I'm not seeing Romney as the nominee against Kerry.
Massachusetts politics writ large? A Republican party bent on demonizing that state in particular? Romney felt the sting of that propaganda four years after Kerry lost IOTL, how is he going to survive four years of negative spin about his political homeland? I don't think the conservative base is ever going to trust him.
Question: If the financial crisis is bumped forward a year, what's it likely to look like going into election season? Light at the end of the tunnel or murkmurkmurk? Or is it over?
If things are bleak, we might easily see a candidate with a very radical taxation policy take the stage, a Huckabee perhaps. Or have the costs of goods gone up so much that the Fair Tax looks like anything but?
With a financial crisis on, Mccain might still be able to take the nomination in one of his more moderate aspects than the visage we see today. The Mccain of TTL runs with Lieberman and operates a more moderate fiscal policy and pulls in the Reagan democrats and then some. Any state with an open primary goes heavily for him.
Actually come to think of it, with Kerry in the White House it might be much more likely to have a third party seriously throw its hat in. Kerry keeps the liberal base and fights for the moderates with Mccain, who takes the lion's share of moderate voters, and the libertarians/small gov't/fiscal responsibility crowd. Huckabee (or someone) takes the religious right and the neocons.
Kerry probably wins this one. Huckabee (or whoever) definitely loses.