We’ve got four guys running for governor. Three of them, Deval Patrick, Tim Cahill and Christy Mihos, are pretty easy to understand.

The puzzler is Charlie Baker. The man appears to be competent. Some Democrats say they liked working with him when he was in charge of Administration and Finance during the Weld/Cellucci years. He took an insurance company and has been given credit for turning it around. So he’s successful in the business world. Good looking. Well educated. Not corrupt. Nice family.

Sounds like someone we know. Someone who was our governor. So, Charlie Baker, how do we know you’re not a Mitt Romney?

Mitt Romney looked like a good manager too. But it turned out that rather than attack problems, he managed by creating fall-guys—like the well-regarded DCR commissioner whom he fired supposedly because a DCR truck driver hit someone with a snowplow. It turned out the only goal we ever heard him set—reviving the Republican party—was one in which he failed, and now that Scott Brown has actually done it, we see how easy it was to accomplish.

It’s good to know, Charlie Baker, that you don’t plan to discriminate against gays and that you trust women to make their own decisions about their reproductive lives. But Mitt Romney said this too. Some Democrats voted for Romney on the basis of his hoped-for managerial skills and his supposed support of gays and women. But Mitt turned tail. Are those kind of Democrats going to be blind-sided by you too, Charlie Baker?

We recently learned that you consider yourself too dumb or ill-informed to have an opinion on humanity’s contribution to global warming. It’s hard to imagine that you’re either. We all know that rejecting global warming is one of the ten commandments Republicans must follow. But in a high-tech state like Massachusetts it’s pretty implausible to claim that our practices haven’t contributed to such phenomenon. Haven’t you taken your family on a vacation to see the retreating glaciers in the Rockies? If you have, even your kids probably have an opinion on global warming and humanity’s participation in it. Scott Brown can take a pass on this because he’s a lovable, handsome, intellectual lightweight, but you’re supposed to be smarter than that.

And if you really are moderate on social issues, Charlie Baker, how can you stay in the Republican Party? The tea-baggers and the other right-wing crazies are out to get people like you. They’ll want you to deny global warming, not equivocate. They’ll insist that you send women into back alleys again. They’ll pour money into bringing you down if you say it’s okay with you if gays and lesbians marry. Mitt sold his soul to be on the good side of the bigots. Do you have a soul, and will you sell it?

The second commandment Republicans must obey is denouncing “big” government. But that ideology is a tire with a worn-out tread. If you’re so smart, Charlie Baker, stop criticizing “big” government and start promoting good government, which sometimes has to be small and sometimes has to be big. The one-size-fits-all solution displays shallow thinking that we wouldn’t expect from a former CEO of the insurance behemoth Harvard Pilgrim Health Care. Should insurance companies be as small as you say government should be?

You seem to have done a good job, however, at your big insurance company. But didn’t some of the Big Dig financial debacle take place on your watch? So your record is mixed.

Nevertheless, you went to Harvard. You’ve served in a both elective and an administrative capacity in government. You’re the kind of golden boy that a lot of people like. But I keep thinking of Mitt, Charlie Baker. Golden boys often turn out to be made of brass. And brass can tarnish. Are you made of brass, Charlie Baker?