In hindsight (and foresight) Healey vs. Patrick and O’Brian vs. Romney were bigger mismatches then Muggsy Bogues trying to stuff Yao Ming.  For us to have had an interesting gubernatorial battle we would have had to see Romney’s “you must believe in my cooperate head honcho efficiency or you are a clueless liberal act” vs. Patrick’s “you have to believe in my yes we can liberal populism if you don’t want to feel like an old crusty conservative curmudgeon act.” But unfortunately that political match up did not happen.

            I am here to argue that it still might on the national stage. With the defeat of Rick Santorum and George Allen, Mitt Romney has emerged as the conservative insiders’ choice for the Republican nomination over more liberal John McCain and Rudy Giuliani. If McCain and Giuliani are both in the primaries they will split the moderate republican vote leading to Romney winning by getting the entire conservative base on his side. Then it is about a 50/50 crap shoot if he can become president, but let’s say for the sake of argument that he wins. Then in our scenario Patrick has a successful term as Governor of Massachusetts. In 2012 the Dem’s will be looking for a candidate to go against Romney. Hillary Clinton by that time will either be tainted from losing in 08 or be the Senate Majority leader. People will talk about Obama, but Patrick has all of his positive attributes (youth, gives a great stump speech, populace message, African American, Harvard Ed, ext.) but he will also have been a governor which is the true farm system to the presidency. Thus, Patrick beats Obama in the primary and we end up with Patrick vs. Romney.

Note: I admit that this scenario is not all that likely and is mostly written from the perspective of someone who considers anyone outside of 128 to be a foreigner, but stranger things have happened.