romney: a good poll, a good read, and an exciting presidential announcement tomorrow!

New Iowa Poll - ROMNEY LEADS:

Former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney leads in Iowa according to a new survey by Public Policy Polling. The poll was conducted between 5/22/11-5/30/11 and included 491 Iowa Republicans. The full results of the poll will be released Wednesday morning, but MSNBC’s The Rachel Maddow Show received an exclusive partial first look (from which I got my screen grab, see left) of the top three contenders.

Among Iowa Republicans, presumably likely to vote in the crucial Iowa Caucus, the first electoral contest of the primary season, Mitt Romney placed first with 21%, followed by a two-way tie for second with Sarah Palin and Herman Cain, the Georgian founder of Godfather’s Pizza, at 15%.
[...]
The PPP survey adds further credence to Romney’s reputation as the nominal nominee. Romney now leads in Iowa and New Hampshire, whose primary follows Iowa’s, as a CNN/WMUR survey published in late May had him as the preferred candidate of 32% of Republicans in the New England state.

More here.

David Frum (CNN) has written a fine article asking why the media obsesses with other GOP candidates (including those who are a ‘maybe’) while ignoring Governor Romney. Is it celebrity versus governing ability?

“Romney’s long-standing advantage is dismissed as pure name-recognition.”
[...]
Meanwhile, Romney continues to raise money, collect important backers and ride along in first place in the polls.

Why?

Well maybe it is all name ID.

Or maybe — does this give voters too much credit? — they are thinking about the close match between skills Romney has and the skills needed in a president.

What do presidents do?

Among other things:

– Presidents set goals and priorities. That’s easily said, but hard to do. The natural temptation is to accumulate goals and priorities atop each other. (See Clinton, Bill, State of the Union addresses of.) But if everything is a priority, nothing is a priority. (See Clinton, Bill, presidency of.) To govern is to choose. To choose requires extreme mental discipline: This I do first, this I do second if I can, this must wait for third, these next 997 things probably don’t get done at all.

– Presidents align means with ends. Congress is the place where the American people register their wishes: Generous Medicare and Social Security benefits and low taxes; global military predominance but no casualties; perfect airline security with no personal inconvenience. It’s the president’s job to bring the system into balance, to set budgets, to force tradeoffs.

– Presidents are deal-makers. There’s a story told about Harry Truman in the last days of his presidency, awaiting the transition to Dwight Eisenhower after the election of 1952. Truman supposedly said to an aide, “Poor Ike. He’ll sit at this desk. He’ll say ‘do this’ and ‘do that.’ And nothing will happen! It won’t be like the Army at all.” The president cannot tell Congress what to do. He can’t tell a governor what to do. He can’t even safely tell the CIA what to do. (If they don’t like it, they’ll leak against him.) And that’s even before we get to foreign governments. A president doesn’t get what he wants. A president gets what he negotiates.

Those requirements happen to look a lot like the skills Mitt Romney brings to the job. And they may be the skills for which Republicans — and Americans — most yearn at the moment:

– The war in Libya, now dragging on for months with no visible strategic goal, reveals an ominous failure of priority-setting.

– The terrifying national debt represents the country’s accumulated inability to reconcile what it wants and what it is prepared to pay for.

– The failure to lift the debt ceiling — and the intensifying risk of a default on the nation’s debts — shows a staggering failure of the Obama administration’s deal-making.
[...]
Is Obama vaporous and utopian? Maybe what Americans are hearkening for is the analytic ability and negotiating prowess of the former CEO of America’s most successful management consulting firm. And just possibly, Republican primary voters have the self-control not to let the controversy over Romney’s health care record cloud their respect for their front-runner’s genuine executive abilities.

(emphasis added)
Read entire article here.

Don’t miss signing up for Governor Romney’s LIVESTREAM presidential announcement here. MRC will be hosting a chat party here tomorrow to mark this happy and long-awaited occasion. We invite all Romney supporters to join us! Check back for more details. Also, it’s been reported that Mitt will be on the Sean Hannity show tomorrow evening – so it’s going to be a very full and fantastic day!

After The Gov launches his campaign tomorrow, we look forward to a summer filled with plenty of Romney sizzle!

UPDATE: June is jumpin’ for Romney; he’s never been one to let any grass grow under his feet! On Friday morning, June 3rd, the day after he announces his run for the White House, he’s holding his first Town Hall meeting. It will be held at 8:30 AM EDT at the University of New Hampshire Manchester. And, that evening he’ll be speaking at the Faith and Freedom Coalition in Washington D.C. Way to go, Mitt!

► Jayde Wyatt