Mitt Romney, the Beltway GOP, and the Meaning of Evansville

Conservatives4Palin ^ | 05-05-09 | Rob Harrison

[euram]

I have to admit, at the beginning of the last presidential campaign, I was intending to vote for Mitt Romney. I wasn't a huge fan, but my primary concern was finding someone who could beat Rudy Giuliani, the one person in the race I simply could not support; on that score, Gov. Romney seemed like the best option. He was the most conservative of the plausible candidates, and had proven himself to be an effective executive in a number of positions. His record in Massachusetts doesn't look as good now as it did before I really understood the situation with RomneyCare, but even given that fiasco, the man's a capable administrator with the guts to make tough decisions. I still think he would have made a better president than John McCain, though Sen. McCain made a better losing nominee since he brought Sarah Palin on the national stage.

[Natural Law]

I am sick of the self absorbed “leaders” who are willing to do or say anything to BE president instead of being a real leader by telling what they really believe and will DO as president.

[4Speed]

Romney / Palin
The best looking GQ Ticket possible.
Romney’s 3rd cousin from a Mormon bible retreat would have been a better choice than BHO / Biden.

[ReformationFan]

Agreed. When it comes to saying or doing anything to get elected, I think Romney fits that description perfectly.

[JSDude1]

No, RiNO!

[EternalVigilance]

Bleh. When are conservatives going to tire of claptrap like this?

[DannyTN]

Me too!

Romney ranks below Hillary and above the Kenyan Usurper.

[nathanbedford]

So long as conservatives go whoring after the man instead of the message we are destined to be disillusioned.

Liberals must make heroes of their candidates because they are essentially un-rooted, an assortment of God players in rebellion against God and therefore worshipers of man. They are defenseless against the Golden Calf. Conservatives should know that there is no leader this side of the cross who will not in some respects disappoint and that does not exclude Ronald Reagan.

Conservatives are seeking this worldly solutions to this worldly problems and should not confuse politics with salvation. To liberals, politics is salvation so they need a Savior and they make a Messiah in one way or another of every one of their presidential candidates and make a worldly Satan, that is, a buffoon, out of every Republican.

This brings us to Sarah Palin who is an example of this trend in our politics made flesh. Sarah Palin had to be destroyed by the left because she was a living reproach to the valueless relativism of the left made manifest in the starkest reality of all: abortion.

Conservatives should honor Sarah Palin for what her life reveals about her character. But we should carefully distinguish between individuals with sublime character and individuals who have political skills. We must not assume that because someone is righteous in character that he will also be sound in politics. We need think no further back than George Bush to understand the truth of this precept. President Bush is a good man, a conscientious Christian, but he is not a conservative.

I believe the conservative movement and the Republican Party is churning, trying to find a way out of the wilderness. We use a geographical metaphor which can be misleading. We do not need to find a physical path to the place where we can have power enough to redeem the country from the tragedy which is engulfing us therefore we do not need a Pathfinder or a person. We do not need a guide, we need guiding principles. The person will come with the message. There is a very great danger in inverting the process. One facet of this danger is that by confusing the message and the messenger the message is indicted along with the messenger when he proves to have human foibles. The Democrats know this well, they exploit it every day. The latest example? Miss California.

The message and the messenger will appear as one. When that happens much of the internal strife over fiscal conservatism versus social conservatism will fade into insignificance as it did with Ronald Reagan. The overwhelming power of the right message at the right time sweeps all along with it. Nothing less of course will serve now because the party is in its death throes and must fashion a national message to nationalize the election.

Seek the message and not the messenger. If you must compromise between the two, compromise on the messenger. That is, choose the right message and the bearer of the message, when he errs as he inevitably will, is more likely to err on the side of conservatism.

[EternalVigilance]

You’re singing one of my favorite tunes, although I’m not enamored of Mrs. Palin. She is lacking in some critical areas of understanding of America’s principles.

[se_ohio_young_conservative]

Hey, I thought you were a Palin supporter ? What happened ?

[nathanbedford]

I still am I Palin supporter but she has got to win her spurs just like anybody else. She has some gross gaps in the gravitas Department and she's got to fill them. She cannot play Hamlet in Alaska and expect the world to freeze-frame until the next election.

