Romney is our nominee BECAUSE of what happened during the Republican Primary. He is our nominee because, for whatever reason, a majority of those who bothered to take part in the republican primary process decided to make him our nominee.
You can blame the GOP-E, or whatever you want to blame for the choices made by the electorate, but the electorate is the reason Romney is our nominee.
Ron Paul ran for the office, and attracted next to no support. He only managed to “win” when he was able to take over sparsely attended caucuses that controlled minor numbers of delegates. And he only managed to LOOK like he was winning in other places because his supporters pretended to support other candidates so they could be elected to move on in the process.
We could have picked Rick Perry (as one freeper says, a convert from the Democrat party). We could have picked Michelle Bachman (again, apparently a convert, although I don’t know how, and others call her crazy). We could have picked Hermann Cain, a guy who never held any public office, and never ran anything bigger than a small-cap company, and who cut and ran when the going got tough.
We could have picked Newt Gingrich, a man widely considered a turncoat to the cause by the time this process started, and who, having become the conservative darling, promptly threw away his momentum by attacking capitalism.
Or we could have chosen Rick Santorum, a good man who was crushed in his last senate race, and who, when he became the only guy who could beat Romney, was visciously attacked by Gingrich supporters to ENSURE that Santorum didn’t get momentum, because they were certain that Gingrich had some strategy of skipping multiple contests so he could regain momentum or something.
Or I guess we could have picked Ron Paul, a libertarian who has much in common with the OWS folks, although he’s also got some great positions on many issues.
And there was Pawlenty, a boring conservative with a great record who was yawned out of the race. Or Paul Ryan, who was laughed out before he got a chance to start. Heck, there were 18 people who registered at some point to run for the office.
But you know, none of those people were able to get any real traction. The conservatives never decided it was important to rally behind one conservative. Many were still hoping (heck, many ARE still hoping) for the white knight Sarah Palin to enter the race and solve their problems.
No matter how much Romney screws us, he will govern more conservatively than people here at FR claimed. He has certainly not been dissapointing in his first major decision. He won’t be conservative enough, I’m not sure anybody would be, but Romney certainly won’t be. But he’s not Rudy Giuliani. And he’s not Mike Huckabee.
Well said Charles.
Mr. RomneyCARE created RomneyCARE/ObamaCARE, Death Panels,
and gay marriage as Governor while he tanked the state.
And you think THAT is conservative?
For Mr. RomneyCARE, it was a start of his final agendae.
Well Charles, Romney may be YOUR nominee but he ain't mine, and I refuse to vote for the SOB.
And I guess all the GOP-E scheming, backstabbing, and cheating that went on before and during the primaries to clear the way for Romney was a figment of our imaginations, right?