Conservative critics of Mitt Romney have often complained that he approaches governing from a managerial point of view rather than as a conservative dedicated to reducing the size, scope, and intrusiveness of the federal government. Although many of those critics are now making their peace with the idea of Romney becoming the Republican presidential nominee, they could not have been reassured by Romney’s appearance on The Tonight Show Tuesday.
A relaxed and confident-sounding Romney answered questions from host Jay Leno on a variety of topics. Near the end, Leno said to Romney, “Now, you want to cut come federal agencies. Which ones would you cut? You haven’t said which ones you would cut.”
“No, I haven’t,” Romney answered. “I’m going to go through it piece by piece, combine — when I was secretary, excuse me, when I was governor of Massachusetts, and we looked at the Secretary of Health and Human Services, we had 15 different agencies. We said, let’s combine those into three. We’re not going to get rid of the work that each do, but we’re going to combine the overheads, we’re not going to have as many lawyers and press secretaries and administrators, and that saves money and makes it more efficient. And I hope to be able to do the same thing in Washington.”
While everyone would applaud saving money and reducing redundancies, many conservatives, especially in the Tea Party corner of the conservative world, want to see a federal government that actually does less — not one that does the same things it does now, just more efficiently. Romney’s answer did not offer them much encouragement. But the former Massachusetts governor did briefly address that point of view a moment later, when Leno followed up with the question, “Now, would you say before Election Day which federal agencies you’re going to cut?”
“It depends on whether I have the answer to that,” Romney said. “We’ll look agency-by-agency and look where the opportunities are best, but I’ll take a lot of what Washington does and send it back to the states.”