If she could come forward and deliver a coherent indictment of the Obama administration and a clear path for recovery of the economy I think she could gain support of the party with no problem. But she cannot do it in Alaska and she's got to have a message. In view of the disastrous interviews with Katie Couric etc. and the destructive satire on Saturday Night Live, Palin lives in the popular mind as a goof. The truth is she's taken no steps whatsoever to remedy that false impression except, perhaps, to complain about the coverage and appear on Greta.

During the election I suggested that she make some serious speeches to establish gravitas and that she hire a team of Speechwriters and, yes, comedy writers. She simply cannot go on stumbling from one public-relations disaster to another. We conservatives will tolerate it but nobody else will.

We are almost out of time for the 2010 election. We are not organized, we have no coherent campaign theme, we have not reported any progress on selecting candidates, I have heard no strategy. We simply must have forward movement now. If Sarah Palin can deliver that message I support her 100%. If not, she must move over.

[jla]

You’re singing one of my favorite tunes, although I’m not enamored of Mrs. Palin. She is lacking in some critical areas of understanding of America’s principles.

Thomas Sowell, Rush Limbaugh, Ann Coulter, Laura Ingraham, Sean Hannity and a host of others think differently. Then again, none of them are shilling for an irrelevant third party.

...and what's another of your favorite tunes - 'Lies'?

[EternalVigilance]

Still can’t think for yourself I see.

[Natural Law]

"So long as conservatives go whoring after the man instead of the message we are destined to be disillusioned."

Amen to that. The very basis of modern politics is deception. Every poll, focus group, image consultant and speech writer is involved in packaging and repackaging a faulty product to make it easier to swallow. Sarah Palin was refreshing because she was genuine and unashamedly Sarah Palin. That is why both the left and the so-called right, and the parasitic spin and media industry has to destroy her.

[curiosity]

She's one of us, a politician who remains of and for the ordinary barbarians of this country.

This is exactly the kind of attitude that is killing the GOP right now. The only reason she's so popular with the party base is because they feel she's one of them.

Palinites think their conservatives, but they're not. Identity politics and populism are not conservative.

[curiosity]

Excellent post. I particularly liked this passage:

Conservatives should honor Sarah Palin for what her life reveals about her character. But we should carefully distinguish between individuals with sublime character and individuals who have political skills. We must not assume that because someone is righteous in character that he will also be sound in politics.

In other words, we must not allow personality cults determine how we vote or who we support politically.

The widespread political support Sarah Palin enjoys today is nothing short of a personality cult. People support her because of who she is, not because of her skills as a stateswoman.

This is very dangerous. Personality cults are not conservative.

[nathanbedford]

This is very dangerous. Personality cults are not conservative.

Your observation is absolutely true on many levels of which I am sure you are aware, nevertheless, I want to expand on your idea.

I hesitate to use the term on a political forum but, on a spiritual level, it is a corruption to indulge a cult of personality. To the Judeo-Christian heritage it is the first sin and it is not by accident that is the first one about which we are admonished in the 10 Commandments. If we do not get this right, we cannot get anything right except by accident.

As I tried to say in my original post, liberals are God players and therefore they are at emnity with God and they cannot abide any restraint on their God playing. Their entire lives are a quest for scope to play God.

If they will not acknowledge the primacy of God the result (or perhaps the cause) is, as noted, a never ending, never satisfied, compulsion to play God. Another result is the whoring after false gods and that includes the cult of personality. I think this explains why liberals have to demonize every Republican and lionize every Democrat politician. It is more than political expediency the drives liberals to say that all Republican presidents since and including Eisenhower have been dolts. Imagine, General Eisenhower, the man who ramrodded D-Day and masterminded the Crusade in Europe, was libeled to the American people when I was a kid as being so stupid he could barely tie his shoes. By the time they got to George Bush they had become quite adept at this smear.

A cult of personality is contrary to conservativism for other reasons. It drives us from the rule of law to the rule of men. It drives us away from the Constitution to the flavor which tickles liberals fancy this season. it says, have resort to the man and not the message. It resorts to relativism to cover all the sins of the beneficiary of the cult and, ultimately, condones any crime calculated to perpetuate the cult.

The Gulag, the concentration camp, the cultural Revolution, are all ultimate expressions of the cult of personality. I wrote a vanity before the election reacting to a cult of personality surrounding Obama and his failure to repudiate it and what that failure says about the heart of the man.