WASHTIMES(HAYDEN):Romney is likely to spring surprise with pick for State

Romney is likely to spring surprise with pick for State

http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2012/jul/11/romney-is-likely-to-spring-surprise-with-pick-for-/?page=all

...Jockeying for position

Recent weeks, meanwhile, have brought what another campaign insider described as an attempt by some advisers to jockey for position - if not to gain influence over Mr. Romney’s message, then to get their names atop the list of possible Cabinet nominees.

“Clearly there are some people politicking at the top,” the insider said.

Among the campaign’s key advisers are former CIA Director Michael V. Hayden; Mitchell Reiss, who once served as director of policy planning at the State Department; and Eliot Cohen, who heads the Strategic Studies Program at Johns Hopkins University’s School of Advanced International Studies and penned the foreword to the Romney campaign’s 43-page foreign policy white paper last fall.

Also being mentioned is Robert Kagan, a pre-eminent conservative foreign policy theorist who - in an ironic twist - is married to Victoria Nuland, the chief spokeswoman for Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton.

But there are no guarantees any of them will end up in a National Security Council, U.N. ambassador or top State Department posting.

“My experience goes back to an awful lot of presidential campaigns, and generally, you just don’t know these things,” said Richard Williamson, who served key positions in the George H.W. Bush and George W. Bush administrations as well as the Reagan administration. He is one of the few Romney advisers willing to speak openly without having his remarks vetted by the campaign’s full-time staff.

“At the end of June four years ago,” Mr. Williamson queried, “was there anyone who would have thought Hillary Clinton would be secretary of state for Barack Obama?”

Others say that once the summer convention season has passed and Mr. Romney’s lock on the nomination is ratified, he may be inclined to swing toward the center with his Cabinet position shortlists.

Former Republican presidential candidate Jon Huntsman Jr., who served as U.S. ambassador to China under Mr. Obama until last year and then ran against Mr. Romney during the GOP primaries, likely would be in the running.

Mr. Romney’s outspoken affinity for Israel, along with his hard-line rhetorical posture toward Iran, could bring into the race even retiring Sen. Joe Lieberman, the Connecticut independent whom 2008 GOP nominee John McCain briefly considered as a running mate.