Mark America

Conservatism Rides On Roof...

Signaling what may be the beginning of a new round of endorsements of Mitt Romney, Michele Bachmann(R-MN,) endorsed Romney on Thursday, but one wonders how she squares this endorsement with her position prior to exiting the race that Romney “cannot beat Obama.”  This may be the beginning of the big push to get everybody to rally around Romney, with Newt Gingrich having suspended his campaign officially this past Wednesday, and it may leave some number of conservatives in the lurch, including me, because I’m really not interested in endorsing Governor Romney.  On the basis of the adage “If you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em,” I find I’m in the position that I have no choice.  I’m not the sort to tell people how to vote, as I would rather make my arguments and leave people to decide on their own, so I’m rarely inclined to “endorse” anybody.  Naturally, as you might expect, any sort of “endorsement” I might offer will be fully justified in the context of my arguments, unconventional though it may be.  In order to explain myself, I need to catalog my reasoning:

Mitt Romney is a spineless wonder when it comes to confronting not only the left, but also the media.  He stays away from interviews he thinks might go poorly for him, considering the particular outlet, and this makes him positively disgusting in my view.  I have no problem with a candidate avoiding a liberal outlet on which it is believed a fair shake will not be offered, but to avoid interviews on conservative shows is another matter.  In virtually every issue over which there exists controversy, Willard remains aloof until the dust settles, never staking out a firm position until the outcome is already settled.  Remember the Debt Ceiling debate?  He had nothing of merit to say until it was over.  Remember the issue of Eric Holder and “Operation Fast and Furious?”  While others called for Holder to step down, and still others called upon President Obama to fire the Attorney General, Mitt remained quiet about it until the evidence was completely damning, and Holder had been criticized broadly.  That’s Mitt Romney’s leadership style, and if you’re going to replace Obama, you might just as well get somebody who joins President Obama in “leading from behind.”

Mitt is the father of Romneycare, and Romneycare begot Obamacare.  If you’re a fan of socialized medicine, this is your guy!  If you like health insurance mandates, and if you really love the notion of death panels, you have found the guy who brought this system to America.  He won’t repeal Obamacare, although he may tinker with it a bit, and if you’re into big government programs, the Republicans couldn’t have picked a better nominee.  Mitt Romney is the son of a liberal Republican archetype, so none of this is really a surprise.

Mitt Romney is a loser.  That’s what Republicans do when they nominate liberals only barely disguised as conservatives, and if you liked the Bob Dole campaign of 1996, you will absolutely love Mitt Romney’s.  He’s been endorsed by a whole slate of Bush-clan members, minus the most recent President Bush, and he’s the establishment’s chosen son.  If you liked the communitarian policy preferences of George W. Bush, or for that matter, his father, you’re going to love Mitt Romney.  If you want somebody who will carry on the Bush dynasty, throwing occasional bones to conservatives while holding court with a bunch of liberals, there has been no finer example of the type seeking the GOP nomination in 2012.

Mitt Romney is not a conservative, despite the pretense, and while the media will do its best to portray him as such in order to attack conservatives, the simple truth is that he’s more inclined to be one of theirs than one of ours.  He will be hammered by the press as a member of the elite, and a rich Wall Street guy, who is out of touch with mainstream America, working-class America, and so on.  He fits the template of the candidate against whom Barack Obama most wishes to run.  He relies upon his own version of Alinskyite tactics, since his father George Romney thought Alinsky was a peach.  We don’t need to worry about Mitt Romney dredging up Saul Alinsky in this campaign, and raise any issues that might be uncomfortable for Obama.  Isn’t that swell?

Of course, if you like failed campaign tactics, consider what Mitt Romney has employed throughout the primaries.  He and his supporting cast of super-PACs have absolutely demolished every opponent, by running dishonest attack ads to a degree I believe is unprecedented in Republican primary campaigns.  He has managed to demoralize conservatives to a degree that some will simply never vote for him, and that means he’s placed his own election chances in serious jeopardy.  His strategy rested upon ad buys that outspent his opponents by as much as twenty to one.  Of course, nobody in the media is asking how this strategy will translate to a general election campaign, when he will not have such an advantage over Barack Obama, and besides, he won’t want to offend any moderates or liberals.  Offending conservatives is fine where Mitt is concerned, but one simply mustn’t offend the left.

Considering all these reasons, I therefore believe it is nigh on inevitable that Mitt Romney will be the Republican nominee and candidate for President, and he will almost certainly, inevitably lose the contest to Barack Obama, barring some completely unknown factor.  Of all the Republicans the party could have chosen to best and most thoroughly lose the coming presidential election, I believe Willard “Mitt” Romney is absolutely the most thoroughly qualified.  It’s clear that the party establishment intends to lose this election, so that they can put up another insider, perhaps another Bush, and Mitt Romney makes the perfect place-holder.  He’s safe.  He stands little or no chance of victory, and that will clear the path for Barack Obama’s second term, and an incumbent-free oval office in 2016.

Since it’s fairly clear to me that the GOP establishment wants to lose this election, as is clear by its “inevitable” nominee who at last seems to fill that role, I believe I will support the Republican party in its goals.  They didn’t want conservative support, and they tried to close off conservative participation, and I am in the mood to grant them their wish.  Many conservatives aren’t excited about a Romney candidacy, because they know even if he were to win, they will spend the entirety of a Romney administration not battling liberals, but instead in a constant battle to prevent Romney from going along with the left.   Even if Mitt Romney manages to beat Barack Obama by some cosmic comedy of errors on the part of the Obama team, he will have done so without my help.  It is with this in mind that I do hereby heartily “endorse” Mitt Romney as the next liberal Republican presidential loser in a long string of them.   Those who have more recently joined the Romney camp may find my “endorsement” somewhat lackluster, but after all, as a conservative, I believe in accepting responsibility and doing things right, so if we’re going to lose, we might just as well lose big.  It’s the least I can do.

Conservatives may eventually hop aboard the Romney bus, but if and when we do, we will be riding on the roof, and we know it.

Note to Readers: My apologies for the lack of posts lately. Between the recent death of my father-in-law, the Spring work on the farm, and a difficult and lengthy project at work that is consuming between twelve and fifteen hours daily, seven days per week, I’ve been unable to post so much as normal.  I expect that by the end of May, the bulk of the farm-related efforts will be complete for the season, and by mid-June, the project at work should be complete.   There will undoubtedly be occasions upon which I am able to post more in that period, but it obviously hasn’t been this week.

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