"Mitt on the mind" also explains why Rob Gray is now on board McCain's presidential exploratory committee as New England political strategist. Gray worked on Romney's 2002 gubernatorial campaign and knows well his record of conversion from moderate to hard-core conservative. Gray also relishes political hardball...
Rob Gray is co-founder of Gray Media Group, a Boston-based media consulting firm. Boston's alt-weekly, The Phoenix, says Gray "was senior advisor and media strategist for the only political campaign Mitt Romney has ever won: the 2002 gubernatorial election." The paper notes that Gray is a former aide to moderate Republican governors William Weld and Paul Cellucci, a "friend of Karl Rove" and a "regular Romney consultant," but instead will serve McCain's New Hampshire campaign as a senior advisor focusing on communications and political affairs.
That could be good news for Romney, actually - as The Globe reports, Gray blew it for his candidate in the recent Massachusetts gubernatorial race to replace Romney in the statehouse, taking "a moderate Republican with potential appeal to female and independent voters and turned her into a candidate with little appeal beyond a narrow conservative base."
Turning McCain into a candidate with appeal to a narrow conservative base would be a plus in a GOP primary. However, it is also hard to accomplish on its own, given McCain's long, unhappy history with conservatives. The next best option is to make conservatives as suspicious of Romney as they are of McCain.
Romney's political career certainly provides McCain with sufficient ammo to do just that. Right now, Romney's winning over conservatives largely because, of the three perceived front-runners - him, McCain and Rudy Giuliani - he's considered the least bad option for conservatives.
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