Replies

I just watched Romney’s speech to CPAC. And all I can say is, to all of you who denied this country the opportunity to have this wonderful conservative and great man as our Next President, and instead through your pettiness and single-minded blind adherance to lifetime ideological purity fought him at every turn, until too late many conservatives realised their error —

Yes, to all of you I say,

Well I guess I already said it.

But having watched many of you do as much as anybody to personally and vindictively tear down a fine family man, a man of principle and purpose, a successful and intelligent businessman, and a deeply committed man of faith and patriotism, your attempt to now escape culpability for the tragedy you have brought on our country is not laughable, but pathetic.

Nobody here who supported Romney did anything to prevent any of you from successfully bringing forth a “better” conservative who would be acceptable. It’s not our fault that no “better” conservative spent the last two years crossing the country and laying the groundwork for a successful presidential run.

It’s not our fault that you scrambled across the internet scraping together a “conservative” candidate and came up with Fred Thompson, a fine man with great promise who failed to live up to that promise.

It’s not our fault that your chosen candidate scared away a good number of the 3rd of the legs of conservatism, leading them to jump to Huckabee. It’s not our fault that a third of the conservatives decided while Fred was still in the race that McCain would be their man.

It’s not our fault that you all pledged allegiance to Duncan Hunter, but could never talk 10 friends into supporting him and getting 10 other friends to support him — an act which if it had just been repeated 4-5 times would have made him a national figure to be reckoned with.

You had to support your candidate, and we supported the candidates we chose, and instead of pushing your candidate you trashed all the other candidates, opening the door to McCain. You worked to get Huckabee 1st in Iowa, and many of you were praying for McCain to win in New Hampshire, thus directly supporting the man you now scream to the heavens is the wrong man for the job.

And when it came time to get Fred Thompson through in South Carolina, you and others who claimed to support Fred Thompson sent him barely enough money to live day to day, while ron Paul supporters were outdoing your weeks of fundraising in single-day blitzes.

Many of us were for Romney not because he was Romney, but because in January of 2007, Romney was the only conservative in the race who looked like he had a national strategy to defeat Rudy Giuliani. Fred Thompson wasn’t a gleam in anybody’s eye, and Hunter even then wasn’t getting your overwhelming support (He may have been here, but not among the 60% of the republican party who was supposedly conservative).

No, while Hunter languished, and Romney put together a national strategy, you abandoned Hunter AND Romney and went looking for the NEXT conservative.

Romney was there at the beginning, and was there until the end. He had a great conservative platform, and he could deliver that platform intelligently and coherently.

As a man who helped push Fred Thompson into the race, mostly because I could see that the combination of the blind purists, the bigots, and yes, those people who understandably but in my opinion wrongly feared Romney’s recent conversions were likely to make him unelectable, I can speak with authority that supporting Romney did not stand in the way of supporting and encouraging Thompson.

Because Fred Thompson was a dissappointment. Not his message — that was great. We were lamenting at work today about how Huckabee had held Thompson’s ideals, he’d be our next president. But moreso, Fred Thompson’s entry in the race was really what gave McCain a second life. He kept the conservatives from grudgingly doing what they eventually did — back Romney.

Anyway, I’ve just listened to McCain, and for whatever evil he has done and will do, he hit MANY points which were in fact on our conservative agenda. We could do worse. But we didn’t have to do this bad.

My biggest regret about Romney failing here is that he won’t get a chance to prove every person who attacked him here wrong, as I’m positive he would have.

Maybe in 4 years, the conservatives like those here looking for a scapegoat for thier own failure, might think about finding and promoting a candidate a bit earlier in the process, rather than laughably attacking those who rightly point out to them that they are too late in getting to the game.