Good Riddance to the Mittwit

Have a nice life back there in your true home, Utah, after your Presidential run crashes and burns. Goodbye, our own living, breathing, press-conference holding Ken Doll. Even the Herald, our right-wing Murdoch rag, is sick of his schtick.

Yesterday's Boston Herald editorial:

Hey Mitt, it’s been swell!

OK, so Mitt Romney isn’t running for re-election. Well, we didn’t exactly stop the presses for that one.

The bad news is that Romney pretty much gave up the day job months ago — not a good thing. Legislative leaders have been working on that assumption too, for the most part treating the governor like the little man who isn’t there.

Now, in the wake of last night’s announcement, he really isn’t there — his eyes presumably set on bigger stuff. So it’s time for Romney to do the decent thing and turn over the day job to someone who (1) wants it and (2) is perfectly capable of doing it. That would be Lt. Gov. Kerry Healey.

Being governor of Massachusetts isn’t beanbag. Memo to Mitt: Don’t let the screen door hit you in the backside.

Yesterday's Globe editorial:


Romney exits right

OUR NEW YEAR'S wish: a governor who wouldn't rather be elsewhere.

By thumbing his nose at Massachusetts after less than three-quarters of one term as its chief executive, Mitt Romney, yesterday surrendered his clout and squandered his legitimacy. If, as it appears, his heart and mind are no longer in Massachusetts, he should resign.

Lieutenant Governor Kerry Healey is inexperienced. But the state would be far better off in the hands of someone focused on state problems, rather than someone touring the country ridiculing the people he was elected to serve. Romney has joked in several states that, as a Republican here, he feels like ''a cattle rancher at a vegetarian convention."

Today's Globe:

Facing hard realities, Romney accrued modest list of successes

Less than three years into the CEO-style governorship of Mitt Romney the broad reform agenda he promised in the early days has been reduced by the political reality of Beacon Hill to a more modest series of legislative accomplishments.

Horse-trading and patronage, long the currency of the State House, have been anathema to Romney. That reluctance to deal, combined with his uncompromising nature, has meant that many Romney proposals -- even bottom-line, money-saving moves -- were ignored, killed, or gutted by the Democrats who run the Legislature. Close courthouses? Not in our districts. Merge the Highway Department and Turnpike Authority? Forget it.

Even on reinstating the death penalty, a hot-button issue on which polls have indicated that Romney had popular support, the governor lost a vote in the House by nearly 2 to 1. Eight years earlier, a capital punishment bill failed on a tie vote.