You’re blind if you don’t see Romney supporters here. They don’t specifically say “we support Romney”. They say things like “we must defeat Obama even if we have to support an imperfect candidate” (Romney). I wasn’t challenging them to a debate. I was asking them to tell everyone why they support him without using notions of “electability” etc.
That was the 2nd point of my response — if they are here (and sure there must be), they are only here because they have specifically chosen NOT to post anything like what you asked them to post. That type of post would get them banned, and they’d be gone.
I’m not one of them (although I’m regularly accused of it, since I endorsed Romney in the final 3 competition, after Thompson dropped out, and I defended Romney way too often before that). But I can’t think of any reason to pick Romney over Santorum or Gingrich. I don’t think Romney would be a better President overall than either of them, and he’d be a lot more problematic in terms of trust on conservative issues. The only reason I can see to want Romney over Gingrich or Santorum is the electability issue, which I don’t see as clearly favoring Romney enough to overcome the strong negatives against him on actual policy and trust, relative to the other two candidates.
I’m ignoring Paul because I don’t want to think about him. That way, I don’t have to decide whether my reasoning would apply in a Paul/Romney race, and so I don’t have to feel like I’m compromising myself to keep quiet here. Because I wouldn’t keep quiet if I felt it was important to speak out, and I would get banned (a lot of people don’t understand that, and assume I’m happy to lie about my positions to keep my place here, which would be antithetical to my nature and to my posting history).
Anyway, the people who seem to argue for Romney on things other than electability (like my current Governor) believe executive experience is the be-all of the argument. Since Romney’s the only governor left, it seems to have forced their hands. And while I would have prefered a governor to a congressperson, all things being equal, it’s not like I’m going to support Buddy Roemer just because he was a Governor. And it’s not like Mitt was a governor that long. Perry had a decade of experience running a pretty large state, really well. Not Mitt. I’d rather have had Pawlenty, or Mitch Daniels, than to have to consider Romney for his experience as Governor.
BTW, decades ago in high school, I learned debate, and served on our school’s debate team. So I learned how to analyze and espouse arguments I didn’t personally believe. I find it helpful in understanding why other people believe what they believe, and it helps me when arguing for unpopular positions here, which I like to do sometimes just to make people examing an issue more closely, and to be less polarized about the PEOPLE who believe differently.
So, while I don’t support Romney, I don’t feel the emnity toward those who DO support him that a lot of other people around here do. I’m not ready to disown my Governor for his falling into the dark side, for example. I don’t agree with him, but I understand his argument.