TAMPA, Fla. -- Mitt Romney's campaign manager Matt Rhoades compared the presumptive Republican nominee to the 11th president of the United States, James Polk, in an interview that is featured at the beginning of a Huffington magazine piece on Romney.
ABC's Jonathan Karl asked Karl Rove about the Polk comparison at a forum Monday morning with Politico's Mike Allen. Rove embraced the parallel.
"He will be like Polk," Rove said.
"Polk was a Democrat," ABC's Karl said.
"No, no, he will be like Polk," Rove shot back, and then launched into a long explanation on why he thinks that is.
"Polk is one of the near greats, and we don't recognize," he said. "We've begun to recognize him in recent years. But here's a guy who ran, and he said he was going to do four things: he was going to reform the Treasury, restore the independent Treasury and get rid of Jackson's pet banks, stop putting the federal money in the political state banks of allies; he was going to lower the tariffs; he was going to resolve the Oregon border dispute with Britain, which was a huge dispute; and he was going to admit Texas. And very rapidly he did all four."
"So he did these four things and then served one term and got out. He came in with a very clearly defined program of pretty significant reform," Rove added.
Allen asked Rove if he thought that Romney would make himself a one-term president, like Polk, if Romney pursued entitlement reform.
"I think that's where it's less likely to be the case," Rove said. "But making it about big things and going about achieving them, this is a methodical, from his Bain expeience we know he's a methodical, 'I've got a list of actions I need to achieve and I'm going to achieve them.'"
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