Rowe showed up early Thursday morning, camera in hand, for a Romney town hall meeting at the Boys and Girls Club here. It wasn’t the former Massachusetts governor he wanted a picture of, but the former war hero. “Now that McCain’s behind Romney, he’ll pull a lot of votes from people like me,’’ Rowe predicted.
That, of course, is what Romney and his staff are hoping. McCain has long been a favorite of New Hampshire Republicans and independents: He crushed George W. Bush in the state’s 2000 primary and beat Romney in 2008. And thanks to his brave record as a prisoner of war in Hanoi, McCain - though a frequent thorn in the GOP’s right side - has retained lasting respect even in his party’s more conservative circles.
But there are limits to McCain’s influence, even among Republican voters who served in Vietnam.
John Anderson of Pittsburg, N.H., was the first on his feet with a question for Newt Gingrich when the former speaker visited Littleton. Gingrich had repeated his description of Romney as a “legitimate Massachusetts moderate,’’ ticking off the issues - from gun control to health care to judicial appointments - on which Romney had disappointed conservatives while governor.
“You call him a moderate, and that’s being generous,’’ boomed Anderson, a retired Air Force officer who was involved in Operation Ranch Hand against the Viet Cong in 1965. “And as a Vietnam vet, I was pretty upset with a certain person that endorsed him the other day.’’
Anderson told me afterward that while he deeply admires McCain, he has no intention of voting for Romney, whom he considers too willing to tilt to the left whenever it is politically expedient to do so. “I’m not a Romney-hater,’’ he said. But given Romney’s philosophical flexibility, “I do not believe he can take on President Obama.’’
